Yasuo Inoue (director)

Yasuo Inoue (born August 14, 1972) is a Japanese television and music video director. Inoue directed the Japan-only live-action Metroid Fusion commercial. He also directed the 2005 film The Neighbor No. Thirteen. Inoue gave an interview to the Metroid Official Site about directing the Metroid Fusion commercial in Japan, which was published on February 13, 2003. An unofficial English translation was published by Shinesparkers on February 26, 2021. It can be read here.
==Biography==
Inoue graduated in Japanese cinematography from the Tokyo University of the Arts in 1996. In the same year, he won the MTV ID Contest Grand Prix, and entered MTV Japan's on-air promotion the following year. He won gold and silver medals from the PromaxBDA Awards, and has been invited to Ars Electronica. Some of his clients have included Gilco, Kao Corporation, Nestlé, RIZE, Love Psychedelico, Pushim and "Sphere of Influence".
==Metroid==
Inoue gave an interview to the Metroid Official Site about directing the Metroid Fusion commercial in Japan, which was published on February 13, 2003. The commercial itself was on the website at one point, but has since been removed.
Inoue had Game & Watches as his first gaming systems, specifically Ball, Fire and Manhole. During middle school, he acquired a Famicom Disk System. Because children with lots of Famicom cartridges were popular, he would often save his lunch and bus money to buy more of them. This carried over into adulthood, where he bought just about everything with a Nintendo brand on it.
Inoue's first impression of the original Metroid was as a "luxury" game, since to play it one would have to buy a Famicom, then a Disk System, and then Metroid. He could only play it at his friend's house, where he was impressed by the higher quality of the game provided by the Disk System. Inoue appreciated Nintendo releasing Fusion as a traditional sidescrolling game despite the influx of three-dimensional, polygonal games. Samus Aran's ease of maneuverability in the game, continued from the previous two games, made an impression on him. He bought three copies since it was being released at the same time as the Game Boy Advance SP.
For the commercial, Inoue insisted on it being live-action, because it was harder to achieve the level of realism with CGI. However, the X Parasites and Samus's face in the commercial are rendered with CGI. Models of Samus's Fusion Suit and her original Varia Suit were sculpted and filmed from different angles to reference her operation at the beginning of the game. This meant that no actress was needed to play her. Inoue felt that recollections of the in-game scene would differ from player to player, and tried to ensure that extra details shown from each angle of the camera would come out in a player's imagination.
At the time of the interview, he was independently directing a video group for MTV, and focused on directing music videos and television commercials.
==Gallery==
inoue phot.jpg|Interview images.
Yasuo Inoue Photo04.gif
intercopy04.gif|Index page banner.
G&W Img01.jpg|"Game & Watch Ball, Fire and Manhole"
Famicom Metroid Img02.jpg|"Famicom, Disk System, and Metroid".
Fusion Img03.jpg|"Metroid Fusion"
Img04.jpg|Construction of the Fusion and SA-X suits used for the commercial: "Fusion Suit Samus, front side. Samus viewed from the side. Filming in an 'angle of approach'."
==External links==
*Original interview
*Inoue on IMDb
*Inoue on Letterboxd
*Inoue on Mubi
==References==
Category:Directors
Category:Ads