Chapter 10 “Oscar? Oscar who?…what…you mean, THAT Oscar? That…that golden-statue-thing Oscar? Oh my g…I mean…” I do not remember exactly what I did after I hung up the phone. All I can recall is that after a while I was thinking about how it all started; what lead me to become an Oscar nominated filmmaker. Memories flashed one after another…my University days in Philadelphia, the airplane headed to the United States…and finally stopped at my high school classroom, mid-April, 2002. ******************************************************************************************************************************************* Our class was having a very boring discussion about our plans for the upcoming school festival. It was the beginning of the term and my new classmates were quiet and withdrawn. The class discussion went on and on without producing any brilliant ideas. Someone suggested making a film. I immediately agreed with that exciting idea. No one else really agreed or disagreed; they just wanted to finish this discussion and go home. I volunteered to do the editing with my computer and…that was the dinger. Everybody’s faces suddenly lit up, and the next moment, they were all gone. My friends and I wrote the screenplay. I suggested basing the story on Ise Monogatari (Azumakudari), one of my favorite Japanese classic written in the Heian era, and shifting the settings into the daily life of a high school student. It is a story of a young man who makes a journey to the east to find a place where he belongs. Every time he feels lonely, he expresses his indescribable feelings through composing a waka song. Taking the pattern of Utamonogatari (tales composed alternatively with short texts and waka poems), it intertwines the beauty of Japanese nature with poems and songs. I was fascinated by this story of an adventurous journey set within the Japanese culture, and thought it might be exciting if we appeal to the universality of the tale from a perspective of a 17 year old. We started shooting in the middle of May. Probably because I was the one who wrote the screen play and did the editing, everyone kept calling me “Director”. The funny thing was that my withdrawn classmates suddenly became so active and involved that I didn’t have to do everything by myself. “Aaaand, Action!”(I didn’t even get to say this because one classmate insisted on doing), “Whoa, isn’t my camera work lovely?” I enjoyed watching my classmates getting excited day by day, and felt something special about this atmosphere that everyone was a team working on the same project together. Simultaneously, I was doing the editing. Everyday, I took the tape back home and edited it through the night. I had secretly recorded my classmates’ faces when they were not acting, which worked perfectly in adding reality when spliced between shots. I used modern music instead of old Japanese poems, and like in the original tale, wove it carefully into the story. This editing made my classmates look like dramatic celebrities. I could not wait to show it to my friends. On
the day of the festival, my class planned a special early morning preview just
for us. I brought the tape that I had spent all night editing, put it in the
VCR, and pushed the play button. I seldom get nervous, but this morning was an
exception. Students were giggling and chatting cheerfully from the beginning. I
think they were shy at first, but then they started to realize that the film was
very entertaining. When they saw the bloopers I had inserted at the end, the
roar of laughter didn’t stop for a while. ******************************************************************************************************************************************** Their voices of laughter were still ringing inside my mind. It was this sound, the cheerful laughter of the audience, that made me wonder how exciting it might be if I can make people all over the world smile and laugh. This experience was also the first time I realized the unique aesthetic Japanese possess. After all, this project was the beginning. As I walked down the red carpet, I was thanking the boring discussion and the withdrawn classmates in that classroom that day. - 217 - |