Bring the independent spirit to major movies! This is how movies are made! ~Major movies and authorship~ Event Report Vol.1 (3 parts in total) [CINEMORE ACADEMY Vol.19]

Bring the independent spirit to the majors!

Koda: How about Mr. Yukisada?

Yukisada: When we debuted about 20 years ago, major films were films made by five companies: Toho, Shochiku, Toei, Daiei, and Nikkatsu. It's a film produced by a film company that has a strong distribution network and even owns its own theaters. As Uchida-kun said earlier, it is true that companies with a large number of theaters have an advantage.

Under these circumstances, I was more of an independent director, and from the time I was working as an assistant director, I admired independent directors such as Masashi Yamamoto, Kaisho Hayashi, and Sosuke Ishii. , I was just crawling under them. I just love movies, it wasn't about money or anything like that.

I shouldn't say this, but being independent means you have unlimited time. When you become a big organization, your time becomes limited, but when you are an independent company, your time is unlimited. Nowadays we call it black, but that means no sleep, but it was still interesting and made on a low budget.

I've always thought that the difference between major and independent is that independents are able to have more adventures because they have lower budgets. You can't go on adventures in the majors. Because it costs money and it has to be recovered. Of course, no matter the size of a movie, I believe it has to make money back, otherwise I won't be able to continue filming. The easiest way to recover from that is to make a really interesting movie on a low budget.

For better or worse, Japan has been able to share its audience domestically. For example, in places like Hong Kong and Taiwan, they can't share the audience domestically, so they have no choice but to target overseas. That's how we were able to spread around the world. However, in the case of Japan, it is easier to set goals for recovery because it can be shared domestically. That's why I become very domestic and don't go abroad. That's why I consider major movies to be those that go in the direction of non-adventure, those that don't take adventures and aim for something certain.

On the other hand, being independent allows you to have an adventure, which is why I do both. There are definitely times when I want to go on an adventure, otherwise I won't be able to maintain my mental balance. I've been doing this for 20 years, believing that if I could bring an independent spirit to the majors, things would definitely become more interesting.

Even when people called me barter, I said I didn't want to do it, and that's what I've done up until now. My first condition was that if I couldn't do that, I would quit. That's why I don't think I'm having a hard time compared to Mr. Motohiro.

Even when it was an original work, I said, ``If you don't mind changing the original work, I'll do it.I have a good scene in mind, so I'll change the last scene.''If the original author gave the OK, I would accept that condition. I don't really want to fight. The original author is a god who changed it from 0 to 1, so I have no intention of going against that, but I thought it would be better if they could change it cinematically, so that was my first condition.

In the end, for me, there isn't much of a difference between independent and major, but listening to Mr. Motohiro's story, I thought maybe I was lucky.

do what no one else is doing