How did "Seven Minutes for a Miracle" come to be?　 Two producers talk about "Carol & Tuesday"

Carols & Tuesdays" completed its 24-episode run. The final episode brought the show to a conclusion with the "Miracle of Seven Minutes," which had been announced from the beginning of the first episode. The charm of this work is the vocal music that played in each episode. The songs were provided by talented artists from Japan and abroad, and sung by native English-speaking singers. The work was unprecedented in terms of quality and quantity. The production site must have been a storm.
Next to the conversation between the two presidents, Shiro Sasaki of Flying Dog and Masahiko Minami of Bones, were the two people who moved the scene. Makoto Nishibe (producer and music producer) of Flying Dog and Naoki Amano (animation producer) of Vons shared their stories behind the production!

The performance scenes were drawn based on live-action footage taken beforehand.

───First of all, please tell us how you two got involved with "Carol & Tuesday.

Amano: President Sasaki of Flying Dog and Minami of our company had been talking about doing a film directed by Shinichiro Watanabe for many years, and we were told that you would be in charge of the project. About two years ago, the project began to move forward in earnest, and I was asked to join the project when the scenario production began. At that time, several character designs by Eisaku Kubonouchi had already been created, and I thought it would be a hurdle to move these designs in an animated film. I also thought that it would be a tough job to make a film with a music theme and many performance scenes.


Nishibe: I joined at about the same time as Amano-san. Sasaki had told me about the work, and about two years ago, he asked me if I wanted to do it. There was an exchange of "Oh, yes" (laughs). (Laughs.) I thought I was going to be a music producer as usual, but I was surprised to find out that I was going to be a producer for the production committee's managing company, and that I would be responsible for the entire production. It was the first time for me to be assigned as a producer of a production, so I learned how to make animation from scratch with the help of Mr. Amano and the people on site. Every scenario meeting took from 3:00 p.m. to midnight, and afterwards I discussed many things with Mr. Amano.

─ Your name is credited as both producer and music producer.

Nishibe: It was a lot of work to produce the music while also looking at the overall production (laughs).

─ ─ What was the first thing you did when it came to music production?

Nishibe: First, I had a meeting with director Watanabe and the main staff to discuss what kind of artists and composers we should offer. The director would suggest artists he wanted to offer, and I would suggest artists who were currently available, and we would come up with specific names. The list included well-known artists and bands from a variety of genres, so we started by making contact with them without setting any restrictions. I think we ended up contacting about five times as many people as the number of artists who participated.

Amano: Before the storylines of each episode became concrete, we had to make offers for the music first, otherwise we would not be able to meet the schedule, so the selection of creators came first.

─ ─ I heard that it was decided at an early stage that "Carol & Tuesday" would be distributed worldwide on Netflix, and the basic line was to produce music mainly by overseas musicians.

Nishibe: Since the film was intended for an international audience, there was no reason not to sing the songs in English, the universal language, at the beginning. I asked Director Watanabe who he wanted to sing the songs, and then I asked him who he wanted to sing the songs in his mind. Once the scenarios for each episode were completed, I thought that this song that I had previously offered would fit the scene, and then I started fitting it into the story. Also, the detailed storyline of each episode often changed according to the lyrics and sound of the songs that had already been written, so the music and the scenario were closely intertwined in the production process.


Amano: It was decided from the planning stage that we would arrive at "7 Minutes of Miracle," but we thought about what kind of music would be needed for what scene in each episode as we created the story. I consulted with Mr. Nishibe when I had decided what kind of music was needed for each scene.

Nishibe: For example, we did not initially plan to run the audition program "Mars Brytest" from the preliminary rounds to the finals tournament over several episodes. However, Director Watanabe decided that the contestants for the Mars Brite Test would all sing their own songs.

Amano: I was surprised to hear that there were more singers in the film than I had expected. In order to depict the music scene, we filmed them singing and performing, and used the footage as the basis for our drawings. We, the staff of the animation production company, are not that knowledgeable about music, so we don't have a sense of how to produce this sound by playing the music. So, in order to create a realistic depiction, I really needed to have a video that would serve as the basis for the play.

─ ─ The official YouTube channel has already uploaded videos of the main cast singers, including Nai Br.XX and Celeina Ann, who play Carol and Tuesday, and Alisa, who plays Angela, singing in the studio. That was shot for the sake of making the film. That was shot in order to make the film, wasn't it?


Amano: As expected, we couldn't afford to hire a professional video artist each time, so we decided to shoot the video by the production team at BONES (laughs).

Nishibe: In the beginning, it was a continuous process of trial and error, and it took a lot of time to shoot the live-action film. We decided on angles on the spot, imagining how it would look in an animated film, while also considering how it would be edited.

Amano: It was a time-consuming and labor-intensive shoot, but as we gradually got the hang of it, we became more adept at it, and by the end we only needed about two people for the shoot.

Nishibe: Gradually, Watanabe began to direct the singers during the live-action shooting. Then, we developed a method of feeding that back into the scenario and storyboards. For example, "Lost My Way" in episode 11 was like that. The scenario was not yet finished, but Director Watanabe asked Serena Ann, the singer voice of Tuesday, to sing the song with a triangular hood on. When I asked her why, she told me that Tuesday was injured when he was singing this song, but for those of us who did not know the story, it made no sense (laughs).


Amano: The idea just came to Director Watanabe!　It was like Watanabe had just come up with the idea!

Nishibe: Before singing "Lost My Way" at the Mars Blythe Test, the director said that Carol and Tuesday had an ordeal that they had to overcome. If that's the case, I had to have the scenario writers construct such a storyline. The result was an episode in which Sibert becomes morbidly obsessed with Tuesday and gives her a present with dry ice on her birthday.

Amano: We also filmed a dance scene for the Mars Blythe Test.

Nishibe: We wanted Piotr and GGK to dance, just as actual artists have different styles in addition to singing. We called on dancers we knew on short notice and had them dance to the music. The drawings had an amazing synchronization rate. Normally, I would have used motion capture and moved them with CG. However, the dance and performance scenes for "Carol & Tuesday" were hand-drawn.

Amano: Thanks to the animators who were in charge of the dance scenes, especially Piotr, they turned out wonderful. However, it was the performance scenes that were more difficult for the animators than the dance scenes. For example, for Tuesday's performance, only the guitar was CG, while the characters were hand-drawn.

Nishibe: The hand-drawn fingers are superimposed on the CG guitar, so if there is even the slightest deviation, the movement will be different from the sound that is being played. Since this is a music piece, you paid a lot of attention to detail in order to synchronize the sound and pictures.


Amano: There was a scene in episode 17 where Artigan shows Tao his voice percussion. Nishibe-san is doing a live-action voice percussion performance in that scene (laughs).

Nishibe: That's why Artigan's head is a little shorter than usual in that scene (laughs).

Amano: Artigan's face also looks somewhat like Nishibe's (laughs). There is also an anecdote about the scene in episode 17 where Carol and Tuesday play their repertoire one after the other in front of producer Toby and he says, "That sucks," and we had to rush to prepare a NG song that they played.

Nishibe: That was after the scenario was finalized, and it was written in the scenario that the two played only the introduction and Toby denied it ten times. In episode 15, there is an old man playing the trumpet by the river, and at the director's request, I played the trumpet. I played the trumpet at the director's request (laughs).

Amano: Speaking of that, you and I came up with the text for the dangerous e-mails between Sibert and Black Knight, the stalkers (laughs). (Laughs.) We did various things as we were asked to do.