I got a call from Mrs. Iwashita of Magazine House. Keanu Reeves is coming to Japan to promote the movie, so please take a picture of the interview." It's the best! Thinking so, I immediately went to the hotel where he was staying with Mr. Iwashita. At that time and now, when I arrived at the hotel in the usual style of sticking the camera into the tote bag of the LL bean, which was in tattered because I didn't like the camera bag, the interview location was a luxurious suite room. Several companies have already gathered and are buzzing. In the middle of deciding on the room allocation for the interview, a primitive world was about to unfold in which the editors of each magazine decided the order of the interview in junken. I had no choice but to believe in Mr. Iwashita's junken magic, and I was quite excited, but it ended in a completely unfounded worry, and Mr. Iwashita brilliantly grasped his luck and won the best room.
I immediately started to set up the writing and the paper used for the back in the room. Nowadays, anyone can easily shoot with high-spec lights using LEDs, but in the 1980s, strobe was a normal world. I guess there were few people who used it outside of the movie site to shoot with the lighting of the fixed light (*1) like me, there was no assistant, and the other photographers looked at me and said, "I wonder if this guy is okay." . But I knew it because I was an assistant in the film department. I've seen the lighting with tungsten, which was taken for granted in the movie, on the spot, so I thought I could try it in still shooting, so I tried and researched various things in my own way. I finally got a satisfactory result, so I actually did it in the interview. Above all, the constant light can literally see the state of the light visually at any time, the shadows around the face can be seen immediately, and the subject can be floated using the blur that can be made by opening the aperture. There is also anxiety that you can't know the status of the strobe unless you check it with Polaroid every time. So at the already busy interview site, the equipment was smaller and lighter to shoot with constant light, and I was able to shoot alone without an assistant, which was full of good things.
*1 The ideal light source for both stationary light and tungsten light and "strobe, stational light" is "sun". Lighting equipment continues to evolve to bring it closer to the sunlight. "Tungsten" was the mainstay in shooting using constant light, for example, in the past when shooting movies. It can be said that it was rarely used in sites such as steel interviews as equipment that is difficult to respond to modern society for various reasons such as having heat, high running costs, and large. It is still used in movies and commercials. The reason why I like it is that the background blur is good, and the fact that it is finished with a photo with an atmosphere with warm light.
However, the problem is that unlike digital, it cannot be corrected, so if you shoot tungsten lighting with film, it will be colored. Yellow is on it, and if it is Japanese skin color, it will be yellow. That's why it was hard to use a filter or soften the light with a diffuser. However, I realized that the transparent skin color of white people would not be unnatural, and I dared to wish for this writing at this time. Of course, I also took a film dedicated to tungsten just in case. However, tungsten-only film is low in sensitivity, so the shutter speed will inevitably slow down. Even if you can take pictures, you are worried about the risk of becoming blurry photos, so it probably didn't spread much at the interview site. While I was waiting in the suite room while doing this and that, someone from the movie promotion department came over and said, "I'm sorry! The previous interview is standing up and I'm pushing it, so please wait a little longer," he said and disappeared. About 15 minutes later, this time, he said, "Mr. Keanu was starting to get annoyed and started tapping the desk in small increments with his fingers, so I wonder if this is no longer possible... Maybe the next interview will be canceled." I came. When we were saying, "What is it?", Keanu suddenly came into the room and hit his head against the wall and shouted something. Everyone who was there was surprised! Time froze for a moment. Suddenly, Keanu turned around and said, "Come on! Let's interview! Who was it at first? What, I was even more surprised because he said it to us with a smile as if it was completely different from before. Now I think that it may have been his style of acting, but there was no way we could afford it. In the midst of nervous running, "Yes! The interview began, "Please," but as far as I was concerned, when I started shooting while exploring the situation, Keanu suddenly said, "Are you a surfer?" What do you say? How do you know? When I said that, he said, "Because you're wearing UGG boots." That's why I thought so. At that time, UGG boots were not yet sold in Japan, but I also got the one that my friend Kaoru Ohno imported personally and loved them, so I was wearing them at that time. That's why I also remembered the story of his previous surfing-themed movie and said, "You surf too, don't you?" When I said that, "Just once in a while, by the way, what kind of wetsuit is it in this season?" I was already happy because he asked me, and I never thought it was good to be a surfer at this time. "Let's shoot!" If you say that" "OK! I'll do anything, so tell me," so I asked for a lot of things, but he posed without making a single disgusting face. It was the best time. After taking a lot of photos, we thanked Keanu for taking good enough photos, and left the hotel in a good mood, looking sideways at the other interview teams who were stunned.
According to what I heard later, it seems that all our subsequent interviews were canceled. What I think is still clear is that the best event of that day was thanks to Mr. Iwashita's junken and UGG boots. It's a moment when I sincerely thought it was good to be a surfer.
「Only Surfer Knows a Filling」
