ASHITA in Japan

Well I am back from my month in Japan. While there I had the pleasant news that a Kitakyushu theatrical company known as BeniShoga will mount my play FALLEN LEAVES in August 2009. More on that in the coming weeks.

One of my intentions during my trip to the land of the rising sun was to show the 30 minute preview DVD to as many people as possible. As you loyal readers know, I was a little apprehensive about what impressions the homeland Japanese would get from this Canada-jin making a movie in their language. The few that saw it received it well. Someone even commented that it was better than Kill Bill. The common reaction Ashita gave was that the characters said many "un-Japanese" things--which is very true. As the film is not intended to be about Japanese people, it is about people in general. It was shot in Toronto and at the outside most, some of the characters are Japanese living in a foreign land. Living in a city like Torono would certainly affect anybody's personality... I am rather pleased with the response Ashita garnished and it has renewed an excitement in me for the film to complete in 2009.

My second week there, the family got sick so we were unable to travel to Tokyo to see our friends there. I was looking forward to meeting Don Matsuo, singer for the rock band The Zoobombs, as it had been about a year since I had seen my friend and his family when they came on tour in Canada. I know that Don had been excited about seeing his music being used in Ashita. As well, my lovely wife Izumi was in Tokyo earlier on and stayed with Sayaka, the singer of Super Girl' Juice, Izumi was even lucky enough to catch them live--unfortunately it was all before I arrived. I wanted to show Sayaka the footage as well, as we shot part of the film while she was visiting Toronto. Oh well, my friends in Tokyo will just have to wait for the premiere at the Tokyo International Film Festival.

I did get a chance to see Maki, our hair stylist. She was nice enough to come to Kyushu to see us. We met in Kokura and I was able to show her the 30 minutes on a portable DVD player siting outside of Kokura Castle (so far that is my favorite place to screen a movie, sitting outside an ancient Samurai castle built in 1602 while drinking a couple of Asahi beers).

I got the chance as well, to visit the Akira Kurosawa Museum, which inspired me--I will write an entry on that at a later point.

I have much stress about this little experiment known as Ashita. It may all just work out.

The Auteur and The Filmmaker

Wong Kar-Wai is a true auteur. He makes his movies, completely on his terms. His films are deeply poetic and visually stunning. Larry Gross of Sight & Sound magazine says: "The first time you see Wong Kar-Wai’s movies, you feel you are watching the work of a delicious visual mannerist indifferent to narrative structure....The sheer hedonistic absorption in architectural surfaces, in light sources, in decor of every possible fabric and material, and the absence of overtly literary seriousness in the plots, make you feel trapped in the world of a super-talented hack. Then you go back and take another look, and the movies change, more drastically than any I know of. They seem richer, more intricately organized, more serious...”

Much like Leonard Cohen’s work I first experience Wong Kar-Wai in my mid-teens when I first decided to go into filmmaking. In my time at CUTV, working on my first ever production, a puppet show known as Paradites, I had met a man by the name of King, he was of Hong Kong origin, he was quite knowledge about cinema and he is the one who first introduced me to Hong Kong cinema. This was in the early and mid-1990s before the names John Woo, Jackie Chan and Jet Li were household names in the white people world. I was ravaged through all the HK films he lent me, often watching three or four films in a row. I went to film school with movies like John Woo’s The Killer and Hard Boiled burnt into my brain, highly stylized yet melodramatic at the same time. Nothing in American “action” movies had come close to these masterworks. Around that same time, the Fantasia Film Festival was launched in Montreal. The festival would feature predominantly Asian action films and Japanese anime. Finally I could prove to my chums in film school that I was not crazy, that these films belong on their own plateau. I attended many films that first festival year with King. One day he brought me a VHS copy of Chungking Express. I was expecting another action movie, however what I got was a super stylized melodrama. It blew my mind. It was incredible. It was like nothing else I’d ever seen. I re-watched the movie two more times in a row. To me, it was an almost perfect poem on screen. The camera work and aesthetics of the film were the true work of a master, I had no seen color used like that since Hitchcock or Kubrick. The truth is, in film school you learn (at least when I was there) that a good film never lets the audience be aware of the
camera, which is a theory that is thrown out the window with a lot of work from Hong Kong. John Woo stylized action cinema, Wong Kar-Wai re-stylized cinema. Wong Kar-Wai humbly describes his style: “People are always very curious about the visual effects in my works. The not so romantic truth is that lots of those effects are in reality the results of circumstantial consideration: if there is not enough space for camera maneuvering, replace the regular lens with a wide-angle lens; when candid camera shooting in the streets does not allow lighting, adjust the speed of the camera according to the amount of light available; if the continuity of different shots does not link up right for a sequence, try jump cuts; to solve the problem of color incontinuity, cover it up by developing the film in B/W… Tricks like that go on forever.” Even his use of voiceover, which had been portrayed as the anchor of a weak story, is used in such a way that it adds to the grace and beauty of his films. They lend to the story as well as the music. His work is stylized, but not empty.

The way Wong Kar-Wai tackles romance and love on screen is much like Cohen tackles it in his work. In Wong’s work, the possibility of love is as beautiful as it is problematic. Its almost like his characters want to be in love, they just happen to fall in love at an inconvenient time. He explores themes that state that people, even though in very close physical proximity, can be so far apart. His ability to isolate his characters and present them as social outsiders. His imagery of large urban centers as alienating, lonely places are really what attract me to his work. Ashita is a film about people in city. Lonely, depressed, desperate people. Can I paint the picture like Wong the auteur. Probably not. But I can hope to.

Thank you Mr. Wong.

The Poet and The Filmmaker

Every artist has an influence or a number of influences. I’ve always felt that I have a poetic spirit—maybe its my romantic Italian roots, but with experience I see my art going in the direction of the understanding of the soul and the meaning of humanity. So its no surprise that two artists I greatly admire are Leonard Cohen and Wong Kar-Wai.

I will write two entries one dedicated to the world’s best known poet, Leonard Cohen and one dedicated to cinema’s best know poet Wong Kar-Wai.

Maybe I feel a special connection to Leonard Cohen because he is a fellow Montreal native. Maybe its because, deep down, his words, both in songs and on paper, bring such vivid imagery to mind. I first discovered Leonard Cohen in my mid-teens just as he was releasing his album The Future. I has known of Cohen, but never experienced his work first hand until I bought the album. I was blown away by every aspect of The Future. When I entered college, there was a plaque commemorating Cohen. I had a number of professors who had known Cohen—at the time they had lost touch with him because he had gone into seclusion to become a Zen Buddhist monk.

Cohen’s work is marked by themes of love, sex, religion, psychological depression. Most music, of course, is about these things. But the way Cohen writes and presents them is much deeper and more complex. He is a story teller as much as a poet. He, like all writers, writes about what he knows and what he has experienced. He knows heartbreak, from his many relationships and affairs—including one with Janice Joplin. He knows about depression—true psychological and unsentimental depression. He suffers from chronic depression, though less so in his old age. His early work is marred with references to suicide and loneliness—his later work is less depressed, however has many references to social justice to the chaos that fills life of most American and North American cities.

I can relate to a lot of his references, almost six years ago while in post production of my second film Truant Café I suffered through a depression. While recovering, I was commissioned to produce a TV pilot for LIFE Network. While making the pilot, I almost slipped back into my depression because I was under an enormous amount of pressure and severely tight deadline. Humanity was slipping away and I did not like the person I had become. Worst of all, I was no longer having fun with my productions—I think the fun stopped when I was working on Truant Café, I was obsessed with success. Like Leonard Cohen said: “Life got a whole lot easier when I no longer expected to win.” His comment, full of joy and lamentation, which can only come from him, can best describe where I am now in my life. I want to explore the human soul. I want to explore the things that made me depressed and the things that remove joy from people’s lives. I want to explore the dark places people hide their worst thoughts. Why do people hurt each other when they know what pain does? Why do people lie when they know it is futile? Are humans foolish or innocent? Why are we frightened to admit we’re lost? My hope, is that Ashita explores some these questions and provides its own unique perspective on them.

Thank you Mr. Cohen.

The Big CITY

My movie Ashita is about loneliness, its also about life in the city. Living in a big city breaks you more often than it makes you. I’ve been living in Canada’s biggest city for just over 6 years and it gets shockingly more disturbing every day. I can’t read the paper or look at the news without seeing a random act of insanity—I know what you’re thinking, bad news sells. This may be true on some morbid level, however there’s bad news and then there’s sheer madness. I can accept that in any given city there is crime and violence. But what shocks me is the volume of random violence, teenagers killing the school mates for fun or a man who beats a stranger he’s never met to death with a brick. Teenaged parents leaving their unwanted newborn baby in shopping mall parking lot in the dead of winter. These are signs of an ill city. Signs of, maybe, what the city does to people. Maybe deep down, I am fed up with the city, fed up with the constant feeling of depravity and frustration. Maybe I want out.

The way I create a project is through observation. And in a city like Toronto, there is a lot of observation to be done. I look at people and try to guess what’s in their mind and in their life and from there, the story grows. Sometimes I get depressed doing this, so many sad faces in the crowd, so many complex souls. The question that still drives my creative juices is: Why? Why, with all the opportunities, with all the advantages, with all the culture, with all the options available in big cities do people remain frustrated, stoic and frightened? Do the lies, corruption and general nihilistic sense outweigh the good of the city. Maybe it’s the uncertainty of the city that bites at people. Maybe it’s the sheer size of the unknown in the city’s façade that causes undue rest.

I’ve never pictured myself living anywhere but a big city, stating that the quiet of rural suburbia frightened me. That’s beginning to change, maybe its age, maybe it’s the fact that I am now a father or maybe its both. I often toy with the idea of living somewhere quiet and exploring my secret passion—cooking. I doubt I will ever stop creating, maybe I will make more films, maybe I will write a novel or write poetry. All I know is that not only did I make a movie about what the big can do to people, maybe I am beginning to understand living in a big city. Maybe understanding the city means its time to leave the city.

The Good, The Bad, The Leone

When you think about influential filmmakers names like Kurosawa, Hitchcock, Fellini, Welles, Kubrick and Ford, pop up. But rarely is the name Leone ever included with these greats. Maybe because he made only 6 movies or the fact that his movies were categorized as Action Westerns (with the exception of his final film Once Upon a Time in America). The truth is, Leone has had a major influence on cinema and many great directors including: Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorcsese, Quentin Tarantino, George Lucas, Sam Peckinpah and even Stanley Kubrick (for Barry Lyndon).

Leone remains one of my personal favorites, the Man With No Name trilogy (especially The Good, The Bad and The Ugly) and Once Upon in the West stand out as two of my favorite movies of all time. When Leone’s work first came out, much like many great filmmakers, his work was misunderstood and misrepresented. Thanks to a lot of young filmmakers who took an interest in his visual style and character representations he slowly grew to legendary status. Leone pioneered a lot of things in cinema like his use of extreme close-ups, ultra fast zooms (known as the Italian Zoom), the “Mexican Standoff” (this is where three men point a gun at each other) as well as his use of Ennio Morricone’s score (Composer Ennio Morricone once said that Leone asked him to compose a film's music before the start of principal photography, which of course, is contrary to normal practice. He would then play the music to the actors during takes to enhance their performance).

During his childhood, growing up in Mussolini’s Rome, Leone was obsessed with American popular culture and American movie stars. He describes his first encounter with an American (a soldier during WWII): “In my childhood, America was like a religion…Then, real-life Americans abruptly entered my life – in jeeps – and upset all my dreams…I found them very energetic, but also very deceptive. They were no longer the Americans of the West. They were soldiers like any others…materialists, possessive, keen on pleasures and earthly goods.” This may explain the unique aspects of his films. His movies are rich in historical detail, however, his vision of the less than pure hero was uncommon in Hollywood and America. His cowboys, who urinated in public, spat, raped and seemed as interested in other’s opinions as they were interested in their own personal hygiene. Until Sergio Leone came around, Hollywood Westerns had always invoked a dream of freedom and adventure always with a happy ending. In Leone’s view, the West was a violent and mythical landscape where a man could determine his place in the world with the skills he had in operating his gun or ticking his enemy. What is most interesting about Leone’s Westerns is that they carry certain essential truths about the American foundation in a way that no American film can. Author Christopher Frayling best describes it: “Leone's films contain no universal moral messages (as many Hollywood Westerns have claimed to), and his heroes are not intended to set an example for today.” Instead Leone showed us ugly and violent acts with a wonderful, unglamorous simplicity.

I love his work. I’ve always been influenced by his style of cinematography and his ability to move a story forward with no use of words. While making my film Ashita, I watched his Man with No Name trilogy to try and harness some of his energy in my work. In one of the early opening scenes of the film, I use an Italian Zoom as a homage to his work, and I use an abundance of Extreme Close Ups as well. And like Leone, I hope to explore society and humanity from the perspective of an outsider looking in.

Politics and Art

A couple of days ago I was over at Andy’s place for a meeting with our new post production team on TV was the Democratic National Convention. Of course there aren’t many people who don’t know Barack Obama, and there are a lot of people who would like to see him become the next President of the Unites States.
The next day, we Canadians were informed that we would be voting for our country’s leader this coming autumn as well. Unfortunately, we don’t have any interesting or electrifying candidate like Obama running in our election. Oh-oh he’s talking politics, quick let’s leave the blog. Wait, don’t go! Seriously, I’m leading into something on film.
I was never into politics, I never really understood it and it never really affected me. And to be honest, I voted only once in my life. I always thought that no matter what joker was in power my life would ultimately remain the same as the quality of life went down and the cost of living went up. Recently though, (here’s the stuff on film—see I didn’t lie) our wonderful politicians in Ottawa began introducing wild ideas like Bill C-10 which made me start paying attention to who runs my country. The Bill is best described in the words of CBC as “an omnibus bill amending the Income Tax Act and contains a series of amendments affecting a variety of different industries, funds and individuals… The issue that concerns Canada’s film and television community is Section 120, which would allow the Heritage Minister (currently Josée Verner) to withdraw tax credits from productions determined to be ‘contrary to public policy.’” If you’re thinking that this sounds like censorship, well you’re thinking like a lot of film and TV people in Canada. Basically, the Heritage Minister would create a set of guidelines (the guidelines are yet to be established—because its always better to pass a Bill while it still hasn’t been fully thought out) to be monitored by committees within the heritage and justice departments. These guidelines would surely cover such things as violence, hatred, drug usage, racism and sexual content. So I guess we can’t make any after school specials in Canada. Of course the minister said: “Bill C-10 has nothing to do with censorship and everything to do with the integrity of the tax system. The goal is to ensure public trust in how tax dollars are spent.”
My opinion is a simple, either tax dollars go to art or they don’t. You can’t pick and choose what gets it and not, artists have a hard enough with that from the private sector with corporate sponsors who don’t want to damage their image by be associated with a specific type of artistic message. If the government does that any unique voices in the Canadian film industry will be destroyed. Besides, a truly insane person (and there are one or two of those in this country) will take offense to almost anything—in fact a quick Google search will give you interesting results who find such Canadian milestone children’s shows like Mr. Dressup and The Friendly Giant as offensive and not suitable for children. So, with this wonderful melting pot that is my country how can a government committee decide what goes against the entire public’s interest? An Afghani news show on cable that depends on grants to survive may be found offensive by a little old conservative racist white lady out west or an internationally acclaimed movie like C.R.A.Z.Y. from Quebec, which deals with drug use and homosexuality, may be offensive to a housewife somewhere in the Maritimes. But you know what? Canada is all of this. Like it our not, Canada is Muslim as it Jewish, Christian and everything else. Canada is gay as it is straight. The idea that the government can decide what kind art and ergo what type of thinking our tax dollars finance is false. No other country has such silly ideas where the government tells its people what is best for them… oh wait, China does that… as do Cuba and North Korea.

Maybe I will pay quite a lot of attention to this next election.

Its a Mad Mad World

Recently I discovered Mad Men, I bought the box set thanks to a gift card I received from my friend Kirsty—and I literally bought it blind. I had no idea what the show was about, or I fit was any good. I was impressed, very impressed. It is an incredible show with all the subtleties of the era in which is takes place. Watching Mad Men is a lot like watching an old movie from the 1960s the pacing, the cinematography all reminiscent of the era. The thing about Mad Men, they don’t hold anything back from the shovenist era. Much like one of my favorite films, Chinatown (1974 directed by Roman Polanski starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway) everybody in the show smokes and drinks. Men smack women, women use men and everybody has a dirty little secret. Funny, that sounds a lot like Ashita. Mad Men is yet another affirmation that I am not insane (and me looking forward to the padded cells and the three square meals a day of the funny farm). I was a little weary when making Ashita, I had been getting a lot of comments about the level of alcohol and tobacco consumption seen in the film. Literally, every character smokes and drinks in the film. Andy, the editor, and I were joking about how we will go down as the worst influence on young minds in cinema history (cool). Of course, most of my characters are women with a contemporary setting, so I can’t hide behind the “it was the 60s that what everyone did” banner. Instead I will hide behind the “they’re Japanese that’s what they do” banner.
When I was in Japan a few years ago, everywhere I went 80% of people smoked and more than that drank actively. Simply put, it’s a way of life for the Japanese. Maybe they’re not as “health enlightened” as us North Americans or maybe they just don’t care. So when making a movie about Japanese I needed to incorporate their character traits. And besides most people who are troubled or lonely tend to smoke and drink anyway. Don’t get me wrong I smoke cigars on occasion and I am a social drinker (long live the Irish Car Bomb) but I, honestly, take offence when someone comments that my film will promote smoking and drinking. If the message a view gets when the see someone smoke or drink on the screen is that smoking and drinking is cool, well then they’re in the wrong part of the ball park (unless you’re watching things like Pineapple Express or Cheech and Chong, which are movies about casual self medication). My hope is that when you see Ashita and see my characters, their cigarettes and booze will fit in naturally with their characters. These are lonely, sad and depressed characters it is natural for them to seek some kind of dependence (oddly enough the one who doesn’t smoke has become dependant on adultery).
My point is simple, as a filmmaker I would never glorify anything or put anything in my film simply because it looks cool, that is for the young and foolish. It is progresses the story, enhances the character or makes a statement about the character then it should be used. Much like violence, I would never put in a violent scene just to put one in. For example in one of Ashita’s stories “The Gift” the Toshio character violently smacks his wife. I’ve seen the edited scene a number of times now and Andy and I have the same view, the smack needs to be brutal and, believe me, it is. The reason it has to be brutal is because it needs to show people the sheer destructive nature of domestic violence. There is nothing pretty about that scene, nor is there anything pretty about a man who hits his wife. Like Roman Polanski once said: “You have to show violence the way it is. If you don't show it realistically, then that's immoral and harmful. If you don't upset people, then that's obscenity.”
It’s the same with smoking, drinking or sex. These are all things that may intrude on people’s sensitivities, but if they say something in art, then the artist should not be afraid to hide them. Filmmaking is art. Art is interpretive. No matter what it is, art always risks offending and always risks being disliked. That’s the nature of the beast.

Shooting Can Be Fun

In reading the July issue of American Cinematographer it was nice to read about the shooting of The Dark Knight, probably my favorite film of the year and one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time. Though some of you may disagree with me, I connected with the style and look of the film. To me it mixed a lot of experimental and classical elements of filmmaking together into what is a visually assaulting piece of storytelling. The Dark Knight was shot on 35mm film with some sequences shot in IMAX (a Canadian invention, thank you very much), which is something that has never been done before.
For those of you who know me, know that I am a big fan of trying new things and its nice to see a studio like Warner Bros. taking a chance with such a costly experiment. Those who have seen the film in IMAX (if you haven’t you should) will attest to the sheer beauty of the scenes. I love what the movie’s cinematographer, Wally Pfister, said about shooting in IMAX: “We just needed to shoot and learn…There’s a whole booklet about how to film in Imax, but our inclination was to break all those rules. In the end, we incorporated some of the ideas to a degree, but for the most part, we did what felt right to us and addressed composition shot-by-shot.” Which, to me, is refreshing and it’s a great learning point for me and any aspiring filmmaker out there. Anybody can take a film class, anybody can read American Cinematographer or any book on how to shoot a movie—and odds are if you learn that way, you will be able to shoot a movie—a rather generic looking movie, but a movie nonetheless. In all my films I teach myself how to shoot all over again. I often try to keep my film education as far away as possible when I approach shooting a movie. I want the approach for everything I do to be completely different and unique. Ashita was probably my effort at learning to shoot. First, I was shooting in PAL for the first time (more on PAL some other time) and I was shooting entirely at night, which are both two things I’ve never done before. I watched a lot of film noir along with a lot of films that inspire me, but I wanted to craft my own look for the film. A look of loneliness in the big city. Andy, Ashita’s editor, once commented that I really enjoy solitary people in big spaces—and for Ashita I do—it’s a look that I wanted.
Actually I never intended on shooting the film myself, I had originally hired a cinematographer and after the first two days of shooting, we let him go—it was both a combination of lack of visual style and paying too much of the wrong type of my attention to my all female, all Japanese cast members. When I came to the painful realization that I had to do my own camera work as well as work with actors in a language I don’t speak, I got rather ill. To overcome those very obstacles I had to preplan even more than I normally do. Some people story board, some people don’t story board (for The Meatball Story I didn’t story board, for Truant Café I did) in the case of Ashita, I decided to do a detailed shot list and literally cross off the shots right after I did them. What was almost unconscious about my shooting of Ashita was the beauty of some of the shots. My office is located downtown Toronto, so I often spend an hour or more a day walking through the streets of downtown—which is pretty much how I did my location scouting for Ashita. Most of the exteriors for the film are shot using existing light from the locations, which turned out surprisingly well. Before I shot I went to each location at night with my camera and looked through the viewfinder to get an idea of what my shot would look like. Some of the shots in Ashita are truly majestic. What’s funny in reading the American Cinematographer article on The Dark Knight, was how Wally Pfister and director Chris Nolan first tested the IMAX camera in Nolan’s backyard and then to test the night shots they put it in the back of a pick up truck and drove down Sunset Blvd. It must be nice to be able to test a $3 000,000 camera in your back yard and then put in your flatbed and drive around with it!

An Interesting Conversation

Recently, I was interviewed by Chris Magee, the creator and Japanese film guru of The Toronto Japanese Film Appreciation Pow-Wow, a group of Japanese film aficionados of over 500 people. Chris met with Andy and I one day while were cutting Ashita (you can read Chris’ article on Ashita here: http://jfilmpowwow.blogspot.com/2008/06/mj-di-rocco-takes-on-challenge-with.html --in fact if your at all interested in Japanese movies, which you may be, if you’re interested in my film, you should check this site out) To me, the ultimate sign that I am not losing my mind making these films I make is when people whom I’ve never met take an interest in what I am doing. Which is, case in point, the result of Mr. Magee’s article on Ashita. A young gentleman by the name of Ben Dower contacted me through Chris with his own dreams of making a Japanese movie in Toronto—bringing the total of gaijin nut jobs who want to make Japanese language movies to 2! Still, though, the boat is a little less lonely now that Ben came aboard.

Ben and I have exchanged a few emails in which he’s asked me a few questions and my advice on making a Japanese movie in Toronto. Honestly, like Andy and I discussed with Chris, I’ve never really met anybody who’s done what we’re doing with Ashita, so we kind of invented the rules and processes as went along.

Below are some of the interesting points of our email conversation:


BEN: What interested me with you and Ashita is that you managed to make a film entirely in Japanese and about Japanese people in Toronto (which is something I'd very much like to do).

MJ: Thank you, I take that as a high compliment.

BEN: I just graduated from Confederation College's film production program. I am now trying to figure out where (and how) to to take the next step from here.

MJ: I can appreciate your situation. Throughout film school , not once do they really teach marketing, financing, management or any of the business skills you would need in order survive in the real world trying to make a film. Any sensible person knows (or quickly learns) that when you graduate film school nobody will hire you as director. More than likely, you are working as a 3rd AD wrangling extras or some other fun stuff.

BEN: It is true that very little film business is taught in film school. I had one course in the last semester on film business but I could tell the teacher just did not have enough time in this course to cover the information properly.

MJ: I can see not much has changed in films schools over years.

BEN: I am just out of film school and the only experience I have is on student films. I want to know what the best way is, in Toronto, to go from this point in my life to making the films I want to make...films that I write and direct.

MJ: Again, I can appreciate your situation. I have been there too. The best advice I can give you here is that if you really, really want to make your own films--if you want to make your stories, your way--well you need to do it on your own. Get yourself a half decent camera, join LIFT find a good cast and crew and just shoot it. When I say find a good crew I mean find a crew that wants to be crew and not directors (you've been to film school I am sure you understand what I mean in that statement). Find a DP that just wants to shoot and do pretty lighting. Find a sound guy that eats and breathes sound. And more importantly find a good editor who loves to cut and build stories through cutting (editors should never be 'yes' men that agree with everything you say, trust me on this one. You want an editor who is a free thinker and will surprise you.) But most importantly, you need patience. If you make a film for next to no money or no money at all, you will have to accept and understand that it is a longer process than if you had millions to throw at your crew. And if you work in a language you don't speak fluently, it will take you even longer--but if you believe in what your doing and you respect the integrity of the filmmaking process, then it will be a good final product.

(What I didn't mention to Ben, but I will mention here--when you work independently, what really counts are the people you work with. Find some good people, people who are passionate and excited about making a movie, like I did with Ashita, and that is a good first step in the right direction.)

BEN: I want to know how you were able to get such a project to be made. How did you get to the point in filmmaking where you could actually do that? I know many studios wouldn't fund this sort of experimental project because it probably be considered a large risk for the studio. Are you doing it independently, out of your own pocket, did you manage to secure funding, or did you get a government grant?

MJ: I am doing it independently. I've done enough work over the years to get all my own equipment. I did a TV pilot for LIFE Network a few years ago and managed to gather my equipment from that. Studios rarely give money to anybody and usually whatever budget you give them will be cut in half or even more by the time its green lit. Government grants are always fun to try and figure out, you have a lot of forms to fill out and it takes several months before they respond to you.

BEN: Did you shoot on film, HD, or tape?

MJ: We shot the film on PAL DV tapes--I love the colors on PAL and it looks much nicer than any 24fps (PAL is 25fps) camera out there. HD is nice, but the pro-sumer technology is not quite there yet. True HD cameras cost upwards of $15 000 and give a bitch of a time on hard drive memory on any editing system. By the way in case you're curious we're editing on AVID.

BEN: My current plan is to get a job at some place , make some money, buy some gear, and then shoot some films on my own.

MJ: Good plan. Honestly, I think you will appreciate what goes into making a film if you have to work elsewhere to pay for your film. It will make you a better, more appreciative filmmaker and producer.

BEN: I really like the DVX100 since Sion Sono used it for "Noriko's Dinner Table" and I love the way that movie looked. I know they aren't insanely expensive so I am going to start there I think (if you know any equally good/better cameras that are equally/lesser priced please let me know).

MJ: I don't know of any other cameras, I think JVC does a nice 24p HD camera for a pretty cost effective price. Let me level with you, I see far too many film grads spend money on equipment and then they shoot utter crap. A good camera does not make a good film. It may help it to look pretty but it will not help with the substance and the story, nor will it teach you to shoot. Buy what you can afford--your real focus should be on the story and the acting because nothing is worse than bad acting in super high definition. I have never seen Noriko's Dinner Table, I will take your appreciation of it as a recommendation and I will check it out.

BEN: My current plan is to get a job at some place , make some money, buy some gear, and then shoot some films on my own.

MJ: Good plan. Honestly, I think you will appreciate what goes into making a film if you have to work elsewhere to pay for your film. It will make you a better, more appreciative filmmaker and producer.

BEN: I also see you have "Battle Royale" and "Gojira" on your list of movies that inspire you. Those two movies are huge movies to me and changed my life a lot. Godzilla brought me into Asian film and my dream is to make a kaiju movie one day (short or feature...as long as it's a guy in a monster suit I'll be happy).

MJ: Dude if you make a kaiju movie, count me in as free help. I would adore the thought of working on a giant monster movie. On my next trip to Japan I plan on sneaking into TOHO and trying on the Godzilla suit. Battle Royale is one of those pivotal movies that gets most people hooked on Japanese cinema, still stands as a modern day classic in my mind, not so much because of the violence, but because the movie is really about the society of children. If you haven't studied Ozu's films, you should.

BEN: Thanks for all your help!

MJ: Always a pleasure.


Well there you go, I wish Ben all the best in his adventures in filmmaking. I compliment him for wanting to try new things and for wanting to try it all on his own. I hope that his experiences good or bad will be rewarding for him in the long run.

If you have an questions or comments about me, Ashita or making movies in general, I invite you to email me at mj@ashitamovie.com and I will do my best to reply in a timely manner.

The Aging Filmmaker

The great Martin Scorsese once said: “…On the one hand, you're the same person, but as you get older, you change somewhat, and you never know how it's going to affect your work.” He is as wise a man as he is brilliant a filmmaker. I am constantly reminded of his statement as a monumental occasion approaches less than 30 days from when I write this. My 30th birthday. I know, I know, this may not be a big deal to a lot of you. Its just a number, just another year people say. Well that may very well be true, but to me it feels big and I feel old. Had you asked me 5 years ago or 15 years ago when I got into this insane filmmaking thing to describe myself at 30, I would have quickly answered that I would have been somewhere in Hollywood making some large budget film. I was aiming to be the first director to make both a James Bond and Star Trek (laugh all you want, I love Star Trek) film. Of course, like most people I’ve learned a lot through many hard knocks.

Though I am not famous, not even close to rich and I never saw myself where I am today, I must admit that life has been good to me. I am married to a wonderful, supportive and understanding woman. I have a beautiful son who makes the sun rise with his smile. And I still get to do what I love to do: Tell stories. And I am not telling the stories I used to tell. My approach to making movies has changed. I am far less aggressive with the content—in film school it all had to be blood and gore, but that may have just been a phase or it may have been that I now tell stories in context to where my life has taken me. My films are the expressions of my life. At the time I made The Meatball Story I was angry, very angry and a lot of my anger was focused through the dark humor in the film and the sarcastic nature of the Dario character. When I wrote Truant Café I was hurt, confused and I wanted to settle a score. And since I could not settle in the real world, I would settle it through a film. Ashita explores themes of humanity, solitude and relationships. I think that being married and having experienced the rollercoaster rides of making my two previous films as well as CinemaFix a TV pilot—making the pilot was a truly awful experience, it really demonized me as a director and as a person. CinemaFix was the first time that I truly did not like the person I had become. After making that pilot I realized the monster I had become while making the show and I became very introverted and reflective. The truth is that I suffered a major depression while in post production of Truant Café and I was scared to relapse after CinemaFix, thus I started thinking long and hard about where I wanted to go with my life. I was dangerously close to quitting outright and not wanting to work on another project again. But, like any other artist my soul is embedded in my art. I couldn’t walk away, it would be like asking me to stop breathing. I love telling stories and making movies. Instead of quitting I began some deep introspection and with that the stories of Ashita were born as was my new perspective on my art. With the help of my wife making Ashita helped me discover my humanity.

Being a father brings me to new levels of humanity so who knows what stories and films the 30 years will bring me. Either way when I grow up I want to make movies.

Film Noir et Blanc

On October 17, 2007 I wrote an entry called “This Movie Has Been Modified from Its Original Version” where I discussed pan & scan and the colorizing process. I also mentioned in my last entry that during my last crazy couple of months I’ve bombarded myself with projects, one of those was a Japanese short titled Yuki Star. In this entry I will follow up on October 17, because I’ve decided that Yuki Star will be in black and white.

It’s no secret that I love black and white movies, I love watching them and I love making them. My first feature The Meatball Story was shot in black and white. Yuki Star, I actually shot in color and only when watching the footage did it strike me that this movie belonged in black and white. As a filmmaker, with every project I do, I try to have fun by experimenting and doing something I’ve never done before. Like I said, The Meatball Story was shot in black and white, while in preproduction and development, my vision of the movie was for it to be in black and white, when I thought about the characters and the nature of the story, I could not picture it in color. So when we got on set, we shot it in black and white. With Yuki Star, while I was writing it and developing it everything was in color. In fact I wanted to give it the rich 70’s style color saturation. However, the day after we shot, I watched the footage and though there was nothing wrong with it, something felt off, it didn’t feel right somehow. I threw the first part of footage into Final Cut Pro and decided to cut a quick opening to the film—again it felt off in color. So I converted into black and white, I didn’t just dump a black and white filter on it, I really tinkered with it to get to look like I shot and lit it for black and white. After watching the same scene in black and white I smiled… this story wanted to be told in black and white.

If you were to throw a rock, you’d be more than likely to hit a black and white nay sayer. More often than not, when I talk to people about black and white they just scoff at me and ask me what year it is. Talk to people like that makes me wish the controlled public usage of nunchuks was allowed. Black and white photography is a form of expression, color is as well (just look at Wong Kar-wai’s use of color in his films). If you take the time to sit down and watch classic or modern films made in a black white medium, then try and imagine them in color, I am ready to bet it will not work (though Ted Turner, may fleas of a thousand camels infest his toupee, tried it and was almost smacked silly by so many people). I don’t know how to explain it better, but movies often times tell the filmmaker how they want to be told. When I watched the footage for Yuki Star, that’s what happened, the story, the acting, the camera work all screamed black and white to me. There are few movies out there that were shot in color and later converted to black and white. The Coen brother’s “The Man Who Wasn’t There” was shot in color, but was presented and released in black and white (ironically, except for Japan where it was released in color). Frank Darabont’s vision for his film “The Mist” was in black and white, but the studio got antsy and so it was shot in color and released in color—however, the 2 disc special edition DVD has both the color and black and white version of the movie, I’ve watched both and the black and white version is far more frightening than the color. It’s the exact same film, not added scenes nothing—one is in color the other in black and white. The color one looked hokey and cheesy, yet the black and white version sent shivers down my spine and the ending, to me, had a much stronger impact in black and white. That being said, black and white should be respected as its own form of expression and like color it is tool used to help tell a story, express a point or convey emotions.

Long live black and white cinema.

My Son, Ashita and lots of stuff

Okay well…. It’s been a while. If any of you readers are still out there please note that I am still alive! It’s been a crazy time for me, Izumi and I expanded our family. Our first child—our son, Dante Yamaguchi Di Rocco was born on March 3rd. We are thrilled and needless to say it kind of stops all other things in life for a while.

Well, Ashita is still truckin’. Andy has been working hard cutting my 40 hours or so of raw footage into something sensible has finished one and half of the film’s six stories. We’re getting there. On another front, I have used the off time to develop a few more projects. I am working with my old friend Maya Bastian in developing a Bollywood movie—which began as fun conversation between Maya and has now taken on the seriousness of being written as a screenplay, with Maya set to direct and me to have a small part (this project is a fun one, Maya and both wanted each other to direct… in all honesty I wanted a break and I wanted to have fun which I can do as a writer and actor). As well, I was contracted by Toronto cotemporary artist tomolennon to shoot and edit a music video for New York’s Toru Dodo Jazz Trio. That was a lot of fun to shoot and I am vigilantly getting back into editing. Speaking of music videos, I still owe Dr. Draw two videos, I need to sit down with them and get the details hammered out. The Zoobombs will probably be back in Toronto over the summer and they will want to talk music video with me as well. YEESH! I also shot a short film with what I call my “All Star” cast. My mother in-law Kyoko was in Toronto to help us with the baby, and she is a professional actor in Japan, so I figured since she was here I’d put her in a movie, so I wrote a short called Yuki Star and it stars Kyoko, Leona (from Ashita) and Anthony (from The Meatball Story and Truant Café). We shot it in 6 hours… and it’s in the pile of things to edit. Speaking of Anthony, I also shot (and surprise, surprise, need to edit) a talk show he’s producing. Oh yeah, and I am also trying to finish writing a play for Kyoko that she will stage in Japan. I don’t even want to mention the comic book I was developing on the side, you know for fun—like I said I won’t mention that because its way, way, way on the back burner.

My one constant anchor in the chaos is my family. My son Dante is barely a month old now and coming home at the end of the day to hold him is the highlight of my life. Sure, for now, he mostly poos, sleeps, cries and eats, but unless you’ve experienced fatherhood, it’s hard to really describe how wonderful the feeling is of holding your child… somehow when I hold him and looking into his big brown eyes, the whole world seems to make sense. Having a child, changes your world for the better. I can assure its not easy, there a whack load of new levels to the game of life when you have a child, but you know what, they are truly unique and in my honest opinion they make everything else in life a lot better.