Meeting an Optical Photography Legend!

Takeshi Miyanishi. Photo by Brett Homenick.

On Sunday afternoon, May 29, I had the privilege of meeting and spending a couple of hours with Takeshi Miyanishi, who worked in optical photography and visual effects in many Toho and Tsuburaya productions.

Miyanishi-san's career in movies began on the Toho production Gorath (1962) as an assistant cameraman. He continued in that capacity until 1968 with Destroy All Monsters. Following that, he moved up to optical photography and visual effects, doing matte shots and other such SFX work. His final credited film is Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (1991).

His memories from his early days at Toho are unfortunately vague, but he had quite a few fun stories from work later in his career. I had a great time picking his brain on a variety of topics.

And that's a wrap! It was my first time meeting Miyanishi-san, but hopefully not the last.