Film noise and grain are beautiful 02

Harada had doubts about the texture of anime images, which were becoming flattened by excessive digitalization.

With the virtual discontinuation of 8mm film and cameras, and the shockingly high cost of 16mm film and developing, Harada had no choice but to learn how to use a computer, which he was not good at.

How could he change those uniform, flat, and clear images to have a natural texture like the old 8mm images?

Harada had been thinking about this since around 2011.
There were people from the film generation who were thinking the same thing.

For example, director Souji Yoshikawa, a senior of Harada's who switched from cel animation to CG, slightly blurred the four corners of the screen in his CG, and even curved the corners slightly like old analog CRT televisions.

In his own directorial work "BEM" (2006), Harada used a technique called "Kerare" that layered a thin layer of noise (like old cathode ray tube televisions) and darkened the four corners of the screen.

But even so, compared to film-era animation, the images in early digital animation were still mechanical, uniform, and flat.

Special effects and key animation by Hiroshi Harada

For his 2006 work "HUMANOID MONSTER BEM," Harada painted shadows and dust particles one by one in Photoshop, but was unable to achieve the texture he had envisioned.

At that time, Harada had already started filming Horizon Blue.

Horizon Blue used the same method as commercial anime of the time, where scanned images were colored using editing software.

Harada thought every day about how to make these flat images look natural, like when they were shot on film.

First of all, when Harada was making his works on 8mm film, or when the anime world was shooting on film,
there were no uniform values ​​of brightness or saturation on the screen.
Film naturally and automatically expressed the atmosphere and sense of depth.
However, after anime was digitized, the colors and brightness of characters, for example, all became the same values.

Horizon Blue

He came up with the idea of ​​making these values ​​uneven.
However, he could not immediately think of how to do this specifically.
One day, he realized that he could create a filter of a certain shape and overlay it on the original image.
This method produced the outstanding and wonderful effect he had envisioned.
Harada re-shot all of the previously shot Horizon Blue using a new method.
He also used it in the filming of "Japanese Folk Tales," which he was involved in at the time.
When Harada told the cameraman about this technique, the cameraman told him,
"Actually, we do that in our company, too. We just didn't tell anyone because it was a trade secret."

On the right is a photo with a filter designed by Harada overlaid on it (for clarity, I've omitted the color changes and the "Kerare" filter that Harada frequently uses). This technique will not be considered successful if the audience notices that something is being layered. It is important to layer very subtly.

Completed state (screening master)

What kind of filter do you think can express a mechanical digital image in a very natural way?
We encourage you to think about it.
However, in recent years, such methods have been introduced on the Internet. However, rather than using it mechanically, We would like you to think together about why such methods were created.

Harada now shoots with a camera.
This allows him to simultaneously record particles, light, and shadows between the subject and the camera lens.
This is the opposite of today's excessive digital remastering. And it's similar to the days of film photography.

Even when shooting with a camera, Harada layers several filters.
These filters are subtle and not noticeable to the audience, but they are a necessary process to make the image look like analog film.

The aforementioned "layering noise" is already a well-known method that is widely used in the film industry.

Harada is also against companies arbitrarily trimming old films and changing the aspect ratio.
Old movie cameramen inherited the experience of the long history of film and meticulously laid out the layout within the standard (4:3) frame.
It is not permitted for companies to arbitrarily change that for commercial purposes.

(This is one of the stories Harada told students at an art university.)