In Production: City Hunter on Fire
The eleventh production by Seishun Shitemasu. Currently in-progress for a summer '05 release.
This one has been a long time coming. We'd made period pieces for the 60s, 70s, and 90s. An 80s riffing was inevitable, though rife with delays. There are few shows set firmly in a "real" 1980s setting (and Megazone 2-3 has been almost literally to death) . In the early 90s, I'd heard of these great episodes of City Hunter 2 chockablock with betrayal, angst, and a fine mexican standoff in the end. With the proposed title (Max's idea, apparently) of City Hunter on Fire, we were set with source, concept, and style. To paraphrase another icon of the early 90s: Everyone else is aping Tarantino, why can't we?
Back then the only source of such an (at best) second-tier series of length was somehow getting an LD set from Japan. It never happened, for various reasons. Years passed. Anime became a huge almost-mainstream sensation in America. Like plutonium, it's now available at every corner drugstore. During one of those weekend impulse-buying sprees I saw that ADV had helpfully released City Hunter in their economy format used for vintage releases that no one in particular is clamoring for. I rooted through my old email and found the note that listed the episodes from CH2. With no sense of urgency, I watched the source for this long-backburnered project.
Good thing. The episodes in question were not at all what I had in mind. The Mexican standoff is closer to a bushido standoff. The villain, an old friend of Ryo's, looked like Macaulay Culkin playing Fred from Scooby-Doo. And then there are the ever-present liabilities of the show: lecheries, mokkori, and hyperspace hammers that fans of this show cannot get enough of.
Still, while nothing in that set of 25 episodes particularly interesting, I was really fond of the title. I thought maybe something else could be used. Over the ecourse of several months I bought the rest of the dvd sets. Having finally caved in and bought a mac like the rest of the SS alumni, I saw it was now fairly simple to splice footage from across the two series into one coherent episode (City Hunter 3, cheap and off-model, could never pass for the same show).
After another 75 episodes, I found the right episodes for the core plot in the two-part closer of City Hunter (first series), the one with the Lodoss Mafia. The tone of the script shifted a lot, but became more firmly 80s. It's become much more of a Stephen J. Cannell-style show. With a lot of John Hughes thrown in.
Playing around with Final Cut took up a lot of the last six months, but I learned something about the production end of digital editing. I spliced in scenes from four other episodes for footage that casts a different light on the Kaori-Ryo relationship. Mulder and Scully have nothing on these two for unrequited tension. Be that as it may, out of a hundred episodes there's a scant five usable minutes of them conversing politely without aid of a mokkori joke or hyperspace hammer.
Real production began in January, and principal photography (read: dubbing) was completed on April 6th. It is now figuratively in the hands of Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, and remains on track for a premiere this con season.
We have finished the voices and music post, and it should be burned to dvd by wednesday.
This one has been a long time coming. We'd made period pieces for the 60s, 70s, and 90s. An 80s riffing was inevitable, though rife with delays. There are few shows set firmly in a "real" 1980s setting (and Megazone 2-3 has been almost literally to death) . In the early 90s, I'd heard of these great episodes of City Hunter 2 chockablock with betrayal, angst, and a fine mexican standoff in the end. With the proposed title (Max's idea, apparently) of City Hunter on Fire, we were set with source, concept, and style. To paraphrase another icon of the early 90s: Everyone else is aping Tarantino, why can't we?
Back then the only source of such an (at best) second-tier series of length was somehow getting an LD set from Japan. It never happened, for various reasons. Years passed. Anime became a huge almost-mainstream sensation in America. Like plutonium, it's now available at every corner drugstore. During one of those weekend impulse-buying sprees I saw that ADV had helpfully released City Hunter in their economy format used for vintage releases that no one in particular is clamoring for. I rooted through my old email and found the note that listed the episodes from CH2. With no sense of urgency, I watched the source for this long-backburnered project.
Good thing. The episodes in question were not at all what I had in mind. The Mexican standoff is closer to a bushido standoff. The villain, an old friend of Ryo's, looked like Macaulay Culkin playing Fred from Scooby-Doo. And then there are the ever-present liabilities of the show: lecheries, mokkori, and hyperspace hammers that fans of this show cannot get enough of.
Still, while nothing in that set of 25 episodes particularly interesting, I was really fond of the title. I thought maybe something else could be used. Over the ecourse of several months I bought the rest of the dvd sets. Having finally caved in and bought a mac like the rest of the SS alumni, I saw it was now fairly simple to splice footage from across the two series into one coherent episode (City Hunter 3, cheap and off-model, could never pass for the same show).
After another 75 episodes, I found the right episodes for the core plot in the two-part closer of City Hunter (first series), the one with the Lodoss Mafia. The tone of the script shifted a lot, but became more firmly 80s. It's become much more of a Stephen J. Cannell-style show. With a lot of John Hughes thrown in.
Playing around with Final Cut took up a lot of the last six months, but I learned something about the production end of digital editing. I spliced in scenes from four other episodes for footage that casts a different light on the Kaori-Ryo relationship. Mulder and Scully have nothing on these two for unrequited tension. Be that as it may, out of a hundred episodes there's a scant five usable minutes of them conversing politely without aid of a mokkori joke or hyperspace hammer.
Real production began in January, and principal photography (read: dubbing) was completed on April 6th. It is now figuratively in the hands of Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, and remains on track for a premiere this con season.
We have finished the voices and music post, and it should be burned to dvd by wednesday.
by Erma Landers at 12:58 PM
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