Shiota attended Rikkyo University, where he was in a film club with other students such as Makoto Shinozaki and Shinji Aoyama[2] and began making 8mm films in the tradition of other Rikkyo students like Kiyoshi Kurosawa.
[1][3] He also studied screenwriting under Atsushi Yamatoya, who wrote scenarios for Seijun Suzuki, and worked as the cinematographer for films by Takayoshi Yamaguchi.
[8] Dororo, based on a manga by Osamu Tezuka, was the eighth top-grossing Japanese film of 2007.
[9] In a San Francisco Bay Guardian interview, Shiota talked about his influences: "Sam Peckinpah, Robert Aldrich, and Don Siegel were directors that I'd admired as the gods of movies since I was in elementary school.
[...] In terms of films using youth as protagonists, I love the works by Vitali Kanevsky, the Russian filmmaker.