January 31, 2014

The Village Part 2 Being Filmed in Yokohama

Did you see M. Night Shyamalan’s creepy 2004 movie, The Village? The director of  supernatural thrillers that feature his signature surprise endings has opted to film the sequel to The Village in Yokohama, Japan.
And Marina and Elena were singled out at a local mall by a talent scout and won parts as minor characters in the movie. Movie stars!
Here is a shot of the two in their costumes in front of their snow shelter on the set.

They are shooting the movie in a replicated farming hamlet from the Edo era (1603-1868) where the inhabitants are terrorized by a group of large, vaporous beings who circle the small village in the winter.

During the filming, to give the actors some acoustic cues and convey the atmosphere he wanted, Shyamalan played a recording – a low, barely perceptible yet ominous thrumming sound – while smoke pots replicated mist blowing over the moat that ringed the village perimeter. The day we were there for the girls' scenes, the villagers mostly huddled in their ice homes, while huge industrial fans blew in gales of snow. 

Here are the girls with their creature heads on after they were transformed into beasts as part of a plot twist in the script.
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Readers (all five of you), I apologize.
I can go no further with this yarn.
Fact is, it’s not even snowing in Yokohama. There is no movie. There is only a web of lies that is this post! See? It’s freaking igloos in paradise.
But it is still winter. We were bored one mid-January weekend. So went to the Sea Paradise amusement park island on a weekend where Akita prefecture happened to be holding a winter tourism promotional event featuring igloo-like snow shelters from the old days of northern Japan. It was about 12 degrees, and the palm trees are still green in the Yokohama area. They had to truck in the snow.  The picture says it all: 
The boring truth is that we did the usual Rising Daughter fandango and had a good ol' family time. But spinning a yarn like this is much more fun than a straightforward account, no? (The Beast Band was entertaining, too.)

1 comment:

Michael said...

You really had me going!!
I really thought they had parts as extras in the movie. i went to the local ski hill and everything was pretty green and the only snow was what they had spewed out of the snow blower the night before, more like playing in an ice bucket than a winter wonderland. But Ewan a good time making a snow (ice) man and sledding down the hill.