Our directorial debut! The segment Hiroko and I filmed for National Geographic's Wild Chronicles, about the troubles facing the endangered Japanese Giant Salamander, seems to have finally found its way online. As a kid I dreamed of growing up to direct kaiju creatures on the silver screen, so getting this chance to stalk some real-life giant monsters in the wild was an incredible treat.
Called "oosanshouo" (OH-san-show-oh) in Japanese, anime fans may recognize these gentle giants as the inspiration for the huge salamander-creature that appears towards the end of Howl's Moving Castle and Ranka's super-kawaii smartphone pal from Macross Frontier, among many others.
very proffesional job matt . never knew these even exsisted .looked like you must have had a lot of making this .
Posted by: jim m | June 07, 2009 at 08:13 AM
What a beautiful film! I am a huge fan of salamanders (I had some normal-sized ones as pets as a kid) so this brings back some memories.
Posted by: Adamu | June 07, 2009 at 10:24 AM
Looks great, Matt!
Posted by: Ryan | June 09, 2009 at 12:14 AM
Ah....awesome that you found it posted. Great stuff Alts!
Posted by: hillsy | June 14, 2009 at 12:32 PM
Thanks! Hopefully this is but the first of many to follow.
Posted by: MattAlt | June 14, 2009 at 12:46 PM