This 5-year work drought recently came to an end when my friends at be-kyoto gallery approached me about a new project. They wanted to do an English language instruction video. I thought, enh...I don't know. I'm an artist, not an English teacher. And there are a million English instruction videos out there. Okay, I said, if we are going to do this, it has to be different - no classrooms or blackboards (or whiteboards!), no textbooks, exercises or quizzes.
After mulling it over for several weeks the project began to take shape. Let's make a super short film! We had no budget so we would have to be creative using the gallery space, a wonderful 200-year-old machiya, and our own talents. I wrote several short scripts and did some Monty Python-esque animation. Uchiyama-san easily took the role of cinematographer. Okamoto-san became the reluctant but charming leading lady. And Okamura-san was brought in as editor and advisor on all things technical. Shooting and editing took another several weeks. Finally we ended up with this, a breezy sketch that doesn't take itself too seriously, but nonetheless hopes you learn some English (er…that is, if you don't already speak English):
