According to Newsweek, Kojima got into filmmaking when a friend brought a Super 8 camera to school, and he charged neighborhood kids 50 yen each to see his movies.
“then took up filmmaking when a friend brought a Super 8 camera to school--charging neighborhood kids 50 yen each to see his movies”
“These games had their own worlds and stories. I felt a certain authorial quality in them.”
“Ever since middle school or thereabouts, for the longest time, I had wanted to make movies.”
Newsweek reported in 2001 that Kojima, as a child, played outdoor games like thief-and-detective — the Japanese equivalent of hide-and-seek — with his friends, flattening himself against walls and peeking around corners much as Solid Snake does.
In high school, using a friend’s 8 mm camera, Kojima convinced his classmates to shoot zombie shorts. For the school cultural festival he made a zombie film and sold tickets for about 50p with the idea of raising money to buy more films to watch, but he did not make enough to buy even one. On another occasion he attempted to shoot a Robinson Crusoe–style island survival story, but the group wasted the trip bathing and ultimately turned the project into another zombie movie.
At 43, Kojima ranked his three vital cultural nutrients as movies, music, and novels. His father loved movies, so Kojima was made to absorb films from the time he began forming memories, and music came along with those viewings; by contrast, although the family home was filled with books and his parents placed children's classics on his desk to tempt him, he still did not read even by the end of elementary school.