Pro
Rodrigo Inada
Biography
My name is Rodrigo Inada, and I am a Japanese-Brazillian film director based between Berlin and London.
When I was 12 years old, the idea was to make music and I had a school band so I started making music videos for it. Ended up that I fell in love with how I could transform ideas and feelings into pace, visuals, and stories and how an edit of a short film could look like a timeline from a song.
In 2016 I started my career as an editor for commercials, documentary, and music promos while I was working on an advertising agency as a junior art director. I had a couple of side hustles by that time, and one of them was modeling. Every time that I was on-set there was something that really grabbed my attention. So I started to shoot my own things for fashion brands. In Brazil. the fashion industry is really small for films, which kind of helped me because I had the chance to direct my first piece for Nike in 2017, obviously doing everything, from shooting to edit.
In 2018 my goal was to collaborate with more people because doing everything alone was kind of hard, so I decided to start getting DOP jobs so I could learn how to deal with crews and also learn on-set from other directors and creatives. I had a great time working as a DOP for some short commercials for Netflix, Converse, Johnny Walker, a documentary for the UN, and lots of music videos. By that time I really wanted to direct, so I paired with a commercial Film Director that was in the industry already and we made a directing duo called TORO+INADA. By that time I had the chance to learn a lot with the sets that we were doing together and also explore myself as a DOP in some jobs, as an editor in my own films and collaborate with other DOPs, editors, visual researchers, and producers.
By the end of 2019, I realized that I have learned a lot from all the sets that I have done with the duo in Brazil and I am really grateful for all the opportunities that I was given. We worked on film spots for Carrefour, Brazillian perfume brands, banks, food industry. I worked out my technique and craft of films by that time.
In 2020, I decided to move to London and start over in a solo career, aiming to work on projects that I could express more my directing language & visuals, and hopefully sell it to commercial projects. What a year to start over in a country that the currency is seven times more than the currency in Brazil.
Although the lockdown started one month after I got in London, I met some incredible people that helped me a lot. The director Florian Joahn was my quarantine buddy and we worked on finishing and publishing IARA on British Vogue, a project that we shot in Sao Paulo, Brazil in 2019 and also I was trying to figure out how to survive in 2020 as an independent immigrant creative.
My lockdown project was Reestablishing Connection, a series of live performances made through video calls between the musician/producer Sega Bodega and invited artists OKLOU, Eartheater, Lawfandah, Isamaya French, Teddy Geiger, Dorian Electra, and Lapsley.
Later on, I directed a spot for Irregular Labs powered by Gucci Equilibrium and also, I was invited to direct a spot for CIRCA 2020, a project that is taking over all the advertisements of the Piccadilly Lights to propose a public open space art gallery in the Piccadilly Circus, every day at 20:20, starting with Ai Wei Wei.
Right now I am looking forward to releasing 2 music videos I directed, commissioned by Universal L.A and Sony UK. I shot some parts remotely and some parts in London.
In terms of personal projects I am aiming to release a short documentary story I shot at the beginning of the year in Sao Paulo Brazil about a Ballroom House called House of Blydex, we shot everything in 35mm, 16mm, and Super 8.
Email: [email protected]
Instagram: instagram.com/t0s_k4