Midnight Eye Interviews Takashi Yamazaki

Takashi Yamazaki, the director of Juvenile, Returner and the new Always: Sunset On Third Street, is interviewed over at Midnight Eye.

Known for his effects-laden films, Yamazaki has taken a new approach with the human drama of Always. This appears to be a reflection of the former VFX (visual effects) director's changing relationship to effects:

"There's certainly a power to be found in an actor's performance and I thought that if I could combine the performance with CGI, then I could create something even more powerful. So that's been kind of my guiding philosophy lately. But this is the same with anything really, if you make only one aspect like 'color' or 'effects' or something what people are supposed to see, well, that isn't enough to make a good film. Just using VFX for the sake of VFX isn't going to make the item on screen any more interesting and therefore, considering my VFX background, I have a very strong vision of what I want and so in that respect, it's a very powerful weapon. That said, you have to use this weapon with great skill otherwise the audience will wonder why it's being used."

Good stuff.