American Cinematographer - March 2009 - 26

Right: After attempting to rob the family home, a homeless burglar (Koji Yakusho) makes an unexpected connection with Mrs. Sasaki. Below: The Sasakis’ younger son (Kai Inowaki), a piano prodigy, provides a ray of hope for the family with a stunning recital. Ashizawa captured most of the boy’s performance from a distant, stationary position that lends the sequence a powerful stillness. wooden beams — places where one would usually avoid placing the camera because there are so many distractions within the frame. By including all those intrusions, we hoped to portray the family within the society, as well as the individuals within the family, in new ways.” She strove to maintain a relatively normal visual perspective within the house (and through much of the film) by employing a Zeiss 40mm lens on the camera, an Arri 535B. Kurosawa notes, “I wanted to express narrowness, proximity and a stifling closeness while keeping enough distance from the subjects to maintain a comfortable objectivity.” Japanese productions feature a lighting designer in addition to a cinematographer, and on Tokyo Sonata, Ashizawa (who operated the camera) consulted with Tokuju Ichikawa on the lighting scheme in the Sasaki home. “I consider him my best work partner because he exceeds all my expectations,” says the cinematographer. “In regard to the lighting, we talk about drastic matters freely, so our working relationship is far more flexible than what is traditionally seen in the Japanese film industry.” The filmmakers mixed colored lights inside the home to suggest the clashing relationships within the family. “We lit the dining area with 3200°K lights, while the kitchen area and living room featured cyan fluorescent lights,” says Ashizawa. “For the area near the front door, we mixed the exterior light with a green-tinted light, and we shot the night scenes with an 85C [colorconversion] filter. The living-room area closest to the TV was lit with a storebought tungsten fluorescent light called an ‘eco light,’ which created a subtle texture. Green and cyan-blue tints are usually avoided, but we chose to use them instead; the mix of colors was a crucial part of delineating the chemistry of the family members, as well as the particular circumstances in which the family is placed.” This nuanced mixture of light required careful handling of the negative. “The team at Tokyo Laboratory, headed by [color-timing supervisor] Ryoichi Hirose, did brilliant work,” says Ashizawa. “I shot the film on [Kodak Vision2 500T] 5218 and [50D] 5201, and all the footage was pushed one stop. For example, the 5218 was processed at 1,000 ASA, but the exposure was stopped at 640 and then printed darker at the lab. We printed on Kodak Vision Premier so the blacks would appear deep and rich. I always aim to express a rich shade of black and also make use of the granularity of the film. I am still emboldened by something Janusz Kaminski said in American Cinematographer a few years ago: ‘Raw films today often lack granularity or are very vague about it. If the image does not incorporate the grain, it will [look] digitized.’” One of the subplots in Tokyo Sonata concerns Ryuhei’s wife, Megumi, who suppresses an independent streak (hinted at by her red sweater) in favor of her duties as wife and mother. Her devotion to her family lends poignancy to a grainy, unnerving dream sequence in which she imagines the unannounced return of her oldest 26 March 2009

American Cinematographer - March 2009

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