Ever wondered about the process of Hayao Miyazaki? How does it work? For fifteen years, as head of international Studio Ghibli marketing, Steve Alpert realized this was imminent. In his next adventure Sharing a House With a Man Who Will Never End: 15 Years in Studio Ghibli, explains the popular animator modes.
Below are excerpts from the book, which was held by the studio before publication to ensure accuracy:
Hayao Miyazaki's approach to film was very depressing, and that is exactly what he thought it should be. He used to only do one's best work in the face of the real chance of failure and its real consequences. Several times after the completion of one of his films, Miyazaki would suggest that the studio be shut down and the rest of the crew be fired. He thinks this will give the animators the sound of the consequences of failure and make them better painters if and when they are re-hired in the next film. No one was ever sure when he was just playing.
When Miyazaki signed on one of its films and it was officially done, he chose not to think about the film again. Done. There was nothing he could do to improve or change. He always wanted to move on and think about the next film.
To start a new project Miyazaki can let images and ideas diverge from her imagination, incorporating her ideas into paintings or watercolors. Usually he had ideas for two or three new films going at the same time. He entertained himself with the pictures he had painted and then began to immerse himself and used the side lines of the building to accompany them. When he thought he had a vision for a new film, he would chat with his producer, Toshio Suzuki, and discuss the possibilities. They will agree with the idea, tell other people on the radio about it, the people who hear about it can enthusiastically admit that, and a week later the idea would have been abandoned looking for another entirely different perspective.
Eventually the view will stick and its drawings will be completely translated. Some artists were brought in to do the art of filmmaking. It can be reached in a strategic decision and many artists will be hired to do background art, space hunting and additional concept art. One or two additional Miyazaki footage will be chosen to represent the film, and then the studio announces the film. Production will begin and about two years later the final film will appear. When the film was officially announced, the theaters would be booked, about two years in advance.
This process sounds more efficient than before. Hayao Miyazaki's reputation in Japan was so great that when the film was announced, all the stadiums in Japan already wanted to film.
The film was almost announced every December. The end of the year has been a great time for Japan to get people's attention. The film will play in theaters in mid-July for the next two years, the best time to film in Japan because all schools in Japan will be on vacation. Miyazaki's ability to present his films to the program is what made this kind of editing possible. But it never seemed that the process was easy, or clear. But that was how Miyazaki believed that the creators of animated films should work; always under the gun. This studio missed just the first time of July, and there were more worrying situations than managed by the director.
At the beginning of the production process things will start at a comfortable pace. Miyazaki painted the storyboards of his films that Ghibli called econte. The econte it was a storyboard integrated with a screen shot, a complete film menu that served as a starting point where the film could be made.
The idioms usually separate the econte five parts; A, B, C, D and E. This was not a game-like performance. They were about 20% of the expected length of the film.
Miyazaki used to have all of Part A and most of Part B in his head when the film was first announced. The images in Part A may be liked and carefully considered in some detail. In his latest films, where he knows econte for all his films were on display at the Ghibli Museum, Part A was made of delicate watercolor. The diagram in Part B has been deliberately made too fast.
When Miyazaki starts filming Part C, the film will begin production entirely. Back painters and songwriters would have already started, but now the animators were starting to draw.
Miyazaki had just finished writing the film and began meeting with photographers and reviewing cartoons. By the time Miyazaki launches Part D, he will have begun to question whether the five parts and length provided by the film were enough to matter. Often you didn't know how the film would end. He may have competing ideas on how it should end and he cannot solve it. Or I may not know at all. The animators would have played a part in Part D and the writing process would have reduced it to a blur.
A feeling of complexity that could slip into the studio. Miyazaki would stop writing and spend his time doing things that were not related to the film. He picked up the wood stove for his Vermont studio stove. Another would tell Suzuki who would pass by and try to get her to cut down the wood and go back to work.
Part E has not yet appeared and the entire studio would have been remedied in a state of extreme depression. Theaters were booked. The product was at the back of the program. No one knew how the film would end.
And of course, success. Part E appeared. After a brief period of excitement, animators and production back workers began to violate Japanese labor laws and worked long hours to finish the film. When prostitutes are ordered to go home to sleep, they pretend to go out and pick up their ports, or simply refuse. The production support staff kept the same hours with the animators, even those with no actual filmmaking activity. All of this was about the solidarity with your partners that they had to work on, as well as the seamless code of traditional Japanese peer pressure; if everyone else is working, you are, even if you have no work to do.
This was Hayao Miyazaki's production process. When the film was being filmed, he traveled all over Japan to meet with the owners of the theater and the media in the local market. When his film was finished, he was free, and the opportunity to see all of Japan was something he loved. Then he left for a month and returned to his small apartment in the mountains with his family. Soon he thought about the next film and started the whole process again.
Or, while Miyazaki has a reputation for being a hardcore employer, in the past, he would sometimes engage with open guests.
A long time in Ghibli, even after the success of Monoke Hime, anyone can just go up and stand in front of Hayao Miyazaki and watch him work. He sat in a small corner of the container area on the animator's desk that was in every way the same on any animator's desk in the room. Occasionally he would stop what he was doing, get up and shake his hands and chat with the visitor (if they were in the air).
With the added security in animation studios, this is no longer possible, but the Alpert anpdote is a reminder of how renewable and high-pressure space is like Studio Studio.
Sharing a House With a Man Who Will Never End: 15 Years in Studio Ghibli will be released June 16. It can be pre-ordered here.
