Behind the Scenes | Johnny Harris Tells How Bright trip Made Tokyo Demystified

Yeah, and okay, and hold on I'm ready. Um, except that

Can I just breathe this? No. We were there for nine days. We had a shot list with over a thousand items on it

13 chapters 60 videos in total. It was exhausting One of the very first courses that we made together was Tokyo Demystified

Johnny and Iz wrote this course and they went to Tokyo and filmed this course themselves and this course now lives on our website

After weeks of us all editing it and working on it together, and it's something that we're really proud of

Today in this video I call Johnny and we just sit down and talk for a little bit about his experience

Writing this very first course and what it was like to go to Tokyo It was a huge undertaking and johnny shares a little bit about how difficult it was some of the things that he loved and some of the things

He learned and gives you a little peek behind what it was really like being there and filming it

So I hope that you enjoy this conversation It was really fun to hear sit back and relax and let's hear from johnny

So since it was the very first course that you wrote or that you guys made at all

How much writing went in beforehand before you went to tokyo man

We wrote the entire thing word for word and we did it all on one google doc

So it ended up being a 125 page document with a bunch of like color coding

It was just a massive beast. Like we had no idea what we're getting ourselves into, but I knew what I wanted it to be

Like I knew the story I wanted to tell. Usually a script is like five or six pages. It was 125 pages because it wasn't a normal video that I was used to doing

And so eventually we broke it out into chapters, which made a lot more sense

And those are still monsters. And then we sort of riffed when we got on the ground because things obviously change

when you get on the ground. We're not doing any Udon on cam. We're gonna just change the VO, depending on how it goes

While you were there and you were referencing all of your notes and everything that you had written how difficult was it to schedule and keep in your brain everything happening all at the same time Incredibly difficult Like it was so I done a lot of field shoots before but my field shoots are usually like

focused on a couple of stories and I'm just getting like a few key visuals. Like for

boarders or for any of the explainers I do, it's always like get a few major visuals

For this, it was like not as deep of stories because we're sort of explaining how the train

works or explaining like the history of the tea ceremony but it's like get a thousand visuals in

nine days coordinating all of that throughout tokyo with children was was a monster of a thing and we

had this giant shot list of hundreds and hundreds of shots and we were just like okay we got this we

got this we had to go to all the neighborhoods because we wanted to visually demystify all the

neighborhoods so someone could like really know where they want to stay and so we ended up hitting

like every corner of tokyo oh it was exhausting it honestly was like i want to go back to tokyo

and like enjoy it because it was so, it was just like running around the whole time. It's still

amazing, but it was, it was just intense. What did making this huge intense course teach you

about Bright Trip? There are certain things about a city that really deserve to be visual. No book

no blog post can do justice to. And some of those things are practical, like writing the train

like you really want to see the symbols and the lines and the map and really see someone go through

it. Like you can't read about that and understand it. And then other stuff is like, you want to see

and understand ramen and like really see how it's made and really see the artistry of it to

understand it. It renewed my faith in the mission of this whole thing, which is like, can we bring

travel into a more visual, smart format instead of like the sort of travel book, which is like a list

of things you should do, but not necessarily an illuminating, immersive experience of learning

about a place before you go. Was there any major hiccups or mishaps? I mean, there were so many

little ones just like not getting footage. I think I got lost one time and Izzy, we got like

separated and like I had the stroller and like it was this nightmare of a thing because we couldn find each other and we were in like a 15 layer mall I was like the dot on Google Maps says I right on top of you but you like somewhere in these 15 floors and I not really sure which one

Anyway, so there was a lot of that but overall we came away with a lot of amazing footage and I was very happy with like everything we got

One of my favorite moments that like I really pinched myself was in the food section

We got to go back in the kitchens of three ramen shops

We had a fixer there who was like helping us with ramen and he brought us back and like

we got to see these like ramen operations and they're so different

All of them are so different. All of them have different specialties and different ingredients and the care that they

would take to assemble these bowls. It was like an art. It was like so beautiful and so fun

And it gave me this appreciation. Like when I see a bowl of ramen, I appreciate it so much more now

Because I was like back there filming in the back of these ramen shops

Another really sort of illuminating experience for me was learning about the difference between a shrine

like a Meiji shrine, which is one of the religions in Japan, versus a Buddhist temple

They kind of look the same. But as soon as you know what to look for, they look totally different

We visited both and we sort of explained them in the religion chapter. but I had so much fun going there and in the Buddhist temple specifically

they light incense and they put it in this like common central sand pit and

doing that surrounded by other people who were there. Some were just visitors somewhere there to worship somewhere there to

you know, talk to their ancestors. And then it was like us like just there to witness and like my

and Henry, uh, who was six at the time was just so enthralled by this

like this incense that was like blowing smoke everywhere. It was really beautiful

And it made me realize that like visually understanding a place is such a universal desire for anyone

whether it's like a child or like an older person. Like we all want to understand stuff

And being there with my kids really helped me keep in touch with that like very human impulse to like understand what you seeing and where it came from and why did you after like writing the course and going there and filming it did you walk

away with a different view of japan or of tokyo i after this whole experience feel like i really

understood major building blocks of at least culture in tokyo we delved into the customs

and like i've visited japan before and like sort of knew about some of the customs but doing it at

this level of like deep research we had a local consultant who was helping us was a whole different

animal like i i was understanding so much of the nuance of customs and also that like as a foreigner

you don't have to take them as seriously but like it's respectful if you do and like all these all

these nuances that were that i think i would have never learned if i just read sort of a quick list

so I walked away with a much deeper understanding of that a much deeper understanding of the food

like you know Japanese food it's all around the world but understanding

sushi and the different types of sushi from like fast food sushi

to like medium scale to like the high end experience I was like wow

not all sushi is the same and in fact these are such different formats

and it's all called sushi yeah I feel like my understanding of Japan is so much richer

after being in the trenches researching this and learning about it and filming it and producing it. It was exhausting. It was exhausting

but it was also like, you just do it once and then it's done. And now it's, that was there

It's a course. It lives and people can use it for years to come. You know, we weren't reviewing

restaurants. It's evergreen. And so it's like really exciting that like that's a resource now

for people. I hope that you enjoyed that conversation. And if you wanted to learn

more about ramen or the shrines or anything else about Tokyo, we have it all in that course

And you can actually buy just sections of the course if you want on our website. So head over

to brighttrip.com and we'll catch you over there. See ya