Nino More 08/2009
Ninomiya Kazunari's It
Every day, the path that Ninomiya Kazunari is creating is brought about by earnestness and the everyday small things being built on top of each other. What landscape will he see tomorrow?
#8, The Freedom of Decisions
~
The site of the shoot is the construction zone of a new building. He stands right in the center. Looking at the pillars and mountain of rubble, there's no hint as to what kind of building it will become.
"How old am I again?"
In the middle of moving on to the interview after the shoot, Nino mutters these words. When he's told he turns 26 this year, he gives a small smile: "Oh really, 26 huh?" Though there's no one quicker than he is at remembering the names of staff members and choreography, it's strange that he can't even remember his own age.
When I don't care about something I forget it. (smiles) Lately my memory has been suspect. I was confident before, though. During my Junior days, I remembered all my seniors' songs and dances and the structure of their concerts, and I could remember my scripts right off the bat, but lately I can't. That's not a matter of getting rusty though, I think it's motivation. Like with scripts, it's not that I can't remember them, it's probably that I'm doing things so as not to remember them...
He says that he came to think this when filming for the drama Ryuusei no Kizuna began.
Before that drama began I expected it to be a turning point, and it turned out I was right. Up until then I would be very precise with my preparations so that the filming would be dealt with swiftly, but I've stopped with those preparations for the most part. At the time I'd been away from dramas for over a year, only focusing on magic. I did wonder if it would be okay after so long, but when I read the script I was overcome with ideas all at once. I realized I was better than before at quickly and deeply understanding that world. When I'm doing dramas back to back, I have more of an intuition about the set, but I think I was still the best at reading into the script. (smiling) That's thanks to doing magic. Magic books are really difficult. In a drama script everyone's lines and the situations are written, but in a magic book only your lines are there. Since you don't know what your audience is going to say or how they'll act, your only course is to imagine and understand and act on your own.
I've been skilled at making paper into other forms since I was a child.
Just like reading a difficult novel, he reads deeply into magic books and then presents himself. And with that, he enjoys himself.
When I was a child I was good at making paper into three-dimensional forms. Since around the age of 13, they started giving me the opportunities to do stage plays and movies and dramas... And you know, I really think that if you do it just like the way it's written, you can't personify things well. It's the same as if you take a cutout of an actress to the hairdresser, and you just do the precise same cut, how it won't even come close to the image. Everyone has their own face and their own personality after all. (smiling) Even if you memorize the explanation of folding paper by rote, it won't help. What's important is how you interpret it, and how your image of it grows. I think that the skill I learned from practicing that since I was young has grown stronger with learning magic. I became able to see things more broadly, and more able to go deeper into the depths of things, and when I went back to dramas after that break I was really able to feel the all the information contained in the script. Like a workbook where all the questions have already been filled in. It was like, if there was all this information there, my head would overflow with images and it would be too hard to do. That's why I didn't try to remember, I thought it would be better to just let myself absorb things naturally and act that way. Even if there's explicit instruction in the script like "Become enraged here," it's still something where the timing changes depending on the atmosphere of the set and the flow, and if I act just as is decided when they say "Because of X, cry," as I'm doing it the world we're creating becomes shallower. Things become the most interesting if the actor chooses for themselves the way things will be acted, and it depends on who's doing the acting.*
He says he wants to choose what's best at that moment, being as flexible as possible, choosing freely.
I mean, don't you think that what you choose depends on that person's personality and life? Not just with a performer. Whether or not you eat breakfast this morning, or you don't. Whether you take a shower, or get in the bath. Whether you say something, or you don't. From the small things to the large, every day, that person is shaped in the middle of countless choices they make. That's why if you perform just the way the script tells you to, it's boring for the person acting and for the viewer. If you're acting while thinking, "I definitely want this to be a hit," or "I want the director to like me," and treat it like an equation, that's fine, but I think I'm a little different. That's why, like with "Door to Door," I've worked together that team with for so many years that they know me well, and they let me do things freely.
Soon the curtain will open on his first stage play in four years. What sorts of decisions will he make there? It's all the more interesting for the fact that only he can imagine.
* For example, there are lots of ways to cry--you could bawl, or cry a single tear, or be simply on the verge of crying. The choice the actor makes should depend on that actor's personality and what sits with them best, to be most natural.
Every day, the path that Ninomiya Kazunari is creating is brought about by earnestness and the everyday small things being built on top of each other. What landscape will he see tomorrow?
#8, The Freedom of Decisions
~
The site of the shoot is the construction zone of a new building. He stands right in the center. Looking at the pillars and mountain of rubble, there's no hint as to what kind of building it will become.
"How old am I again?"
In the middle of moving on to the interview after the shoot, Nino mutters these words. When he's told he turns 26 this year, he gives a small smile: "Oh really, 26 huh?" Though there's no one quicker than he is at remembering the names of staff members and choreography, it's strange that he can't even remember his own age.
When I don't care about something I forget it. (smiles) Lately my memory has been suspect. I was confident before, though. During my Junior days, I remembered all my seniors' songs and dances and the structure of their concerts, and I could remember my scripts right off the bat, but lately I can't. That's not a matter of getting rusty though, I think it's motivation. Like with scripts, it's not that I can't remember them, it's probably that I'm doing things so as not to remember them...
He says that he came to think this when filming for the drama Ryuusei no Kizuna began.
Before that drama began I expected it to be a turning point, and it turned out I was right. Up until then I would be very precise with my preparations so that the filming would be dealt with swiftly, but I've stopped with those preparations for the most part. At the time I'd been away from dramas for over a year, only focusing on magic. I did wonder if it would be okay after so long, but when I read the script I was overcome with ideas all at once. I realized I was better than before at quickly and deeply understanding that world. When I'm doing dramas back to back, I have more of an intuition about the set, but I think I was still the best at reading into the script. (smiling) That's thanks to doing magic. Magic books are really difficult. In a drama script everyone's lines and the situations are written, but in a magic book only your lines are there. Since you don't know what your audience is going to say or how they'll act, your only course is to imagine and understand and act on your own.
I've been skilled at making paper into other forms since I was a child.
Just like reading a difficult novel, he reads deeply into magic books and then presents himself. And with that, he enjoys himself.
When I was a child I was good at making paper into three-dimensional forms. Since around the age of 13, they started giving me the opportunities to do stage plays and movies and dramas... And you know, I really think that if you do it just like the way it's written, you can't personify things well. It's the same as if you take a cutout of an actress to the hairdresser, and you just do the precise same cut, how it won't even come close to the image. Everyone has their own face and their own personality after all. (smiling) Even if you memorize the explanation of folding paper by rote, it won't help. What's important is how you interpret it, and how your image of it grows. I think that the skill I learned from practicing that since I was young has grown stronger with learning magic. I became able to see things more broadly, and more able to go deeper into the depths of things, and when I went back to dramas after that break I was really able to feel the all the information contained in the script. Like a workbook where all the questions have already been filled in. It was like, if there was all this information there, my head would overflow with images and it would be too hard to do. That's why I didn't try to remember, I thought it would be better to just let myself absorb things naturally and act that way. Even if there's explicit instruction in the script like "Become enraged here," it's still something where the timing changes depending on the atmosphere of the set and the flow, and if I act just as is decided when they say "Because of X, cry," as I'm doing it the world we're creating becomes shallower. Things become the most interesting if the actor chooses for themselves the way things will be acted, and it depends on who's doing the acting.*
He says he wants to choose what's best at that moment, being as flexible as possible, choosing freely.
I mean, don't you think that what you choose depends on that person's personality and life? Not just with a performer. Whether or not you eat breakfast this morning, or you don't. Whether you take a shower, or get in the bath. Whether you say something, or you don't. From the small things to the large, every day, that person is shaped in the middle of countless choices they make. That's why if you perform just the way the script tells you to, it's boring for the person acting and for the viewer. If you're acting while thinking, "I definitely want this to be a hit," or "I want the director to like me," and treat it like an equation, that's fine, but I think I'm a little different. That's why, like with "Door to Door," I've worked together that team with for so many years that they know me well, and they let me do things freely.
Soon the curtain will open on his first stage play in four years. What sorts of decisions will he make there? It's all the more interesting for the fact that only he can imagine.
* For example, there are lots of ways to cry--you could bawl, or cry a single tear, or be simply on the verge of crying. The choice the actor makes should depend on that actor's personality and what sits with them best, to be most natural.