Just a quick note. I've been doing my annual interpreting gig out at the Japanese Film Festival. It's amazing that the year went by so quickly - seems only not long ago that I wrapped up Melbourne with them last year. Since then 3 out of the 4 people who ran the thing have been promoted or moved on and have bee replaced. The festival hasn't missed a bit but it's pretty weird not seeing Festival Director Mr. Konomi and the other two. If I add DF who left in 2014, it's the entire group who ran it for roughly the last 5years that turned over in little over 18 months. When I think about my own recent changes, it sure has been a year of changes.
The film selections look good this year and the guests from Japan are interesting as usual. Still, there didn't seem to be quite the same buzz as previous years. It's going to have to build up steam again.
Tent Poles And No-Budgets
Over in Japan, they're telling me the production slates are moving to two extremes where the big budget numbers are concentrated in the hands of fewer players, and the other independent films get smaller and smaller as budgets get tighter. The divergence has killed off the middle terrain of film making where the interesting films used to be. This mirrors developments in America where the tent pole films get bigger but the medium sized films have disappeared.
It's hard to pin a single reason upon it, but basically the tent pole pictures support a greater industrial structure that's already in place. The studios and TV stations have to budget to make the big summer hit and big Christmas hit somehow, and this means they our their resources into the tent pole pictures. In the mean time, technology has allowed people to make audiovisual content cheaply, so the assumption for investors has become, "surely you can make that for less". In both instances, content is suffering because as money gets too big, they can't take proper creative risks; and as money becomes short, there isn't going to be content worth shooting.
The Non-Competitive Casting Couch
The other interesting tidbit from this year's director is how sewn up is the casting arrangements. If the studios and casting agents and talent agencies collude to pool resources, then casting inevitably comes from the same talent agencies through the casting agent. The collision is such that auditions just don't happen for top actors. Now, top talent means they know what they're doing and you're getting a known commodity, but then the supporting cast comes from a mic smaller pool of actors when what you want is to cast a wider net.
According to the director, it means there isn't proper competition to get the best actors for the role and this has led to a certain same-y-ness in casting. It has all the bad parts of the old Hollywood style studio system without getting good results. He doesn't see things getting better because as budgets go up in the tentpole pictures fewer risks will be taken, and so in the name of taking fewer risks, they will keep casting from the diminishing, small pool of actors who are linked to the tentpoles, not through talent but by mere association.
That being said, it's still a nice problem to have from our point of view. Anyway, it was an interesting note from the frontline of film making in Japan.
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