[1989: pp. 146–147]
[2003: pp. 150–151]
[Side Tab:]
Essay on the MOTHER Commercial
MAKING THE MOTHER TV COMMERCIAL
Do Commercials Trick Innocent Children?
Hiroshi Ichikura
一倉宏 Born 1955. Copywriter affiliated with Nakahata Advertisement Works. Has made a lot of commercials for Tokyo Gas, Suntory, and Sony. Saw recent fame for the Suntory Malt's tagline, "I am not dry." And, of course, "Guaranteed Masterpiece."¹
We Mustn't Make a Joke Out of Children's Creativity
In American TV commercials, it's turned into a taboo to show toy robots and spaceships flying through the skies on their own. You make sure you show a kid holding a robot or a spaceship in his hand and making it fly or whatever else. In other words, you have to make it explicitly clear that this is how it really is, they don't move on their own, they don't transform on their own, and they certainly don't grow giant-size.
I'm sure what they mean by this is, a commercial can't be allowed to trick innocent children; but in truth, doesn't this make a big joke out of their imaginations? Do you know what I mean? When kids pick up a small object and go, "sha-keeen!" or "za-boom!" they've got a clear picture of it riding at hyperspeed through the stratosphere or outer space. Don't they? Isn't that a little thing we call imagination? I remember it like it was yesterday: I had a robot some 20-odd years ago named Tetsujin 28-gou², and you can bet he saved the Earth over and over.
Even the Famicom is Bound to Have Masterpieces
That brings us to the commercial for MOTHER. After being approached by Mr. Itoi to put this thing together, everything we took into consideration was boldly drawn toward this "world of imagination". After all, I believe RPGs are stories that let us participate in our imaginations, and in MOTHER's case especially, I felt like that was what Mr. Itoi had most in mind when he made it. Of course, when it comes to stories that let us have fun with our imaginations, we have literature and film, so there you go: we tackled this commercial with the idea of making that sort of thing. The intent behind the tagline, "Guaranteed Masterpiece", was to include the meaning: "We don't mind one bit asking you to compare this to masterpieces from those other genres, like Dandelion Wine, or The Never-Ending Story or Stand By Me." And I believe that's just about how far it's already come.
Shooting was Done with Kids' Imaginations in Mind
It was fun shooting the MOTHER commercial! Even though all of us on the crew were middle-aged guys to varying degrees, in this commercial, we had a blast working the robot and wielding psychic powers. After all, even in America, there's no restriction saying Bradbury and Ende's books have to have the disclaimer, "This is fiction."
Which means I could end my story here, but for those readers who are interested, I'll briefly explain some of the special effects techniques we used in this commercial. Or, put another way, how our commercial tricked innocent children (laughs).
First of all, the robot (R7038XX), which shows up in a few shots in the first half, was a towering 50 cm [just under 20 inches] (laughs)! We shot it at an angle where the camera was looking up at it. When shooting these kinds of miniatures, camera movement is key. The slightest shake or oscillation will betray the scale, so we use a special system called motion control, which moves the camera delicately and smoothly and follows the numerics we've entered into a computer.
For the main shot looking on Holy Loly Mountain, we made a composite out of a bunch of separate shots. The portion that would become the underlay was a set that, speaking in terms of actual size, was made about as big as a stage in a school auditorium. To bring out a sense of depth, we made it so that the further away the road gets, the more it dwindles and the hazier it looks. The section with the faraway Holy Loly Mountain is separately-shot film. The actual mountain we made was about one meter tall [about 3.28 ft.]. The clouds were set in motion with animation, and in them we also made an alluring, synthesized light.
How about it? Do you think we did a good job tricking you?
(N) Hiroshi
(L) Genius
(A) Natsuno
(T) Big Brudder
(F) Omelette
[Translator's note: The girl who played Ana has been identified in this Reddit post! Her name at the time was Laurel Dollahon. Thanks to Biozilla (who else?) for alerting me!]
[Photo: The three kid actors standing on the set.]▲Lloyd's legs trembled on the set.
[Photo: The raw mountain model without the cloud.]▲The peaceful, calm Holy Loly Mountain, before the commercial production crew brought in the black cloud.
[Photo: The production crew working with the kids, showing them how to crouch for the PK attack.]▲When you do PK Beam Ω, you go like this... no, further down... there you go!
¹ One of the two taglines for MOTHER. If this Famitsu article (link goes to EarthBound Central) is to be believed, the other, more well-known tagline, "No Crying Until the End" was also Ichikura's doing, not Shigesato Itoi's. Everything we MOTHER fans thought we knew was a lie.
² Known in the US as Gigantor.
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