I watched a cat documentary World’s cat walk filmed by a Japanese filmmaker Mitsuaki Iwago before I chose this course. At that time, I got a goal that make a cat documentary.

During this semester, inspired by the shooting style of Mitsuaki Iwago, I made a documentary focused absolutely on the daily life of domestic cats. Before start my idea, I watched many cat documentaries and analyzed the different between them, and I found most cat documentaries were a storytelling form that interview cats’ masters combining some cats’ shots, those documentaries were not absolutely focused on cats’ characteristic and their unique aspect. So that made me thought deeply that how can I made my own cats’ documentary differently. I reviewed Iwago’s film found the Japanese accent voice over made his film vivid, then I asked myself can I achieve that?After that, I asked my friend who study Japanese for years that could she become the voice actor in my film and she accepted my invite.

Her acceptance helped me begin my project. I contacted my friends who has cats in their home asked them the shooting permission and I got almost 30 peoples reply. Then I filter 15 cats to prepared shoot. During the shooting, I found each cats has their different characteristics and their special parts, some might scare stranger, and some might likes; some of them likes eat, and part of them likes sleep. That’s what I want to show audience. After that, I back to edit them chose most interesting part made into a complete film. I discussed with Robin and showed my work, his suggested me shoot something different, it’s kind of tedious that only watching different cats. Why not try to shoot other pet with cats or some outdoor shoot? Then, I shoot one shot that one rabbit and cat in the frame and one outdoor shoot. After that, I edit them again combining the background music showed to Robin. He was quiet happy with that and asked me keep working on the voice over.

During week 11, I was done all the voice over with my friend. The content of the voice over mainly telling cats’ action and the feeling of my friend as an audience. I asked her did two versions, one was in order, the other was out of order. The reason I made this was she can get different feelings when she watched the film and different narration. Her voice sounds cute and warm, the tone of her voice totally match those cats action. So, critical to my investigation and expression was the development of an idiosyncratic Japanese voice over; the cadence and poetry of which informs the project’s overall rhythm, tone and sympathy with my subject’s “otherness”.

To sum up, I think I achieve my goal in my project, without any human being in the project, absolutely focused on cats’ action, their daily life. Also the idiosyncratic Japanese voice over made my project vivid and different.