Hiroko Imada takes us though a process that dates back to the 8th century, when woodblock printmaking was used to disseminate Buddhist scriptures. The traditional process used teams of artisans, each person would focus on a specific step of the process. Instead of dividing the labour, Hiroko does everything herself- from design to block carving to printing.

Collaborating with Japanese paper artisans often requires working in a controlled environment, so our production was unable to relocate to a film studio, despite the small size of Hiroko’s studio. Our cinematographer had to get creative with the lighting as the basement room had little natural light and there was not enough space to safely fit lighting equipment inside.

Fortunately, there was a small balcony off the room where we were able to rig lighting to recreate natural light coming through a window. We then bounced light off reflectors to soften it, creating a subtle, diffused light that was perfect for filming Hiroko's printmaking process.