Chapter 147: Playing Scenes Together

The staff stood by on both sides of the street, gently informing passing pedestrians that filming was currently underway. At eight o'clock at night on a street that was far from a main thoroughfare, the disruption was minimal. Even when two or three office workers or random passersby occasionally strolled past, they merely glanced briefly before moving on without paying it much mind.

Tonight's scene required Kirishima’s girlfriend, Iida Risa, consumed by anxiety over Kirishima’s disappearance, to follow his friend and acquaintance, Kikuchi Hiroki, to a cram school and confront him aboard a bus.

Although it was a youth campus film, the production still included two or three exterior scenes set outside the school grounds. Incidentally, the location for tonight’s night shoot was not Saitama, but Chofu in Tokyo.

Every year, hundreds of films and television dramas are produced in Japan. Broadly speaking, compared to the massive yearly output of historical costume dramas in domestic markets, Japan’s period dramas are relatively rare. Moreover, there is little appetite for so-called blockbuster spectacles, meaning that settings are predominantly grounded in everyday reality.

Consequently, filming crews might pop up unexpectedly on any given street in Tokyo and its surrounding cities. Especially in iconic areas like Shinjuku and Shibuya, film crews could be found shooting on location almost every single day, often with multiple productions overlapping. Having seen it all so often, passersby simply could not be bothered to stop and gawk.

When it comes to shooting exteriors, nothing strikes more fear into the hearts of a production crew than on-site live sound recording. While it might sound ordinary to the bare ear, listening through monitoring headphones to the feed from the boom microphone reveals that even the most mundane sounds—the wind, car engines, and even pedestrians' footsteps—blur together into an impenetrable wall of noise.

This was especially true back in the insufficiently advanced 1990s, when the idea of relying on superior equipment to compensate was a pipe dream, leaving the crew to rely on manual ingenuity to solve every problem.

While dubbing in post-production was an option, it was practically a last resort among bad choices. It brought complications like matching lip movements and trying to recreate the actors' emotional intensity in a sound booth where the energy of the moment was absent. Therefore, unless conditions strictly prohibited live sound, post-production dubbing was avoided in pursuit of better authenticity.

It all seemed manageable during the planning phase, but in practice, trying to cut costs while delivering high quality proved immensely challenging. Fortunately, while the budget was limited, it was sufficient when applied where it mattered most, unlike situations where you expected the horse to run fast without feeding it grass.

At times like this, Yuzawa felt a profound sense of gratitude toward the television drama The Kindaichi Case Files. Through that production, not only had he "poached" an experienced director as a collaborator, but he had also secured backing from NTV—a stroke of fortune rarely bestowed upon a newcomer recklessly plunging into the film industry to chase dreams.

...

After calling "cut" for the second time, Tsutsumi Yukihiko looked toward the sound monitoring crew, and only upon receiving a reassuring "OK" gesture did he let out a sigh of relief. "Let's prepare for the next scene. We only secured the street permit for four hours. If we don't pick up the pace, time is going to run short. And," he added, his expression turning far more severe, bearing the classic prelude of a short-tempered auteur about to blow his top, "please be more diligent with on-site noise control. Let's not make low-level mistakes that waste our time."

The scene being shot featured Kikuchi Hiroki, played by Yuzawa, waiting for a bus at the station. The first take had been NG’d not because of any flaw in his acting or blocking, but because a stray patch of ambient noise had bled into the recording.

...

If they were shooting inside a moving car, the standard method would involve placing the vehicle onto a flatbed trailer and towing it without the engine running. However, since the transport in question was a much more spacious bus, things became simpler, allowing the crew to bring their equipment directly inside the vehicle to shoot.

Because the space inside the bus was cramped and the perspective constantly shifted between the two characters as Iida Risa stormed aboard to interrogate Kikuchi Hiroki, the scene had to be broken down and filmed in a series of short, disjointed shots.

Before filming officially commenced, Yuzawa had jokingly whispered to Yukie Nakama, his co-star for the scene, "If you find it hard to get into the emotional state, try imagining that I've suddenly vanished from the face of the earth."

Watching Yukie Nakama, who wore slightly more mature makeup to suit Iida Risa’s character, Yuzawa mentally marveled at the fresh radiance it brought to her, while simultaneously experiencing a strange, tender sensation of "the little girl suddenly growing up."

Yet, the moment she broke into a childlike smile, that illusion of maturity vanished entirely, leaving before him once again the innocent young girl he knew.

"For a scene like this one, I don't need to resort to tricks like that."

"That sounds terribly confident."

"Of course. I'm definitely not going to hold Big Brother Yuzawa back," she replied.

Yuzawa wore a slightly sheepish expression. "If we're talking about holding people back, the one who'll do it is probably me..." When it came to experience in acting and professional training courses, Yukie Nakama far surpassed him.

"That's not necessarily true. Judging by Big Brother Yuzawa's performance in Kindaichi, your acting skills are already quite polished."

Yuzawa couldn't help but chuckle. "You really watched every single bit of it, didn't you?"

Even as they spoke, the two maintained a restrained and polite distance from one another.

To avoid arousing suspicion, they continued to interact at the film studio just as they always had. They hadn't even reported anything to their respective talent agencies. While maintaining professional boundaries on set is a mark of good conduct, failing to report a relationship to one's management agency actually bordered on a breach of professional ethics.

Generally speaking, unless an agency strictly enforced a no-dating policy leaving artists with no choice but to engage in secret romances, talent agencies required their stars to report any romantic involvements. This precaution ensured that if an emergency arose—such as being caught red-handed by a tabloid magazine—the agency wouldn't be caught flat-footed without time to manage the PR.

However, Yuzawa’s boss was himself; he didn't need to report to anyone as long as he kept his own counsel, and Being Inc. had zero interest in the personal lives of its singers. As for Yukie Nakama, if her manager ever found out, there was a ninety-nine percent chance she would be ordered to break it off. For a newcomer, unless the agency possessed the tolerance of a saint or the individual cared nothing for their career, there was rarely a second choice.

Between the two of them, one was simply averse to trouble, while the other feared that speaking out would cost her this tiny, hard-won happiness. Thus, without ever explicitly discussing it, they tacitly embarked on a secret romance known only to the two of them.