Since the story progresses through narration, we needed to make sure the audience would not get bored. In particular, with short dramas, if viewers lose focus, the work won’t perform well, so at the script stage we asked for more dialogue. We then recorded it at a fast pace and increased the speed by 20% in editing, packing in as much information as possible so there would be no dead air. The script originally started from the idea of “You know how your imagination would always drift during class?” and had a structure in which the protagonist, Kimura, would point out the boss’s verbal slip-up. But it was changed into a structure where Kimura keeps getting carried away after pointing out the mistake, and in the end never manages to actually point it out. As for the wordplay and phrasing, I’m truly grateful for the scriptwriter’s sense of humor and style. My honest reaction the first time I read it was, “Wow, that’s impressive.” For the filming, I had always associated short dramas with an overwhelming number of cuts and a fast pace, but for this project, we wanted to see how much fun we could create through direction and make a new style of short drama. So across the five episodes, we used every gimmick we could, including episodes that played around with text animation in the editing, as well as episodes that experimented with high-speed and slow-shutter techniques. The direction had a basic structure in place, but on the day of shooting we kept adding things and adjusting them on set. Thanks to the cast freely performing, a lot of ideas came to mind, and I’m really grateful for that.

One night, in the moments before falling asleep, a robot begins to tell a story to a young girl. Its voice is a little clumsy, somewhat awkward. And yet, there is kindness in its words, as they softly melt into the quiet night. A warm story spun by such a robot.