Documentary "10 Years With Hayao Miyazaki"

Studio Ghibli has always been one of my biggest inspirations, as a child I was able to re-watch the movies times and times again. There was something not only about the beautiful intricateness of the storylines but also the breath-taking animation. Obviously, as a child I never looked at the name of directors, so it was only in my late teenage years that I learned the name of Hayao Miyazaki. My love for the movies, evidently, makes me a huge fan of him. So, when I learned there was a documentary that filmed his creative process through the making of the movie, I rushed to watch it. Not only because I admire him and his work, but also because I feel like it would be very educative to watch how someone who is so good at his craft work.

It did not come as a surprise to learn that, one of the things the famous director does most, is observe. One thing he did to try to find inspiration, which interested me a lot, was film his way from home to work, by setting up a camera and putting it in his car. He said, there is a lot that you miss on day-to-day life simply because you are focused on your goals and then he excitedly went to his office to check what it was that he misses every day.

His process was also incredibly fascinating, he is not someone who has a script, or know where the story is going to go. He simply draws a storyboard picture by picture, starting by the very beginning and going to the end. With a lot of struggles midway because he cannot find a good way to continue the story or the images are simply not coming to his head. The movie he was making in this particular documentary was Ponyo and, later, The Wind Rises. Both movies I have watched and loved for that matter.

One quote from the documentary that most stood out to me was when Miyazaki said "easy-to-understand movies are boring. Logical storylines sacrifice creativity. I am all about breaking conventions. Kids get it. They do not operate on logic."

Another aspect is so how hands on he is, throughout the documentary, you notice how he verifies absolutely every single drawing that is done for the movie himself. Studio Ghibli still only uses traditional animation methods, everything is drawn up by hand. Including all the backgrounds. But, Miyazaki is the one that double, and triple checks each animated cel and if there is something he does not like about it, he will erase it and draw it how he thinks it should look. Whether it was the characters expression that was wrong, whether their gestures should have portrayed more emotion, etc.

It was mesmerising, to say the least, to watch someone with this much expertise in an area struggle as much as he did. Constantly claiming filmmaking is suffering, and not knowing where to go next. Interesting how, no matter how much experience, art blocks are a thing that every single artist experience and needs to find a way to go through.

The following are screenshots from the documentary that I found to be funny: