Japanese Director Known For Single Shots Releases Zoom Film

Uedas style incorporates slapstick comedy and focuses on visual, rather than explanatory verbal storytelling, an approach relatively rare in contemporary Japanese film.

I grew up on Hollywood films. Ive watched more Americans movies than Japanese movies. The works I watched were all made on a global standard, not something just understood in Japan. That helped me develop the knack for pursuing works enjoyed by everyone in the world, works that deal with universal themes and primordial desires, he said.

Ueda, wearing a Citizen Kane T-shirt for the interview, said his influences include works by Billy Wilder, Quentin Tarantino, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Wes Anderson and Sidney Lumet.

In addition to directing, Ueda also writes the screenplays for his films and edits them himself. He frequently works on a shoestring budget.

His earlier film One Cut of the Dead had a budget of 3 million yen ($28,000) but has won awards in the U.S., Europe and Japan. The Japanese title that film can be translated as Keep that camera rolling, which is exactly what Ueda did for 37 minutes, or nearly half of the film.

Cannes award-winner Koji Fukada praised the earlier work as a film that passes by in a flash of mesmerized joy over pieces of a puzzle that fit utterly perfectly. Variety said the film captures all the craziness and exhilaration of movie-making on a minuscule budget.

Ueda said hes pretty sure a long uncut sequence will be a staple of his filmmaking.

All the techniques, the filming, lighting, recording must continue without stopping. The actors must keep acting without stopping. Whats being demanded is enormous. But that difficulty is what makes it fantastic. In a sense, everyone has to come together, to get that one shot, he said.

All the wonders, meaning and legacy of filmmaking are packed in that single take.

Ueda has been making films since he was a teen, running around with a hand-held video camera. He said he’s found the key to success is to just keep making films, lots of them.

Its only after 200 or 300 bad films you will have that one great film, he said.

I believe that what counts, beyond anything else, is that you just keep making films. Just keep making mistakes.

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Yuri Kageyama is on Twitter https://twitter.com/yurikageyama