Figma CM

Now that the new Figma commercials have been released, I can show you what happened on the day of filming.

First things first - meetings over lunch at the Indian restaurant run by Max Factory thats situated just below the Good Smile offices.

Then its back in the huge meeting room which has been transformed into a filming studio for the day. The office usually looks like this.
Tis Mikatan taking pics of the setup.

Dont know what this is called but it looked like it was used to measure light and was most fascinating to watch - kinda looked like watching the Matrix.

Shooting the box opening sequence which took ages to get right.

Commercials in Japan are known as "CM" and was wondering if the same term was used in your region too? Never heard the term when I was living in the UK or US though.

Shooting went on for pretty much the whole day and needed about 7 people full time on the cameras, lighting and editing.

A closer look at the desk where the Figma characters come to life in the stop motion action.

Figma Mikuru takes a break from the filming and plays with me instead ^^;

Cant wait until shes released. Mikuru used to me my fave SOS dan member but am leaning towards Haruhi since I've acquired a load of her figures ^^;
Your typa girl Haruhi or Mikuru?

I tease her by using the yellow pliers to tug on bits of her body.

Itsuki in the box but for some reason dont have much interest in playing with him ^^;

The box opening sequence continues...

The folks at Good Smile/Max Factory are perfectionists as you can tell with the high quality of their figures - getting that box opening sequence has to be perfect.

Editing is done on the MacBook Pro with Final Cut Pro.

Mikuru gets back to work.

And here is the schedule for the day.

Each scene of the commercial is sketched out like an econte. You previously saw some econte in this article.

And each scene is described in detail.

You can see the first commercial below.

And the second commercial with the whole cast below.

Good things happen to folks who do great things. This guy became popular for his stop motion videos that he uploaded to Nico Nico and was asked if he would do the stop motion that you see in the commercials.

This was a *very* slow process as the camera would run for a few seconds after each pose and then it was checked on the mac each time.