"Egoist" Director Daiji Matsunaga x Ryohei Suzuki x Hio Miyazawa One scene and one cut [Director's Interview Vol.280]

Strengths of making documentaries

Q: One of the reasons it has a documentary feel is that Naoya Ikeda's camerawork capturing the two of you is also impressive. There are many close-up shots, but what was it like on set?

Suzuki: If you're being filmed so close, it's like you're not even there. I think it was similar to the feeling of someone filming a documentary, and I gradually forgot about the camera. There were many scenes that weren't in the script, and I didn't know how anyone would move. The camera was always moving along with that.

TV documentaries are interesting, but I don't really want to enter that world. But this movie has beautiful colors and images, and because it was shot with great care, it's very immersive and makes you want to enter that world. If this were a complete documentary that just followed the two of them, it wouldn't be like this. I thought that this is the power of fiction.

Matsunaga: I think my strength is that I have shot documentaries. When I was shooting documentaries, I thought, "I wish the subject was a little closer," and when I was shooting fiction, I thought, "I wish it was a little more like a documentary." I've been going back and forth between these thoughts for the past 10 years, and this film matched that. But it's hard for the actors, and it's hard on set. We shoot almost without testing, so we don't always know where or what we're going to shoot. That's why the microphone sometimes shows up, but it can't be helped because everyone is concentrating on that. I think the concentration on set was extremely high.

Suzuki: It was a really good team.

"Egoist" Miyazawa Hio (role of Nakamura Ryuta)

Q: Was it almost like one scene, one take?

Miyazawa: That's right. I think it would have been impossible to achieve that without a long take. It's not something you can do by saying, "I only want this part, so let's do it again from a little before that," and I often forget what I did in the previous take. I can't get there unless I start from scratch again.

Suzuki: If we do the same thing as the previous take, we'll never get the OK (laughs).

Matsunaga: I don't like being copied. That's why it's so hard. I have to reset every time, but I also have to keep the good parts as they are and make the bad parts better. I think it's very hard for the performers.

I don't dare to tell you what's wrong