What is an action director?
There’s a lot of different titles for people who are responsible for creating a fight scene; the action director, the stunt coordinator, the fight coordinator, etc, so it’s easy to get confused. An action director is like the overseer. They are the ones who have to think about the drama portrayed by the action, the camera angles, the editing, and the sound.
How is an action director different from a stunt coordinator?
The stunt coordinator is the person responsible for making a scene that could be potentially dangerous real, and yet safe enough to execute. The action director thinks about the image of the scene from the script, and how it pertains to the movie.
Why are there no ‘action directors’ in the west?
The position of the action director is something that was developed in Hong Kong. In HK, the director and the action director works together. During the filming of dangerous scenes, the AD would have all the say. (Although it’s quite common for A.D.s to transition into directing as well.)The position of the action director started in Japan about 10 years ago, but it still isn’t really recognized in Hollywood.
Once Hollywood took an interest in the HK style of fight scenes, they tried to only import Hong Kong’s most talented stunt men, but it didn’t necessary work. Next, they tried to import action directors but they gave them credit as other things instead of recognizing the position. Even Yuen Woo Ping,who worked on the Matrix and is one of HK’s most reknowned action directors, still isn’t credited as such in the film.
What are some of the challenges unique to directing action in Japan?
A lot of directors in Japan conceive of the action and the drama as separate things instead of seeing them as both integral parts of the film as a whole. They aren’t good at integrating the action scenes into the story.
If there’s action and drama in the same film, oftentimes the action is seen as holding less value, and the action sequences will be the first thing to get cut.
Sometimes a film will start off with multiple fight scenes, but the director will cut out the action sequences claiming that the bottom line is just that the good guy kills the bad guy. For us as action directors however, the fight scenes are as important and as potentially emotion envoking as the dramatic scenes; and how the good guy kills the bad guy is just as important to the story as why he’s doing it.
Another challenge we face is that ,Japan, having the island mentality that it does, film makers always concentrate on making films that will appeal to the Japanese market, and aren’t as outward looking as film-makers in Korea or Hong Kong. That’s one reason why there hasn’t been a major international action hit here.
If they do want to make something to sell internationally, usually they try to make something that reflects Japanese culture so they go the route of history films instead of action.
This is our challenge as action directors here- to push the envelope of creating entertaining films that can reach farther audiences.
Do you prefer working on Japanese action films or international ones?
It’s easier to work in foreign movies. They allow you to spend more time because they have a bigger budget. At times, for something that should take a month or two to film we only have 2 weeks . Also, as a function of smaller budgets, the economics of the filming are often considered more important than the creation of true entertainment value.
Have you always wanted to simply be a director? Was there ever a time that you wanted to be an action movie star yourself?
Of course. Like a lot of people in Japan’s action industry, I got into it during the ‘Kung Fu Boom’ because I wanted to be like Jackie Chan or Jet Li. I started making Indy films with my friends (See Sample) and as we produced the films, I’d spend hours and hours studying Hong Kong films to see how we could produce fight sequences with the same level of quality. In doing so, I realized that every action director has a certain taste, a flavor. The same actor with the same martial arts ability can look completely different depending on the action director they are working under. The more I learned, the more exciting the process of creation became for me, and eventually, it outweighed my desire to be in the films myself.
What do you see for yourself and U’den in the future?
I don’t want to create a huge action team per se. The future vision that I have for Uden is for it to simply be a group of ‘creators’ who can work without borders and integrate different elements of film with action.
When people fight, there is always a reason that they are fighting. The more meaning the fight has, the harder hitting the impression needs to be. In the future, I hope that we can develop and pioneer new ways of expressing this idea.
Yuji Shimomura is the head action director at U’den Flameworks, and is one of the first action directors in Japan. He has worked on over 50 films to date in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, New Zealand, and Romania. Death Trance, (which I had the honor of appearing in myself) was his directing debut, and a smash hit internationally. Recently, I also had the honor of working under him again in the short film, Yassy.
English/Japanese Interpretation by Ichiro Gutierrez
