InterBEE REVIEW2016

64/71

97Asia Directors Super SessionMr. Shinji Higuchi is a movie director who has worked on many hit and much-discussed movies (e.g. Shin Godzilla and Attack on Titan). Mr. Jack Neo is a Singaporean movie director with a distinctive career originating as a comedian who has made successive hit movies. These two directors, who are leading the world of movies as top runners in Asia, talked together about their hopes for the world of creators/movies in the future and other current issues.How to Make an Original MovieDigicon 6 is a video festival organized by TBS to discover excellent content creators from 11 Asian countries and regions. Mr. Jack Neo came to Japan to serve as a judge at this festival.Mr. Neo has produced movies for about 16 years in Singapore. He is a wonderful director who breaks box office records each time. He has released about 30 movies to date. His movies mainly depict the lives of people. In particular, he treats the element of comedy with great importance.Mr. Higuchi asked the following of Mr. Neo who has contin-ued to be so vigorously active. “There is no money in Japan for movies that don’t have clear prospects of returning funds to investors. This means we get remakes, movies from original works and movies originating from TV dramas. There is no one who will put up money for original scripts. What do you do about that?” Mr. Neo replied to this as follows. “Singapore is the same. It is high risk to make a new movie from scratch. However I take risks to make original movies.” He then revealed an episode in which sequels are made one after the other when very popular by giving the example of the movie Ah Boys to Men that he made.State of Video Not Constrained by CountriesBoth directors mentioned the future of creators after watching the works nomi-nated for the Grand Prix at DigiCon 6.Mr. Neo had the following to say. “I think that movies in Asia are too constrained by local culture. I feel that there are many movies that would be difficult to export. I want movies that everyone can understand regardless of their nationality.”Mr. Higuchi also spoke about feeling a barrier. “Everyone is becoming a generalist from a situation in which we have to make movies ourselves. This is great on one hand. However, on the other hand, I wonder whether this is a barrier. There is a tendency to employ people who can do everything. How-ever, I think it is possible to make great movies by combining people who are not like this.”In response to this, Mr. Neo revealed his Help Yourself Proj-ect that he is currently working on. He spoke about whether it would be possible to produce a 100 minute movie by dividing production between five Asian countries with each country producing 20 minutes. This production method will create a movie that plays for 100 minutes in each country at one fifth of the cost.Mr. Neo had this to say about this project. “I think horror would be good. Maybe Godzilla would work.” Mr. Higuchi responded with a smile. “It would be good to have Godzilla go to various countries but then eventually meet a common ending of being beaten.”4:00PM-4:45PM, Friday, November 18th