Interview with John Sirabella (software-sculptors.com)

At AnimeEast '95, Software Sculptors President John Sirabella did an interview that was later hosted on the official Software Sculptors website. The questions were represented in text form, and Sirabella's responses were uploaded as aiff audio files.

• Subject: Sirabella explains the origins of Software Sculptors, why they chose Tenchi Muyo! as a product to pursue, current anime in Japan such as Slayers, and the future of anime home video releases.
• Note: All misspellings by the original website or the interviewee are kept intact for posterity and marked where applicable.

Transcription

Interviewer: There's a rather unique story as to how Software Sculptors got started. What was your first exposure to anime and what was the catalyst that started it all?

Sirabella: Well, our exposure to it was definitely interesting. I mean the way it started was actually at a Star Trek convention more than anything else. What happened was uh... we were at a few... I like Star Trek and I went to Creation Convention in New York City and I noticed there was more anime booths there than anything else. It seemed to be they were selling more anime than uh... actually Star Trek stuff and uh... I noticed that I said to myself "maybe there's something here" and I started to look into the Japanese market and I noticed the Japanese have a very big crossover when they say "software" they mean computer, video, and all those type of encompassing products. They usually have a video and they have some software that goes behind it. I figured we could try and do that because while the videos were starting to come here in the U.S. and were starting to catch on, nobody was concentrating on the software yet.

Interviewer: With so much anime in the Japanese market, how do you know what people want? What helps you decides (sic) what your next release will be?

Sirabella: We're very fan oriented in the sense of that when we go to these conventions and we talk to people, I really want to find out what's the next thing they want and uh... this thing was it. Everybody wanted Tenchi, they said "When are you going to come out with a Tenchi one?" and the people at Pioneer were great, they've been giving us so much uh... stuff to work with. What they were able to do is they gave us the full songs and they gave us in both Japanese and English versions so the person gets to select between either one. They gave us full access to all the different pictures. They gave us animation we could use in there.

Interviewer: Since there are so many formats (PAL, NTSC, SECAM) what benefits do you get from putting anime on CD-ROM?

Sirabella: Right now, I mean everybody's talking about DVD in the future, but QuickTime and MPEG are still pretty much standards around here. And the QuickTime has been improving over the time. And the other great thing about it is we were able to really take big advantage of its text track. What we were able to do was we did a 320 by 240 of Lodoss, put it in a very nice interface, give at least three episodes on each CD. And the other part of it too was actually subtitle it below using the QuickTime text track feature.This had a lot of big advantages for people and they didn't have to worry about PAL, NTC (sic), those kind of formats. And the other part too is that it gave even more value for the money.

Interviewer: Regarding your newest venture into video, what is so unique about your releases? What are you doing that other companies have stayed away from?

Sirabella: We got Slayers the TV series and people are really looking forward to that.

Interviewer: These are currently running in Japan?

Sirabella: Yeah, we're taking a very different approach than a lot of the other companies, but a lot of those other companies were going more for the OVA, and they were going more for series that were already proven success stories. What we tried to do was we tried to focus on the very new stuff coming out, stuff that we personally liked, and we tried something really different where we took a chance on TV. A lot of people were scared of TV. Other companies had tried TV, it didn't work out too well for them, but we thought if we did it the right way, we can make a success out of the TV.

Interviewer: Now that anime has become more popular than ever tin (sic) the anime market, what changes do you see happening? What is the future of anime?

Sirabella: Slayers we plan on doing a simultaneous release. In fact, that's how come we've moved it back. It's going to be both sub and dub, and the thing is we're gonna try something original. What we're going to do is we're going to release them both simultaneous and both at the same price uh... they're both going to be under twenty dollars. The truth is subs do cost a lot less to make, but the fans are getting punished because they think that the guys who really want the subs will probably pay anything for them. We feel that, you know, the marketplace now is at the point that we can change that and we also want to get more footage because it's a TV series we want to get more episodes on each video, give them more and give them the right price points uh... the markets radically changing. This year is going to be a big change in both the video and a lot of things you're going to be seeing in Japanese anime. Big changes in price points, everything should be below 20. Big changes in length, no more 30 minutes on a tape for $24.95 or $29.95. They've got to be putting at least an hour and a half to two hours. There's a series we're probably going to sign it in the next couple of days which will have at least five episodes on each tape of that.

See also

• Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki: The Screen Saver