Communicating Effectively: The Bread and Butter of Investigative Journalism

This week, we're discussing reaching out to people and communicating effectively - one of the key components of taking part in a lost media search.

But first, our current leads - while my contact wasn't able to get much information from Junichi Hayama at Sakura Con, someone else was. According to this Twitter thread, we now know the following from Hayama himself:

- The original runtime was 70 minutes, but they pushed it to 90 minutes.

- There was a director prior to Junichi Hayama, and he left the project partway through, so Hayama had to take over as director.

- There were apparently lots of obstacles during the film's production.

- The film was planned to get a DVD release, but at some point during the production of the film, for reasons that Hayama could not say (likely an NDA/Non Disclosure Agreement), Shueisha had collected the assets, and Hayama could no longer work on it.

All of this puts some more pieces of the puzzle together - for instance, the runtime being extended from 70 to 90 minutes might explain why the film's release date was pushed back from the Fall of 2006 to February of 2007. Shueisha collecting the assets to the film would explain Hayama's seemingly angry reactions to being asked about the film over the past year or so, given that he could no longer work on it. We are currently digging to see if we can find who this original director might have been.

Other than that, still no word from the American anime distributors or the film archives I managed to find.

Finally, we managed to raise the $600 needed to enlist Japan P.I.'s services! HUGE thanks to everyone who donated! I will be getting in contact with them again at my earliest convenience and we can get this show on the road.

Effective communication is one of the most useful skills you can learn, especially in business or investigative settings. If you want to get answers out of people, you need to know how to effectively introduce yourself and your intentions, and how to let your recipients know that you are to be trusted, and that you are credible. Over my four years of being in college and honing my communication skills, I've gained some insight as to how you can start to effectively communicate with people and reach out to potential interviewees - and that's exactly what we're digging into today.

SOURCES/CITATIONS:

DFFTCOP's Sakura Con Twitter thread

Marco Co.'s official website