So, recently I’ve been feeling slightly empty.
I feel like the captain of a pirate ship, and the ship is loaded with enough barrels of wine and enough tins of spam to sail wherever I want upon the high seas. Hell, the ship is even staffed with an enthusiastic team of the finest shipmates a captain could hope for. (Aka. regular Abroad in Japan viewers).
The only problem is, as Captain of this most prestigious ship, I haven’t a fucking clue which direction to sail in.
By now, two things are abundantly clear.
Number 1: This is a convoluted metaphor.
And Number 2: I’ve been watching too much Muppets Treasure Island again.
From 2017 to 2019 I was more or less perpetually stressed by Natsuki: The Movie and then Journey Across Japan. I was out of my depth on both projects - mainly due to the fact I was too stupid to truly plan out either project in advance and was forced to rescue both through extensive editing thereafter.
This meant I spent months on end sitting in a room, editing relentlessly and consuming the world’s supply of junk food to get through it all.
And yet, amidst the stress, I felt like I had something to look forward to - with Natsuki: The Movie it was the day I released a 55 minute long documentary to hundreds of thousands of excited viewers.
For Journey Across Japan, it was the anticipation of revealing the next adventure-filled day on the unpredictable 2,000km journey.
To me, these ridiculous projects had a swashbuckling sense of chaos to them (excuse the pirate metaphors once more). I had an idea in my head what I wanted the documentary to look like and the 28 part Journey Across Japan series to become, but I never knew if they’d work or not.
And yet now, almost 750,000 people have watched Natsuki: The Movie and experienced his whirlwind escapades - quite literally whirlwind, given he nearly broke his neck in a wind tunnel - of his trip to Europe and back.
Journey Across Japan may have been executed poorly in terms of its irregular release dates, but nevertheless it’s a relatively well produced series that’s been viewed over 15 million times by folks all around the world.
For all the hell I put myself through for these projects, it was completely worth it - I gained more knowledge than a hundred film courses, and came back with enough stories to fill a reasonably priced Autobiography (it’s coming one day).
And today, with my stress levels so worryingly low, that I feel almost broken, I know I’m doing something wrong.
I need that thrill that can only be brought on by embarking on yet another mega-project that’ll push me to the brink of my sanity once more, and get Abroad in Japan viewers fired up for the next challenge.
Now several months back you may recall I announced the idea of making Natsuki: The Movie 2 and put a survey here on Patreon to hear your thoughts on what you’d like to see. At the time, the concept was to get Natsuki to quit smoking - a task so difficult, it makes the Manhattan Project or Apollo Programme look like opening a tin of biscuits. However, as time passed, the more I thought about it, the less appealing the premise became.
Whilst the aim of getting Natsuki to stop smoking and save his health is undeniably a noble pursuit, I feel like it’s ultimately at odds with what viewers would like to see, what I’d like to make, and what Natsuki would like to feature in.
Because having known him for 6 years, I have no hope whatsoever that he could ever stop. To me his addiction and dependency on cigarettes is incomprehensible - but the idea of making it the focus of a documentary, with a lighthearted entertaining tone seems wrong. Not only that, but given the high probability of failure, it could be a bit embarrassing or humiliating for Natsuki and that’d suck quite a bit.
Whilst I’m not ruling it out for a genuinely more serious future documentary on addiction, first things first, it makes sense to produce a more crowd pleasing series, that everyone can enjoy - viewers, Natsuki and myself.
The results of that questionnaire you guys did several months back revealed the following:
- Would you rather watch a movie or a series?
Movie: 29%
Series: 71%
80% said yes to him doing challenges, 83% really want to see him travel the world and 75% said yes to him interacting with strangers.
So it seems like we all want the same thing here.
And as much as I'd like to overcomplicate this premise with more pirate-based analogies, I’ll come right out and say that it’s high time we made a swashbuckling six part travel series, with Natsuki at the helm.
6 episodes, each episode 20 minutes long. Filmed over a period of 2-3 months, edited in one go to completion and released back to back, aka. Every Sunday for 6 weeks.
No erratic silly release schedules - a well produced comedic series, produced to tv quality standards, with Natsuki diving into these countries, trying local dishes, undertaking challenges, meeting locals and potentially viewers.
We’ll title each episode something like “Japanese Thoughts on Rome” or “Japanese Thoughts on America” and BANG we’ve got ourselves a buccaneering series that lies somewhere between Natsuki: The Movie and Journey Across Japan in terms of scale.
As for the countries and cities, the most likely candidates for the first series would be (subject to change):
America (New York / LA), Canada (Montreal / Vancouver)
UK (London, Edinburgh)
Germany (Munich, Berlin)
Sweden (Stockholm)
Italy (Rome), Australia (Syndey)
Spain (Barcelona)
Switzerland (Verzasca Dam - that’s right, I haven’t forgotten the bungee jump off of that dam)
The things these countries have in common is that the Abroad in Japan channel has quite a lot of viewers in all of them, so hopefully we can bring the party to you guys. And that in a nutshell, is one of the big things planned for next year! (Amongst some more mini documentary episodes like the recent Fukushima one).
It won’t be cheap, and with Natsuki’s damn schedule it won’t be easy, but I’m very excited about the idea. With some extra planning this time around and building on the lessons learned through 7 years of Youtubing, I think we could do something extraordinarily fun with this.
I need your ideas though guys - and more importantly your thoughts on all this. Questions remain, such as should there be an overarching story - WHY is Natsuki travelling? Maybe we don’t need one. Maybe the fact he’s only ever been to 4 countries is reason enough for his journey around the world.
But hopefully, by now you’ll know I’m not someone who just says things - I actually go and do them, and this is something I very much plan to get working on.
With that in mind, now the real work begins - let’s make this happen. And who knows, next year Natsuki could be coming to a town near YOU!
Now meet me in the comment section - before I go off and watch more pirate movies.
Chris
Judith Goudzwaard
2020-04-29 17:02:51 +0000 UTCPamelaSu
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