Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg Campus Magazin 23/24

SHOOTING REPORT
KAGE
(Shadow)
IN 1935, JAPANESE AUTHOR EIJI
YOSHIKAWA PUBLISHED THE FOLLOWING
QUOTE IN HIS BOOK ABOUT THE LEGEND-
ARY SAMURAI AND PHILOSOPHER
MIYAMOTO MUSASHI: "IT IS EASY TO DE-
STROY AN EXTERNAL ENEMY, BUT IMPOSSI-
BLE TO DEFEAT AN INTERNAL ONE."
THE STORY OF THE VFX DIPLOMA FILM KAGE
(JAPANESE FOR SHADOW) MAKES USE OF
THE PHILOSOPHY AND VIRTUES OF THE
SAMURAI TO STAGE INNER CONFLICTS AS A
LITERAL BATTLE AGAINST ONESELF AND TO
ILLUSTRATE A POSSIBLE WAY OF DEALING
WITH THEM. THESE VIRTUES HAVE MANY
PARALLELS TO THE NOW FAMILIAR BUDŌ,
THE PHILOSOPHICAL COMPONENT OF THE
JAPANESE MARTIAL ARTS.
We follow the young samurai Taka who, on a deserted
mystical mountain plateau in the midst of his training
place lying in ruins, tries in vain to settle his inner conflict
with excessive training. Inspired by the shadow archetype
of Carl Gustav Jung‘s psychoanalytical theory, he
becomes embroiled in a battle with his own shadow and
discovers that he cannot win this battle.
The realization of this film was a great challenge. We
had to show a samurai in a fictional setting, depict an
asynchronous, three-dimensional shadow and tell a metaphorical
story in less than four minutes. Fortunately,
we had a fantastic team of over 100 people, including
highly ambitious students from the Animationsinstitut
and other areas of the Filmakademie, as well as experienced
industry professionals, who worked together to
overcome this challenge.
Once the story and key points were established, Lee
Huang (a member of Jackie Chan‘s stunt crew) and his
team implemented the fight choreography in a first
previz. In addition, we received valuable first-hand input
in online conferences from Ide Ryusetsu, a Japanese
samurai grandmaster who had already acted as a motion-capture
actor for the character Jin Sakai in the video
game GHOST OF TSUSHIMA. Afterwards, martial artist
and actor Eskindir Tesfay took over these basics and
finalized the fight choreography together with the actors
Anon Mall (Samurai Taka) and Bernhard Fuchs (Taka‘s
shadow).
We had to do various VFX tests, including the design
of the fictional mountain plateau environment and
the three-dimensional shadow. An AI-assisted solution
helped us to crop the shadow silhouette and darken it
later in the image. To reduce the effort, the SFX mask
department had to find a way to cover the eyes. This was
because the costume and mask already had to form as
dark a base as possible. After extensive research, the costume
of the samurai Taka was modelled on the warrior
clothing of the Sengoku period in Japan (15th/16th century)
and elaborately handcrafted. The authentic samurai
swords worth 6,000 euros were made especially for
this film by a katana smithy ( Japanese long sword, editor‘s
note). For the fight scenes, optically identical wooden
dummies were used for safety reasons. In the event
that a wooden sword should break, six copies were provided
so that shooting would not be interrupted by necessary
repairs.
The challenge of the filming location remained. The dojo
ruin was completely recreated as a set design and set
on stilts on a virtual mountain in front of a full CG backdrop.
The CG environment was created in Unreal Engine 5
(a tool for real-time 3D creation for photorealistic visualizations
and immersive experiences, editor‘s note)
and formed the basis for the virtual production shoot.
At the end of January, the first shooting block followed
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