Miyazaki: Starting Point
Apologies for the radio silence. It's been over a month since our last post, due to a combination of Sam and I both getting COVID, a busy work schedule leading into the Christmas break, as well as moving into our new office in Surry Hills. The office move has us both very excited, especially since the teaser for "Unegen: The Burning Tree" is in the works. We know the office space will be a powerful incubator for the teaser, allowing Sam and I to get back into that writing studio mindset.
During the Christmas break, I was gifted Hayao Miyazaki's "Starting Point", a series of his lectures and essays outlining his philosophy and practical approach to animation. I'm still in the early part of the book, but there have been some powerful insights so far, as well as unexpected thoughts coming from the man who's made some of the most incredible animated films of all time.
As we've mentioned before, Sam and I aren't animators or illustrators; we are writing this series as screenwriters. We believe that regardless of the medium, live-action or animation, the script is the foundation and key to the success of a film; it is our starting point. Miyazaki, as an animator, has a different approach. Many of his works will originate from an idea or scenario he has drawn. From there, he'll work with writers and other animators to develop that scenario. He firmly believes in a cooperative relationship between animator and writer, where both are constantly tweaking and giving feedback on the overall scenario; Miyazaki says that a writer must trust in their animators to develop the story as well and make important decisions in how things will appear on screen, sometimes completely overhauling what was written in the script.
Reading this at first felt counterintuitive to the approach Sam and I have. I'm not suggesting that I'm disagreeing with the great Miyazaki, I'm just not used to the idea of a team of animators making decisions that I believe writers should make, he's probably right though. Miyazaki mentions the parasitic anime industry in Japan, in which animators are given scripts and told exactly how to work under very strict deadlines. He resents this factory style workflow, as it stifles any creativity for the animators and in turn, the work suffers.
Miyazaki says in "Starting Point", "I am pointing out that other important staff members suffer from a severe lack of rights. It is a mistake to view the screenwriter and the director as being special as far as creating animated films is concerned."
This makes complete sense. Our experience so far in working with a broader team on this series has been limited to illustrators who have drawn our characters and some key scenes. The process has been fairly directive from us, we write a description of the character, provide references, and emphasise certain characteristics. Regardless of the amount of background and information we give, the result is always going to be different to what we imagined in our heads. Until the character is drawn, you really don't know how they're are going to look. As we aren't illustrators, we are very open to suggestions on how best to achieve the visual outcome we desire. If you're designing a character, you should get feedback from a character designer; it shouldn't all come from us as the writers.
When it comes to animators, of course we'd have the same approach; we aren't animators, so the animators should provide a suggestion on how to deliver a particular scene. I am struggling to understand however, Miyazaki's strong opinion that the animator should be granted even more say in the overall storyline. It is contradictory to our firm belief that everything that happens on screen is because of the writing, a process that Sam and I have spent years critiquing, tweaking, and overhauling to get right. If an animator suddenly suggested that maybe Unegen should head an entirely different direction in the storyline, I'd probably laugh and politely decline.
It's a tricky one. I really back his belief that writers, directors and animators should be working together, each giving feedback to the other departments for the betterment of the show and workplace. The directive shouldn't all come to the animator in a linear way. However at this stage, I do draw the line on how much say an animator should have in the overall writing. I understand that scripts can be changed, but in my opinion that's for the writing department to decide. If there's some major issue animating a scene that can be fixed with a writing change, then sure that's good feedback; but that's a matter of streamlining the work, not a difference in creative vision.
Maybe when we're at the stage of animating with a studio, I'll be eating my own words and listening to excellent ideas they've got for the storyline. Either way, it is very important to gain perspective on writing and animation from the master.
Miyazaki concludes that "... the writer's role in animation is not to fixate on a book that has his or her name on it, but to actively participate in the creation of the film as a member of the team. Only then does that film become something created by the entire staff."
The key insight here is that each individual scene requires exploration between writers and animators, not only from a functional perspective in terms of project time frames but also on what creative opportunities animators can come up with based on the written work provided by the screenwriters.