With the renewal of the recruitment website for Hotel Chinzanso Tokyo, a long-established hotel with over 70 years of history, we produced three types of videos: background footage for the recruitment site, a recruitment concept movie, and a 15-minute vision movie. Hotel Chinzanso Tokyo has been building its history alongside its lush gardens. By connecting scenes of employees at work and interviews from various departments—such as front desk clerks, guest room service, sales planning, and culinary staff—who embody the spirit of hospitality every day, we aimed to create a vision movie that thoughtfully conveys to applicants the values Hotel Chinzanso Tokyo holds dear, as well as the appeal of working there. For the video that plays in the background of the recruitment website, we focused on conveying the hotel’s one-of-a-kind scenery and the refined atmosphere that flows throughout the property, featuring the nature of the gardens, historic sites, and the distinctive design details found throughout Hotel Chinzanso Tokyo.

“BAUM,” Shiseido’s new skincare brand, was launched with the theme of “living in harmony with trees.” Its packaging, made using offcuts from Karimoku furniture, also drew attention, and this promotional video was produced by asking Mr. Wataru Kumano, who designed the product, about the product’s design concept.

The Sainokuni Saitama Arts Theater, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, has reopened this spring after renovation. Following the brand movie released in spring 2022, we were once again entrusted with producing the 《Renewal》 brand movie. Citizens come together here, and the theater exists as part of everyday life. Over the course of about two weeks spent coming to the theater, we filmed each and every one of the everyday scenes we encountered. Sainokuni Saitama Arts Theater embodies the vision of its architect, Toshio Koyama, who said he wanted to create something like a town where theaters gather. The vibrant activities taking place here seem to overlap with Artistic Director Ryohei Kondo’s words: “a place to think about the future.” Together with messages from Artistic Director Ryohei Kondo and Toshio Koyama, we have captured in this film the generous presence of the Sainokuni Saitama Arts Theater, which has walked alongside the local community for 30 years, as well as the sense of anticipation for a new beginning with its reopening. The 《Renewal》 brand movie was produced in three versions: short 15-second and 30-second cuts, and a full version of just over two minutes. The 30-second version and the full version can each be viewed on the Sainokuni Saitama Arts Theater website, so please enjoy them.

We had the opportunity to produce “The Design of Emotion,” a film that conveys Citizen Watch’s design philosophy, at HIROBA in celebration of its 100th anniversary this year. The music was created by haruka nakamura, who has worked with us on Citizen films before. This time, we also had the support of Sigma, who provided us with their Classic Prime Line lenses for the production. We have worked with Citizen for about 10 years, and each time we have searched for the best possible answer through film. With this “The Design of Emotion” film, I feel we were able to come closer to what may be one of the essential answers to Citizen Watch. At a time when ideas about “what a watch should be” and “how we relate to time” are changing dramatically, we interviewed 25 members of Citizen’s design department about their thoughts on “making watches.” Our role was to preserve those conversations as an audio archive, and further to distill the thoughts drawn from them into the film “The Design of Emotion.” Perhaps all the answers are with everyone at Citizen Watch… After working with them for more than 10 years, I shared that feeling with them, listened to everyone’s words through interviews, and built this work together with the design department based on those words. “For the people who live on in this world” — I hope that this film, reached after more than 10 years of working together, will serve as a stepping stone for Citizen Watch, which celebrated its 100th anniversary this year, toward its next beginning.

Yamagata Prefecture’s Okitama region, which we have been filming over the course of a year. This place was described by Isabella Bird, a British female explorer who traveled throughout Japan in the Meiji era, as “an Arcadia of the East” in her book Unbeaten Tracks in Japan. Why did she call only this place a paradise after traveling all over Japan? What did she see that made her feel it was a paradise? This is a project to convey through video the Arcadia we felt over the course of a year in this region, where the way of life changes with the four seasons. Nature, hot springs, farmhouse inns, food, sake, and people—this wonderful place always reveals something attractive every time we visit. We hope you will come visit as well. https://youtu.be/rI_nvsDLdjY