Production Notes VI

November and December 2002

Nov.18: Kagrra @ Kumagaya Vogue
Now this was an adventure for the crew since I decided that it would be easier to drive to Saitama rather than take the train. Well this turned out to be good and bad! Kaori, Uyen, and Akos where on call for the day. Now the problem was that we left a little later than we should have and did not take the traffic nor distance into consideration. Plus, I did not know the way using the freeways so it was a local route the whole way down and back. So what should have taken about max of 2 hours turned into about 3 and 1/2! Wowwwww....... Oh, I would like to Thank my great student Kimie for letting us use her car. Now the sound check was at 4:30 and the show started at7:00pm. We arrived at about 6:25!! So needless to say, our preparation was on the fly and the live house was sooooooo small that it was hard to get a good position. However, the sound was great and that is why they(the band's management)choose this location. It was our first try at four camera's and he did have our tape problems again with tapes getting eaten by the camera's! However, the footage was not bad and we should be able to salvage about 70 percent of it!　 The Canon XL1s was in the center(off a bit) and the Sony's were on the left(Akos) and right(Uyen). The panasonic 2ccd was backstage. Thanks to Quintin Salamack for the use of his camera. The show was a good one and the fans were out in force on a Monday night! Now, the long ride back home.....uhh........ Oh, we stopped after many miles of decided where to go to for some dinner. The final decision was Saizariya! Let's just say that anything tasted good after not having anything to eat for about 6 hours. It was not the best choice but hay, not many places were open after 10pm in the countryside of Saitama!! Kumagaya is almost in Gunma Prefecture!!!　 I had no idea!!!ha,ha. Thanks to everyone for coming along and doing a great job!
November 24:
Merry Live at Shibuya Club Quattro
Staff: Akos,Ai, Yasuyuki, Uyen, Ben, and Tomoko.
We used four camera's this night and I was happy with the nice variety of shots. However, the behind the stage shots were difficult to pull off because of lack of space. However, Yasuyuki and Ai did a great job with what they were given. Akos, Uyen, and Myself were in the front at three separate positions like an inverse triangle. Akos was on the left in charge of close ups from that side of the stage while Uyen was on the right further back in charge of the right side. I was right down the middle; primarily focused on the vocalist Gara! We were able to get some great shots from all angles and I wished we could have done that for XYZ-A too. As for Equipment we used one XL1s, two Sony Hi End 3ccd cameras and one Panasonic 2ccd handy cam.
　
Dec.6th Los Angeles
KNAC DJ Will interview
I got a chance to interview DJ Will from KNAC Internet Radio. He was up the to task and was even wearing an old Loudness shirt. We talked about many aspects of Radio and music. I was by myself so I used my tripod and hand held the boom mic. It took about 40 minutes and he liked a few songs from CRAZE and Merry. He will try to play as many bands as he can on his show which is usually on Sundays at 9:00pm for two hours.
　
Schedule:
No Schedule.
Live shows are Monday, Jan. 13 Shibuya AX, Laputa(great show)
Dir en grey on Saturday Jan 11, Yokohama Arena.(could not go)