Amane Sato attended Ritsumeikan University. Here, he made his first short “The Pervert” (2011), which won the Grand Prix and the Audience Award at the Student Splatter Film Festival. After directing TV episode “Don't Look Back” (2016), his first feature film “Kaidan Shin Mimibukuro G-Men: Fukkatsu Hen” was released in 2017. His 2019 film “Shiorinoinmu” won the Grand Prix at the Hidden Treasures of Horror festival.
On the occasion of “Ayako Tachibana Wants to Go Viral” screening at International Film Festival Rotterdam, we speak with him about shooting a pink film in the #MeToo era, over exposure on social media, adding horror elements in a pink film, shooting the erotic scenes, and many other topics
How come you ended up shooting a pinku film? How was your cooperation with OP Eiga?
There was a New Director Grand Prix and I applied, and I won that prize. The reason why I applied was because the image I had of pink films was that if the conditions the medium demands, mostly revolving around the number of sex scenes and the small budget, are met, you can have a lot of creative freedom. This sounded really fun to me; I have always been shooting horror films with strict budgets, but pink films seemed like a whole different deal.
After I won, OP Eiga asked me for a simple plot written freely, and when I send it to them, they really liked it. The plot was based on my background as a horror film director because I thought it would be interesting to put a horror element within the pink genre. They immediately accepted the plot and they started giving me advice on script-writing, production and even PR, and in general, they were really supportive.
Do you feel that pink films can still be relevant at this age, since the time that they were dominant has long since passed, and we are now experiencing the #MeToo era?
I also think it is a significant issue. Especially when I look at the older films like the Nikkatsu Roman Porno ones, women are depicted rather differently than they are now. Of course, they try to capture the beauty of women, but almost exclusively from the male perspective, and there were many opinions insisting that this depiction has very little to do with reality and a lot of women would disagree with how they were portrayed in those films. However, we have seen the rise of new pink directors like Hideo Jojo and Shinji Imaoka, who, among others, portray women in a different way. Having said that, I also had my doubts about using a woman in a film as a sexual object; therefore, I tried to depict more of their emotions and their inner side. Since pinku is a medium which sells pornographic content,(I do not mean it as a prejudice), but while doing so, especially in Japan, which is a very conservative country, I am aware that the public opinion is not always positive about pink films, which are considered shady. I think that if we changed that a little, if we showed that women are depicted differently than in the older films, then pink films in Japan could have a different standing.
The film presents the issues with over-exposure in social media. What is your opinion on the subject?
I think it is some kind of modern disease. I am also very active on SNS, Youtube and TikTok (I have 400,000 followers). I upload short horror movies and I get a lot of comments. When I watch these comments and reactions, I witness a lot of discrepancy. They make fun of something for example and this seems very off to me, because I meant it in a different way or maybe the joke they come up with is not about the content I uploaded.
This landscape of social media is very different from what it was 20 years ago. People now have the desire to be approved on the internet, they desire to be recognized. This desire is very different from everyday life, where it is expressed by having a laugh with someone or being in a relationship. With the rise of social media, you get reactions right away, for example if you post something from your personal life on the internet. You may want more of that approval from others and that will lead you placing even bigger parts of your personal life on the web. This is affecting a lot of people's lives. For example, there are couples, YouTubers whose private life is affected or even damaged by the level of exposure. It is a modern issue, sometimes it can be beautiful, sometimes it can be like a disease.
Do you think that this need for exposure is connected with sex in a way?
(laughter) If you mean outside my film, then no, I do not feel that.
Can you give us some details about the casting process? How was your cooperation with Kohei Higashiyama and Aika Yamagishi?
Regarding Kohei Higashiyama, my direction was that the character should be very superficial, cold and selfish, someone of whom you would think, “Just Die Already!'. He is a YouTuber and almost like a professional when shooting the videos he uploads, and he is also a successful salesman. However, I wanted to emphasize that in his private life, he is truly despicable, and that was my very explicit direction to Higashiyama. Japanese horror films tend to have the theme or revenge and karma as their main concept and in a way, Keisuke is the archetype of having karma turned against you, and that was my focus on this character.
Regarding Aika Yamagishi, she is an AV actress and I wanted the character to be very confident and shiny (ikejo is the Japanese term) but that is her on the surface. On the inside, she has this conflict, this very dark thing going on because she thinks her shiny self is artificial and she has no place to express how she feels from the inside. I discussed a lot with her about this antithesis between her inner and outer self, which I wanted to be very present on the screen. This is just my opinion, but I was imagining that, as an AV actress who is frequently shooting naked, maybe she has her own conflict as a person, but I wanted this conflict to be present on this character.
Can you give us some details on how you shoot the erotic scenes? How many people are present during the shooting? Do you plan them intently before, or you let the actors improvise? And was there some kind of uncomfortability during the shooting.
Regarding the uncomfortabilty you mentioned, the actresses are very active in the AV industry, so shooting naked is something they are very used to, although I did have a discussion with them about those scenes. During the shooting, we had ten or a few more people around, so it is was not like we surrounded them with a whole crowd; we asked from the people who were not directly involved with the shooting to wait for a few minutes outside.
Regarding shooting those scenes, I would have instructions for about 50% of them and the other half is mostly improvised. However, the scene with Keisuke and the quiet girl from his company [Yuria Yoshine] Â was really fun because I only gave them general directions; for Higashiyama, to say almost absurd things in his dirty talk, almost attacking her and she was to be very passive, passively resisting but accepting him in the end. They improvised the rest of the scene by themselves and I would just say “cut” at some point. It was very fun due to their imagination. Â
How was your collaboration with DP Atsushi Hashimoto? What was your purpose in the visual aspect of the film? Why did you decide to have many POV shots?
Regarding the reason for using POV, firstly, I think it is fun as a perspective, the effect that it has on screen, and if you look at older films, there not many Japanese pink titles that use POV. And since I was the new director on the block, I thought that, as a challenge, I wanted to use it a lot. Even when they were used, they were from the man's perspective, and the woman would be the “subject”. I thought it would be fun to turn it around, and have the POV shots from the female perspective and I actually got good reactions from the audience about this approach.
Furthermore, I wanted to depict things that are not seeable to the eye, and with POV, you cannot realize the feelings of the person whose perspective the scene is presented from, since you cannot see the facial expressions of that person. Therefore, it is very rare to have POV of the protagonist, because you want his feelings and essentially face, Â to be shown on screen. The reason I had the protagonist in POV, however, is because I think you don't really know someone just by looking on their face. This concept is also connected to the aforementioned, about social media. You see these people so much, everyday on occasion, and you think you know them, but, in reality, you don't know them. I also know that from TikTok, because occasionally I would be judged for emotions people who watched my videos perceived I had, but I actually did not.
Regarding my collaboration with Hashimoto, we exchanged many ideas. For example, initially we had an idea to shoot the POV sex scenes with a GoPro. GoPro however, does not have a wide lens, it is like using pan shots for everything, and that is not really what I wanted. So we had the idea of putting a wide lens camera on a helmet. That turned out to be too heavy (laughter) for the actors, they would just hurt whenever they would turn their necks, and in general, it was unusable, so we quickly dropped that idea. What we agreed in the end was having the camera in front of the man, very old style shooting. In general, I felt it was a very good collaboration.
Has the film been screened in Japan?
Last year, when the pandemic hit Japan as well, it was a very difficult time but we managed to have a screening in a mini theater, with a very big screen though, and we were very lucky about that. It was around the time Japan loosened its emergency lockdown measures. It was a strange situation, because even the bigger art house cinemas were not fully closed during the pandemic, so were able to find mostly regional theaters; around five different ones
Are you working on any new projects? Are you planning on continuing working on pink films?
I cannot fully disclose many details about my new project, I can only say it is not going to be a pink film but a romantic movie with some erotic flavor. The director is going to be a very famous pink film director..
Regarding continuing working in pink films, just to be realistic with the budget issues and how much a pink film can yield, it would be very difficult for me to keep working in the field, especially with the corona still at large. Maybe when the pandemic is over, and since I love pink films, I would really want to work again in the genre.
