How to choose the colors for "JAPAN, Our Home Land"

The colors used for various elements--buildings and people’s clothes in 1956--have a great influence on the overall image of the movie. The process of choosing colors for each item and coordinating the general tint of the movie is called "color designing." At the current point of the production, the color setting is considered as an extremely crucial task. In the previous movie "NITABOH," the director asked the production crew to "build the color image by envisioning the world of Ukiyoe as an example". The director’s request ended up with a striking scene of the Iwaki River with a light, amaranth purple surface reflecting the sunset. Some of the other impressive sceneries in terms of color are the white snowy landscape, red pinwheels and yellow flower beds that spread all over the screen.

The second movie is set in old downtown Tokyo in 1956. It feels like the world we remember from those days was somewhat colorless in black and white. But in reality, the sceneries then were surely covered with numerous colors. To incorporate such colorful sceneries in the animation was a big challenge for us. One distinctive difference between general Japanese animations (similar to manga) and Director Nishizawa’s animation is that the latter resembles live-action movies to a great extent. To the color designer Ms. Yuko Kanamaru, the director’s request to "generate the colors of the old days realistically on the screen" was quite a challenge.