A staffer of the Robot production house, where he has worked as an assistant director on entries in the hit ¡°Always¡± and ¡°Odoru Daisosasen (Bayside Shakedown)¡± series, 29-year-old Yukinori Makabe has also directed award-winning short films, including ¡°The Sun and the Moon,¡± which beat out 250 others to win the Grand Prix of the Journey Award 2012 short-film contest sponsored by Louis Vuitton. His latest film, ¡°Tokyo Sky Story,¡± will be shown at the Space 634 theater at Tokyo Skytreetown to celebrate the first anniversary of Tokyo Skytree, and as a special screening of Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia. At the Robot headquarters in Ebisu, a very young-looking, but poised and articulate Makabe explained how the film came to be made.
Did you feel any pressure after you got the commission to make the film?
First, I saw an ad calling for proposals for a film with the Skytree as its subject. It came from the Short Shorts Film Festival, which was recruiting ideas from everybody, not just Robot. I made a proposal and it was selected. There wasn¡¯t a lot of time from the decision to make (the film) until the start of shooting. It was a tight schedule, so I didn¡¯t have time to feel any pressure.
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