TV Commercial Production in Japanese

Here’s a slightly edited excerpt about TV commercial production from my film production book, Circumstances Beyond My Control. (By the way, it was with this company that I got to work with Paul Newman.)

“Between 1979 and ‘82 or ‘83 I worked as 1st Assistant Director on a dozen or more shoots with PMC Productions whose clients were primarily Japanese. We shot all over New York City and environs for products ranging from whiskey to cars. They were all interesting.

“One thing I discovered about the Japanese guys (all were men) was that though they didn’t actually speak English they understood a lot of it, primarily from watching American TV shows. And as I worked with them more and more I learned a lot of Japanese words and phrases many of which had English homonyms.

“For example, Good Morning: Ohio. No Problem: Mon dai nai (Monday night). This second one led to what was to me a very impressive linguistic feat by one of their producers. Several of them had become fascinated by the NFL and one Tuesday I was asked a question by this producer to which I replied, ‘Mon dai nai.’ He turned to his companion and told him. ‘Ben-san say footbarro.’

“It took me a moment to untangle the ‘r’ for ‘l’ transposition and I realized that the man had made a pun in a foreign language. ‘No problem’ = Mon dai nai, sounds like Monday Night … Football. I was very impressed.

“The now clichéd ‘r’ for ‘l’ (and vice-versa) transposition is very real. One day I was standing next to a Japanese cameraman who spoke a bit of English. We finished a shot and I said, ‘Lunch!’ He said, ‘Runch.’ I said, ‘No, lllunch.’ He replied, ‘Rrrunch.’ Trying another approach I said, ‘Rrrunch.’ And he replied ‘Lllunch.’ I swear I didn’t make that up.

“Another example of the L/R transposition was in writing. When I began working with PMC they didn’t have the various forms commonly used in the business such as call sheets and production reports. So during that lengthy preproduction period I had on my first job with them I drafted several examples by hand writing them on a legal pad and drawing in the lines and grids. I then reproduced the grids with pen and ruler on white paper and gave them to Junko to type in the words. No computer graphics yet existed.

“On the call sheet there is a column heading ‘Crew Category’. When Junko gave me her first draft to edit I noticed that she had typed ‘Categoly’.

“I lest my case.

“PS: I didn’t correct it. So for as long as I worked with them the PMC call sheet’s first heading still read ‘Crew Categoly’.”

You’ll find many more humorous and informative tales of TV commercial production when you click here and get Circumstances Beyond My Control.

Tags: ,

Comments & Responses

Comments are closed.

2024 © InkThemes. All rights reserved.