SOURCE: Rodman, Howard A. “Anatomy of a Wizard.” American Film 16, no. 10 (November–December 1991): 35–39.

In the following essay on the making of Prospero's Books, Rodman talks with Greenaway about how he manipulated visual images for the film using high-definition equipment.

Tokyo, the Shibuya District. On a sunny midday in February, the streets are dense with purposeful pedestrians. But if the image is Japanese, the text is English: Signage—massive, outsize, in paint, in neon, in pulsating arrays of electric-bulb dot matrix—shouts out Coke, Amtrak Discotheque, Newport Beach Fashion's Island.

Just across the avenue at the edge of Yoyogi Park, in what can only be described as a human dot matrix, 49 young Asian men in pompadour hairstyles, arrayed in a 7-by-7 grid, execute rockabilly dance moves in strict unison to the beat of American rock-and-roll songs—perhaps older than the dancers themselves—played loud on an enormous radio.

Just...