Interview with Koji Tanaka, Director of Photography of “Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet” [1/4]

The role of final coordination: photography

Hirasawa: Tanaka can make theater epics such as A letter to Momo as well as on-topic TV anime such as Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C. or Guilty Crown; now he is working on Gargantia. He is a person indispensable to I.G’s photography department.

Ishikawa: The director of photography is always credited, but I don’t know about the contents of their work, and I always wondered what kind of things they do. What do you do in particular?

Tanaka: There are many people working on an anime, and we operate in separate sections at the same time. It is an assembly-line system, but sometimes we work simultaneously. Loosely, you could divide the department to people who do the line drawing and artists who draw the background. In the case of Gargantia, Chamber is 3D, so 3D work also comes in as a simultaneous operation, which means we proceed with the work on three lines at the same time. Photography is the work of putting together the separately made materials into one final piece. People often ask, “How can you be a director of photography if you don’t even have a camera?” (laughs) It is true that today we combine the pieces using a computer, in the old days, however, animation cels and backgrounds were shot together, “photographed” one by one on film with a camera, that’s why it’s called “photography.” And since I manage that kind of work, I am a director of photography.

Ishikawa: So the name remained from the old times when they actually did photography.

Tanaka: Yes. There are companies that still call it “photography,” but since it’s not actual photography with cameras, there are also companies that changed the name to the “combining” or “composition” section. Nevertheless, the work they do is the same.

Ishikawa: In the credits, there is also the title of art director. How is your work different from an art director’s?

Tanaka: The cuts in one TV episode can range from 300, Gargantia having about 340, to above 400 if there are a lot, so it would be impossible for one man to draw them all. That’s why we have multiple people drawing the pictures. Even though everyone is very good at drawing, their pictures just won’t be the same. They draw different Ledos and Amys, and since it would be bad if the viewer thought, “Hey, the characters changed,” we need to match the characters so that they would look like the same Amy or Ledo. That is the art director’s work.

Gargantia x Tokyo Otaku Mode Special Site:
http://otakumode.com/sp/gargantia

Source:
http://gargantia.jp/#kaito_3 (Japanese)

© Oceanus / Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet Production Committee