09 The International Film Festival Debut of Consultation Room

Kei Oyama

It's gotten so cold out, hasn't it? We are nearing the time of year when we hope to have someone to keep us warm.
Anyways, in this installment, I would like to show you a nine minute work, Shinsatsushitsu (Consultation Room).

This is the work I created in 2005 as my graduation project for Tokyo Zokei University, in which I tried to improve on some points that did not quite work out in Yukidoke (The Thaw), which I talked about last time.

Please take a look. Like last time, I am making the entire film available on the Internet for the first time.



In this film, a man who has gone to a consultation room to receive a doctor's diagnosis saw images of his internal organs, and this triggers memories in him from when he was an elementary school student. I created a scene of a woman with no head based on an image that I used to be obsessed with. About the school play scene, I created thinking of a moment when I come back to the real world after being absorbed in deep thought, or when I do not know where I am upon waking up, like when I lose my sense of reality after falling into a daze.

I made the first and last scenes, in the consultation room, with the digital painting software Painter. To achieve a sense of reality with shapes and movements in these scenes, I made use of the rotoscoping technique.

On the other hand, the black and white scenes in the school nurse's office feature no realistic movement or shapes. Instead, I created a complex texture by using a collage of photographs. In these scenes, you can sense a different reality..

During the school play, the characters in a black and white collage world use colored scenery and masks as their stage props, but these items actually represent the world of color. In other words, they symbolize the current reality.

When I made this film, I was interested in the kind of cinematic expression that can be achieved only by animation - the experience created by using differing art styles to give each scene a different feel. That interest led to Hokago (After School), which I am currently working on.


This work won the Gold Prize for the Campus Genius Awards, as well as Best Picture for BACA-JA, and was shown at many international film festivals. It is a very memorable film for me, one which took me to many different places and allowed me to meet a variety of people.

My first international film festival was Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes International Film Festival. The pressure of having my work seen by so many people instilled in me the negative feeling of being embarrassed at showing a work like this. I became terribly sick during the screening and afterwards, and caused the program director to worry about me. Since then, I have made a habit of sitting in the seat closest to the door when showing my films, to make it easy to leave in case I become sick.

Back in 2005, the Cannes International Film Festival did not show anything except 35mm film, so I was required to create a 35mm print for Shinsatsushitsu. Less than ten years later, most film festivals are now set up for digital works, and accept them in any format. There are not too many works made using tape or film anymore.

But especially since I took the trouble of making 35mm films for Shinsatsushitsu, Yukidoke, and HAND SOAP, I have the dream of someday opening a 35mm short animation film festival with the other creators I know.

However, after seeing a picture of how thin I used to be, I also have the dream of losing weight without any effort.

Talk to you all next month!





Kei Oyama
Animation artist. Born in Tokyo in 1978.
In 2005, Shinsatsushitsu (Consultation Room), his graduation project at Tokyo Zokei University, won the Gold Prize for the Campus Genius Award, as well as Best Picture for BACA-JA. Oyama has been formally invited to international film festivals such as the Directors' Fortnight of the Cannes International Film Festival. In 2008 he made HAND SOAP for Aichi Arts Center which won him many awards including the Grand Prix for the Holland Animation Film Festival and the Special Prize for the International Animation Festival Hiroshima. In the live motion movies Watashi wa neko sutoka (I'm a cat stalker, 2008) and Gegege no nyobo (Gegege's wife, 2010) Oyama was in charge of making the animation clips. He is now a member of CALF which he founded with his partners, making Hokago (After School) while producing, distributing, and selling animation works.

Official website: http://www.keioyama.com/
CALF : http://calf.jp/
CALF STUDIO : http://calf.jp/studio/

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