In January 2009, the KOFIC published a book on korean director Bong Joon-ho (The Host…) in which we learn more about his Japanese Experience.
Here are some interesting quotes:
So in scenes like the group memorial in “The Host” or the discovery of the body in “Memories of Murder” I had a kind of ambition like, ‘Oh, I’d like to make this look like Imamura Shohei’ (…) Because I said I wanted to make a film about a series of murders, Tony Rayns happened to give me Alan Moore’s “From Hell” as a gift.
The other day, we were speaking about asian directors and weird hollywood projets, well, it seems Japan offers some better (?) examples:
I’ve received offers for things like “20th Century Boys”, and I was asked to do a remake of Kurosawa Akira’s “High and Low”. There was also a proposal to remake “Thirteen Assassins”. I got a definite offer for “Copycat Killer” （模倣犯） based on a book by Miyabe Miyuki. But my schedule was already fixed with “Mother” & “Transperceneige”, so I wasn’t able to make any specific commitment.
Speaking about “Shaking Tokyo” budget (BJH’s segment of Tokyo!):
600,000 Euros. Japan is a country where you work with even lower budgets than Korea so for Japan the budget was considerable. I tend to give various directions directly to the actors, like I did in Korea. I would check footage directly on the set’s monitor and make specific references, asking them to do it this way at these times.But it seems you don’t do that in Japan. I did it politely in my way, but people said that Takenaka Naoto was very considerate since I was a foreign director (laughs). And most of all, in Japan they almost never use monitors on the set, and it seems they don’t even do on-site editing.I was amazed at that.
And there’s more to read!
Via Ryuanji
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what does the director do in a Japanese shoot, then?
O.o