Japan Film Commision, or Just Fucking Create.
Early in the year, I received a Japanese email from a producer I didn’t know about a film project. The details were extremely vague and I’m kind of a creature of habit and always dread talking to new people. I checked their website and I thought it was pretty terrible. I couldn’t be bothered to even respond and so I ignored it. Now, dear friend, stalker, fellow creator or hate-reader, if you are to stop reading this post now, then please be aware that the moral of the story is that I was wrong to ignore it.
For those of you with nothing better to do than read my dribble, I will endeavor to explain why that wasn’t great of me and what a fun opportunity I almost passed up.
I got a follow up email, in English this time from another producer, explaining the project to me in greater detail. Basically, this organization wanted to promote Japan as a filming location for international film makers by hiring 4 foreign directors to show different aspects of Japanese life. Each director got 3 million yen and basically got free reign to choose how we would present our version of Japan.
I got on a call with the production team to discuss the project and I realized just how exciting the project could be. Even with the GQ projects, I didn’t have complete control over the final product.
For my part, they wanted me to present someone who is active in Tokyo’s nightlife as they felt my previous work showed that was something I could do well.
The project presented a few challenges from the start. First, the production company’s work ended the moment they hired me. They would no actually produce the film. The plan was to basically hand me the 3 million budget, and in exchange I would return a month later with a finished film. That was the second challenge. It was only a month to go from conception to completion.
I am not a producer. I’m a decent editor, a foolishly ambitious director but certainly incapable of producing films on my own. Therefore I opted to call upon Mina.
Mina had reached out to me a few months earlier. She had just recently become freelance and was working on expanding her network. We got along really well and it was a good opportunity for us to try and work together for the first time.
The first and most pressing matter was to find a cast. This would completely define how the entire film would unfold. We didn’t have enough time to go through a lengthy casting process but I remembered how much I enjoyed working with DJ Sarasa in a GQ documentary a few years prior. She was friendly, interesting, smart and looks amazing in front of the camera. I hadn’t stayed in touch with her since our last shoot but I decided to reach out even if I figured it might be a long shot. I was on my way to an early shoot when I slid in her DMs and she got back to me before I even got my hands on the disgusting breakfast the production team had inevitably prepared for the crew.
Someone wakes up too early.
I was stoked and so I got to work on a treatment to show her two days later. Mina and I went to Sarasa’s restaurant for a quick chat. I wanted to show her exactly what I had in mind, see if she had any ideas or if anything would make her uncomfortable. Sarasa is a multi-facetted woman. She’s a DJ, a restaurant owner, an event promoter, a style icon and a sort of international ambassador. She belongs in the dingiest underground clubs just as much as in the fanciest halls. I wanted the creative to reflect these many aspect of her personality. Her having been such a huge part of Tokyo’s night culture made her perfect for this project.
DJ Royalty
Based on my experience, the easiest way to approach a project like this with so little time would have been to make a short documentary but I felt like I had done enough of those and I wanted to use this opportunity to make something different, more daring and more artistic in its expression.
Artistic expression
Yes, I wrote that last sentence. I reread it and realized it was incredibly pretentious but I’m sticking with it and you, my dear and most likely only reader, will just have to deal.
Anyways, I decided to make a fashion film. The idea was to create a variety of tableaux that would each represent Sarasa’s different personality traits. Instead of presenting something merely natural, I wanted each of the scenes to be a conceptual representation of all the things that make her such a unique subject
She was completely down with the project. She shared some ideas and I left the meeting completely stoked. Our biggest challenge was done. We had a creative plan and a cast.
Seen here: Sarasa being down with the project
The first hiccup however came from the wardrobe department. Having little to no budget, we had hoped to count on Sarasa to help provide outfits. I wanted everything to be larger than life, more high fashion than prêt a porter and I knew that Sarasa would have some treasures in her wardrobe. Unfortunately, Sarasa was hesitant to make her clothes available for the shoot. Her reasoning was that she didn’t really want to be seen wearing the same thing too many times and that being in a video made it more than likely that more people would see her outfits. Considering how carefully crafted her personal brand is, this made sense to me, but it meant we had to keep a larger part of the budget for a stylist that we now had less than a week to find.
Let’s get stylish
The next week was frantic, Mina and I worked non-stop to build our production team and plan. It was hectic but Mina was really amazing and she basically sorted everything out while I was basically just making a shot list.
For this project, I worked with Alex. Alex is a very experienced DP with access to a lot of equipment and he told me he was keen to do some more creative projects so he was perfect for the project. He also had a lot of ideas for camera techniques and lighting ideas that would help us elevate the project above anything I had done before.
Something else that was excited is that the music would be handled by Eric Reiff, with whom I had worked countless times on huge advertising projects back when I was an assistant at Cutters and he was a producer at AudioForce. I always thought of him as too big for the kind of projects that I was likely to get but we had met for a few drinks and he offered to do music for whatever project I had, even if it didn’t have money and so it was huge to have him take care of the music in spite of our limited resources.
The shoot was a lot of fun. For every scene, the priority was to get the coolest possible shots we could get. Sarasa was confident and very easy to direct. I met a lot of cool people that Mina brought on to the project to help. The weather posed some challenges but ultimately we managed to get everything we intended to and more.
I think this may have been the most positive shoot I have ever been on. Just good vibes all around, in spite of all the hard work.
See how positive I’m being?
Where things got a little tough was in post. After having so much fun with Sarasa and the crew, I was now locked by myself in my room with only 2 days to send in a first edit. I powered through but sent an unfinished edit. What was weird is they needed to present an edit immediately, but then there was no feedback at all and they thought we were finished before we even finished the edit, or colored, or mixed…
Color was really fun. I asked Mai, who used to be my assistant at Cutters to do it, since she had started working at Artone with Toshiki. It was very different to work with her as a colorist but its was a good day of color and I thought she did a wonderful job.
Mix was handled by Daniel. Another long time collaborator I was excited to bring on board.
The hardest part of post I guess, was not being able to rely on Yu-san anymore. In all my directing projects up until that point, I always had the calming knowledge that no matter how fucked up my footage was, no matter how unclear my intentions were, Yu-san would always be there to clean up. He would fix mistakes, make everything prettier and always come up with ways to elevate the work in one way or another.
On this project, I ended up working with a new online editor for the first time and although she did a wonderful job, it just wasn’t the same.
What went wrong:
I realized I didn’t really enjoy editing as much anymore. After the excitement of the shoot, editing felt like a chore and my first edit I sent just wasn’t very good.
Also, not having any serious client to answer to was a double-edged sword. I basically had the opportunity to make the film I wanted, the way that I wanted but that also meant I was the only one to blame if it didn’t turn out to be good. It’s my creative so if it’s bad, it means I’m bad and I don’t know if I was ready to deal with that possibility.
What went right:
Most of it. The planning was pretty smooth, the shoot itself was and amazing time and the final product in the end is something I was very proud of and I think it led to a few new jobs coming in after I released it. It was also a great chance to rekindle a friendship with Sarasa and build upon a collaborative relationship with Alex. I’m also glad we made something Mai could put on her reel.
What I learned:
Pay attention to inquiries when they come in. I came incredibly close to missing the opportunity to get paid to make basically whatever I felt like making at the time. Just by ignoring an email because I didn’t like their website, I could have left all the positive this job brought me behind and continued to struggle to show people I can make some interesting things.