Godzilla Minus One has officially proven that global audiences’ love of the cranky kaiju remains strong. Director Takashi Yamazaki’s period-piece take on the beloved, rampaging monster has grossed over $106 million worldwide, become the first Japanese-language film to earn an Academy Award nomination for Best Visual Effects, and dropped a one-week only engagement of the monochromatic version, Godzilla-1.0/C (Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color).
The most lauded entry in the Godzilla franchise since 2016’s Shin Godzilla, Godzilla Minus One’s universally positive reception made it possible for the U.S. to have a limited release of the black-and-white version before the film exited theaters on February 1.
All of the love means the last two months have been a whirlwind for Yamazaki, who wrote, directed, and was the VFX supervisor for Minus One. He’s been traveling the globe to promote the film, stopped in Los Angeles on January 13 to personally present the film’s VFX reel at the VFX Oscar bake-off (which clinched its VFX Oscar nomination), and is now proudly discussing the impetus for Godzilla-1.0/C. From his office in Japan, Yamazaki-san sat down with IGN again to explain the origin of the black-and-white version and address how they brought this Godzilla to life with 610 visual effects shots, made by a team of just 35 artists.
At what point in Minus One production did the idea of a monochromatic version first get discussed?
Takashi Yamazaki: I was actually doing this panel discussion with director [Hideaki] Anno who directed Shin Godzilla. In this panel, he had mentioned, very casually, that he wanted to do another screening of Shin Godzilla but in monochromatic black and white [Shin Gojira: Oruso]. And that’s when the conversation led to “Well, maybe it would be great if there was a black and white version of Minus One?” Toho, of course, was involved at that point. But the timing of this was when we were in post production, so after everything. It wasn’t before the [Minus One] was made.
Were you hoping to capture any particular look with the monochromatic grade?
Takashi Yamazaki: The colorist [Masahiro Ishiyam] who was tasked with making the Minus Color version actually was the same colorist who was doing Minus One. He is a very particular person, so when I gave the direction, “I want it to feel like it was shot on a Leica camera on film,” he would take one shot at a time and he would mask certain areas, adjust channels and modify nodes. It was a very time consuming process but I think the result is a very beautiful, Leica film-like experience.
And to add on to that a little bit, there is a Kurosawa film called Heaven and Hell where there is a scene where there is smoke, but just the smoke had this red color, even though it was a black-and-white film. At one point, I made the suggestion, “Maybe it could be all black-and-white, but just when Godzilla heats up, it turns blue?” The rest of the team vetoed that decision so it became all monochromatic. [Laughs]
Speaking of Godzilla’s blue plates, how did you compensate for the loss of color with some signature elements in the color version?
Takashi Yamazaki: Interestingly, we did a few test shots early on when we decided to do the Minus Color version. What we discovered in that process is, while we do lose some information by taking color away, there was a weird additive component. It was actually helping us see more of the actor’s skin tones and the texture of some of their performances and expressions as a result of the nuance that — perhaps you could even argue — the color was distracting us from. In some ways, I would argue that Minus Color is more additive and contains as much, if not more, information than the color version.
Were there any budget or production barriers that necessitated you persuade Toho the value of a new black-and-white grade?
Takashi Yamazaki: I’m not too involved…
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