Ryoko's Farewell

Ryoko's Farewell

Today, I thought I shall introduce one of my short-films. The title of the piece is Ryoko's Final Melbourne Tour.

It's a tribute film for Ryoko that I made in April this year. I have attached it to this blog for those that are interested in watching it. WARNING: there are moments where Japanese is spoken. Please ensure that you have the closed-captions icon selected to get the English translation.

Ryoko is a friend of mine that I have know since 2009. We met at La Trobe University when I was in my first year of my PhD and she was still undertaking her undergraduate course. we became close friends and would spend a lot of time together conversing and having lunch together on campus. I found her to be both somewhat eccentric yet at the same time intellectually stimulating to talk to. We would often go out to dinner and karaoke together with other friends.

In 2010, I went to Japan to conduct my fieldwork and during my time abroad she was to graduate and eventually find employment in Sydney. She had mixed feelings about her residence and work in Sydney and would, on occasion, come back to Melbourne to visit old friends in which I would feel obliged to help out my good friend by chauffeuring her around the town.

This time (April 2012), Ryoko announced that she had quit her job in Sydney and was returning to Japan. She decided to come back to Melbourne one last time before she would leave, to celebrate with her good friends and give thanks for the friendships that she had with them.

I decided to film this moment in honour of our friendship, however I wanted to give it a little twist to make the moment more memorable. The theme of my project was to create an illusion that Ryoko was some kind of major celebrity who was arriving for her final tour.

I did not tell Ryoko or any of her guests what I was intended to do with the project because I wanted to catch people in their natural state (albeit, some people like Allison caught on pretty quickly). Overall, I was grateful for everyone for cooperating with me on this project. Everyone had fun and kept the atmosphere lively. I had no problem collecting interesting footage for this tribute.

However, the battery on my camera did run out quickly (this was before I bought a larger battery for the camera) and I had to come back to the city at a later date to film extra b-roll footage.

But overall, I was happy with the end product, even though I am still quite new to the editing software. Ryoko seemed to be pleased (and surprised) with the final product. I hope that we can meet again soon and maybe a live in Japan version at the end of this month.