Location Hunting

Dogasu's Backpack | Movies & Specials Guide | DP Movie 02 | Behind the Scenes

What follows is a translation of the location hunting page of the official website. While it is not a direct word-for-word translation, it does provide some insight on the work that goes into the concept stage of the film.

To the Northern Kingdom!

It was the start of a blistering hot September in Japan. The movie location hunting team, however, leaves this heat and heads toward a kingdom far away to the north. The team, being made up of Japanese people, had already had an image of what this faraway northern kingdom would be like. Yet we were surprised that the flight was going to last ten hours! But since we knew exactly where we wanted to go, the distance didn't seem so great.

Director Yuyama Kunhiko's goal was to arrive in Copenhagen, Denmark and take pictures of the city at night. However, the city was too dark for them to take any good pictures, but they were happy to experience Copenhagen's cool, crisp air.

The Shaking Train

The location hunting team arrived late in a Norwegian town named Bergen. Since we went straight to the hotel, we didn't get a sense that we were abroad until the next morning. Unfortunately, when we woke up, it was raining! Everyone who was walking around outside seemed to be freezing due to the rain and the chilly winds. It really did feel like we were in a northern kingdom.

Since we couldn't do much in these conditions, we pressed on to Mr. Yuyama's desired destination. We got on a train and rode to Voss, where we transferred to a different car. As we rode away from the city, we looked outside through the foggy windows and could see the mountains' greenery As we saw this, we could sense the pleasant odor of the trees and the cool, mountain air.

Our next destination was a small port town called Flåm...

To be continued...