How did “Black Rain” become “Osaka Noir”?

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2019.12.07Kazuo Ozaki

Oscar-winning editor brings together chaotic material

Another contributor is Tom Rolfe, who was in charge of editing. Won the Academy Award for Best Editing for the American space exploration film `` The Right Stuff '' (1983), which had a running time of 3 hours and 13 minutes. He is a veteran editor who has gone through the turmoil of editing from a huge amount of material.

As mentioned above, ``Black Rain'' was not allowed to be filmed on location in Japan, and the filming location was often chaotic. As a result, plans had to change frequently and the script had to be revised while filming, which naturally resulted in a huge amount of edited material.

Rolf created a 3 hour and 17 minute work print (roughly edited) from approximately 100 hours of photographic material. From there, the film was further refined to a length of 2 hours and 40 minutes. At this stage, the producers and others discussed the running time, and the film was further shortened to 1 hour and 50 minutes. As a result, when Nick remains alone in Osaka to pursue Sato, Joyce (Kate Capshaw), who was supposed to help him, appears much less (I don't really feel the necessity for her to appear in the movie). (This is due to the influence of this editing.)

However, at this stage, Sherry Lansing, another producer, commented on the lack of scenes shot in Osaka in the main story. Editing included more scenes to make better use of the material shot on location in Japan, and the running time was increased to 2 hours and 5 minutes.

The actual shooting of ``Black Rain'' did not go as planned, but thanks to the efforts of these talented staff and the producers' judgment, this film has an overwhelming presence as ``Osaka Noir.'' be.

By the way, there is a scene in the middle where the police raid a pachinko parlor in Kyobashi and round up all the yakuza, and the inside of that office was filmed at the Million Dollar Theater in Los Angeles, which is similar to the scene in Blade Runner (1982). It is also used for photography.

Despite the extremely difficult production schedule, Ridley Scott said that among his own works, Black Rain was his favorite because he was able to direct it as a paid job and was able to reflect his own vision in the work. I remember it myself.

References

David Jon Wiener.Sep.1989 “American Cinematographer Magazine” Hollywood:ASC.

Laurence Raw and Lord Puttnam CBE “ The Ridley Scott Encyclopedia ” Scarecrow Press

“Yusaku Matsuda Fire Quietly” by Takeshi Yamaguchi (Kobunsha)

“ First Cut: Editors of American Cinema ” Edited by Gabriella Oldham / Supervised by Ken Okumura and Seiichi Nishizawa (Film Art Publishing)

Text: Kazuo Ozaki

Film critic and writer. His main writing sites include print media such as ``Figure King'', ``Champion RED'', ``Eiga Hiho'', and ``Hokkaido'', and web media such as ``Eiga.com'' and ``The Cinema''. In addition, he has contributed many explanations and essays to theater pamphlets, movie mook books, and DVD & Blu-ray software booklets. She also formed a cinema comedian unit [Movie Gachinko Brothers] under the name "Dolly Ozaki" and appears on TV and at talk events.

Twitter: @dolly_ozaki

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"Black Rain"

Blu-ray: 1,886 yen + tax

Publisher: NBCUniversal Entertainment

*Information as of December 2019.

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