Humanistic detail in animation is all I ever want, and Miyazaki has a fantastic eye for it. Though my personal favorite goes to another Japanese director: Yoshiyuki Tomino, the father of Gundam.
Miyazaki and Ghibli create really appealing human motion, but no one captures the weird little idiosyncrasies of people like Tomino. A friend made an incredible duo of video essays that explain what is so deeply appealing about his style of directing, highly highly recommended: https://youtu.be/6XG-Haqd0iU?si=EyYlnfBv96jhhoSQ
Thank you! And Tomino is someone whose work is definitely on our radar (he's a legend), but we aren't super well-versed in his story yet. Appreciate the link to the videos!
Like the piece says, it's not really about going slower, but rather about going quiet. There's always something interesting going on, but it's quiet rather than loud.
There's a lot of peace and joy to be found when going quieter in real life. Like when you take a deep breath and close your eyes for a second, and then you can hear the birds singing and see the wind through the leaves better and take all of it in. It's like you are slowing down your radio frequency and get to capture a different level of information about the world, one that was too quiet to notice before you turned down the volume.
I've seen films going slow rather than going quiet, and they do get boring a bit. Even if I ultimately loved them. Last year I saw Angel's Egg in theater in Annecy, and I wished I did so with a cup of coffee in hand. I think the film was wonderful on many aspects, but despite gorgeous backgrounds, many scenes were also very *empty*. There were moment with simply nothing happening, and I would call these slow scenes rather than quiet scenes. I don't think I can remember a Miyazaki film when truly nothing is happening: it's not slow, it's quiet.
Really appreciate the thoughtful comment! You make a lot of great points here. There's definitely a difference between what Miyazaki does and, for example, Oshii's work. Oshii really goes out of his way to try the viewer's patience in some of his films, and there are parts of Angel's Egg we find pretty hard to watch. In the case of Ghost in the Shell 2, he once said that he wanted to "make the long, drawn-out shots feel as though they’d last forever" to create "anxiety ... through viewers suffering slowly." A very different effect than, say, what was going on in Heidi.
Well then Oshii succeeded haha. Still I went out of Angel's Egg feeling refreshed, just because it was so different than anything I've seen lately. And the film's legacy on some video games I played was clear (Hollow Knight, Dark Souls...).
More thoughts on the topic: if some films can be slow and boring, some films can also be loud and boring. Marvel films can feel boring despite showing world-ending scale events on the screen and going with shorter and shorter shots. Meanwhile some Japanese manga about rakugo (a form of theater) has people hooked.
There's more to this than going fast or going slow, I think people thinking this way are mistaken. In his quote, Takahata says that they were asked to make rapid noises to hold the kids' attention. Basically using the fact that the brain evolved to pay attention to danger (things going fast) to keep your eyes on the screen. But there is a difference between holding your attention and holding your interest.
I believe Takahata and Miyazaki thought there was a way to hold the kids' interest, and that you could do it in a quiet way too. They both explored that theory very successfully since then.
I have to applaud Ukraine for maintaining and enforcing its commitment to the arts even in the middle of war (which is perhaps when it’s needed the most). It is so refreshing to see a politician recognize the importance and power of art not just from a morale perspective but also from a business and export standpoint.
Completely agreed! We're serious believers in state funding for the arts, and that news from Ukraine was a highlight of the past week. Apparently, more than 1,100 project were submitted, and the results are coming out in a few days. It'll be interesting to see what made the cut in the animation sphere.
Great coverage of this topic! It's certainly one I think about a lot - I think everyone wants to see these kind of moments in their film, but it takes a lot of guts to actually do it, and a lot of skill to actually do it well. Those quotes about WHY they go slow are so insightful. I do feel like we've been getting a lot more gentle, slow shows here in the States but they are also some of my least favorite because they feel more self-indulgent in their pacing, rather than honest like Miyazaki & Takahata's approach.
Thank you! And, for sure, there's been a desire to emulate Takahata/Miyazaki pacing for a lot of years now, even if it doesn't always end up on screen (or doesn't turn out as well). We have a real problem with self-indulgent pacing ourselves and tend to check out quickly when a film lapses into it. Sometimes, there seems to be a misunderstanding about what exactly Takahata and Miyazaki were doing. They were still trying to keep people locked into the films/shows -- just without the shortcuts (nonstop loudness and flash) that others often took.
It never occurred to me the influence Miyazaki had on pacing in animation. Add that to his influence on aesthetics, making his villains human, and solving conflict through diplomacy.
In our studies for the newsletter, we've come to the realization that Miyazaki's influence has reached pretty much everything there is to reach in animation. Just the impact of his use of "space" and physical/temporal continuity (https://animationobsessive.substack.com/p/miyazaki-disney-and-eisenstein-514) is pretty unbelievable. Pacing is another big one. Honestly, in animation, no filmmaker besides Walt Disney himself has had an influence as wide. Miyazaki has expressed a hope that younger generations will break away from him and his own reference points, but it hasn't really happened yet!
It was a really encouraging headline to come across, especially right now. We'd love to see money go to Anastasiia Falileieva, for one, whose film I Died in Irpin was Oscar-shortlisted this year.
Okay so going out on a limb out here but, I write a short story for a competition called "When the wind blows" about a girl named Sai who loves to ask questions and learns that sometimes, you just don't get the answer. (Very brief summary) Its about faith, family, butterflies, and growing up.
I really love this story and even though it never placed, I suddenly had the idea to see it become a animated short film.
About 5000 words, and even though I am also an artist, I've never stepped into animation before. Do you know any Christian animators or other animators that would be interested in a project like that?
So glad you enjoyed! Thanks very much. We're not in touch with many animators on the hunt for commissions right now, but there are plenty of folks seeking work out there. You might want to ask around on someplace like r/animation -- anywhere that allows want ads for animators. Wishing you lots of luck!
Thoroughly enjoyed this article, thank you! It's wild that for at least 60 years, even internationally, children's attention has been bemoaned and maligned as hopelessly short. As these masters demonstrated, pacing and attention are very different spheres of influence, and children are fully capable of enjoying the "lived process" of familiar sights and experiences. There's obviously ample room for rambunctious and zippy animation, but audiences of any age deserve the respect of appreciating subtle, unmomentous moments guided by amazing artists.
Really glad you liked the piece! And yeah, that tendency to make children's shows fast and loud was very much not just an American thing. It didn't die out with the success of Heidi, either -- although that series did have a tremendous impact on sections of the industry, and many of the World Masterpiece Theater shows were made in a similar style.
It's not often you see people give SOME credit to Jeffrey Katzenberg, especially when the Disney corporation themselves are perfectly fine lampooning his past "sins" (see documentary on a A Goofy Movie "Not Just a Goof", streaming on Disney Plus). One of the underrated aspects to running an animation studio on any level is that sometimes you're going to have to be person to shoot down creative endeavors that you believe won't pan out well financially, and Jeffrey was the guy who was willing to do that for more than a decade. Even having spurs of inspiration you have can turn up flat on their face in the position you're in, like Jeffrey's desire to make more adult-targeted animation resulting in the infamous "Black Friday" version of Toy Story.
The topic of "slow scenes" and "ma" is something I feel we have all discussed (great write-up by the way!), so I won't spend too much time on my thoughts outside of 2 points.
The first is that there is a noticeable trend in most mainstream animated movies and movies in general now where a scene that was originally quiet is filled with dialogue and over-explaining what is happening. The YT channel Accented Cinema made a good video on this last year, talking about how this is a conscious choice made to prep the films for streaming and how it connects to the death of movie theaters in North America (15 1/2 minutes):
The 2nd is that I'm reminded of the shows of my youth that take a quieter approach to childrens' TV, such as Oswald or Charlie & Lola. Animation Obsessive has covered Hey Arnold! and Samurai Jack before, and I think those are neat TV examples of where there was an incentive to create an atmosphere and or world for kids to grab onto. There's a very vocal group of people online that lament the absence of wacky, off-the-wall shows in TV animation to the point where they hold envy towards slice-of-life shows like Hey Arnold! or atmosphere "anime-like" shows like Samurai Jack, but my take is that a wacky face or constant "sakuga" wouldn't work for what these shows are aiming for. It certainly wouldn't mesh well with Jim Lang's fantastic score, or the idea of taking in the painted backgrounds of Samurai Jack. It all comes down to purpose.
P.S. I think it's worth noting how Takahata's, Miyazaki's and Studio Ghibli's talents at making atmospheric moments in their films have taken a whole new life of their own regarding peoples' perception of them. Their mastery at this quality has lead people to mistakenly assume or categorize their films as "cozy" or "conflict-free", despite the subject matter and plots of these films, possibly because the look of these films are so good and unlike what they've seen before (It's certainly a take the AI machine has been more thna happy to exploit). It's one example of pop culture (or in this case, an algorithm) feeding folks a narrative about a work of art, to the point that it sinks so deep into our brains that we stop being able to process the information that is actually in front of us.
My personal news bit is the new Dragon Striker show by La Chouette Compagnie is streaming on Disney Plus now.
Thanks for the kind words! And Katzenberg is someone many, many people dislike inside and outside Hollywood. From what we've read, he could be pretty obnoxious and difficult to deal with back in the day. At the same time, the reality is that he made hits and was willing to take certain risks. He wasn't the sole factor in the Disney renaissance, but it started on his watch, and that wasn't a coincidence. Many of the folks who argue that Katzenberg was simply poison to Disney love movies that have Katzenberg's fingerprints all over them. So, it's a complicated thing (especially in light of Disney's current struggles), and we tried to acknowledge that.
Thanks as well for the Accented Cinema link -- lots of good insights in there. We'd already read the n+1 article cited in the video, and many of its claims do seem to be reflected in the way these movies are constructed.
About Ghibli's work being "cozy": we completely agree that this is a mistake. Miyazaki and Takahata battled similar perceptions in Japan during the '90s -- the word "healing" often got used for Ghibli's work. They resented those labels and went out of their way to subvert them, but Ghibli's films are still co-opted as sort of comfortable, indulgent escapism to this day. It's very strange, and, like you wrote, algorithms have definitely played a role in it. We really aren't crazy about Ghibli-inspired art that leans into the cozy/conflict-free/healing/escapist stereotypes around the studio, and GenAI is being used to create a ton of it.
Great read!
Humanistic detail in animation is all I ever want, and Miyazaki has a fantastic eye for it. Though my personal favorite goes to another Japanese director: Yoshiyuki Tomino, the father of Gundam.
Miyazaki and Ghibli create really appealing human motion, but no one captures the weird little idiosyncrasies of people like Tomino. A friend made an incredible duo of video essays that explain what is so deeply appealing about his style of directing, highly highly recommended: https://youtu.be/6XG-Haqd0iU?si=EyYlnfBv96jhhoSQ
Thank you! And Tomino is someone whose work is definitely on our radar (he's a legend), but we aren't super well-versed in his story yet. Appreciate the link to the videos!
Like the piece says, it's not really about going slower, but rather about going quiet. There's always something interesting going on, but it's quiet rather than loud.
There's a lot of peace and joy to be found when going quieter in real life. Like when you take a deep breath and close your eyes for a second, and then you can hear the birds singing and see the wind through the leaves better and take all of it in. It's like you are slowing down your radio frequency and get to capture a different level of information about the world, one that was too quiet to notice before you turned down the volume.
I've seen films going slow rather than going quiet, and they do get boring a bit. Even if I ultimately loved them. Last year I saw Angel's Egg in theater in Annecy, and I wished I did so with a cup of coffee in hand. I think the film was wonderful on many aspects, but despite gorgeous backgrounds, many scenes were also very *empty*. There were moment with simply nothing happening, and I would call these slow scenes rather than quiet scenes. I don't think I can remember a Miyazaki film when truly nothing is happening: it's not slow, it's quiet.
Really appreciate the thoughtful comment! You make a lot of great points here. There's definitely a difference between what Miyazaki does and, for example, Oshii's work. Oshii really goes out of his way to try the viewer's patience in some of his films, and there are parts of Angel's Egg we find pretty hard to watch. In the case of Ghost in the Shell 2, he once said that he wanted to "make the long, drawn-out shots feel as though they’d last forever" to create "anxiety ... through viewers suffering slowly." A very different effect than, say, what was going on in Heidi.
Well then Oshii succeeded haha. Still I went out of Angel's Egg feeling refreshed, just because it was so different than anything I've seen lately. And the film's legacy on some video games I played was clear (Hollow Knight, Dark Souls...).
More thoughts on the topic: if some films can be slow and boring, some films can also be loud and boring. Marvel films can feel boring despite showing world-ending scale events on the screen and going with shorter and shorter shots. Meanwhile some Japanese manga about rakugo (a form of theater) has people hooked.
There's more to this than going fast or going slow, I think people thinking this way are mistaken. In his quote, Takahata says that they were asked to make rapid noises to hold the kids' attention. Basically using the fact that the brain evolved to pay attention to danger (things going fast) to keep your eyes on the screen. But there is a difference between holding your attention and holding your interest.
I believe Takahata and Miyazaki thought there was a way to hold the kids' interest, and that you could do it in a quiet way too. They both explored that theory very successfully since then.
I have to applaud Ukraine for maintaining and enforcing its commitment to the arts even in the middle of war (which is perhaps when it’s needed the most). It is so refreshing to see a politician recognize the importance and power of art not just from a morale perspective but also from a business and export standpoint.
Completely agreed! We're serious believers in state funding for the arts, and that news from Ukraine was a highlight of the past week. Apparently, more than 1,100 project were submitted, and the results are coming out in a few days. It'll be interesting to see what made the cut in the animation sphere.
Great newsletter. I should mention that Bird Box did a BBC short which is really very funny. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZHR29X75Hk
Thank you, Jason, as always! And appreciate the link -- there are some very fun moments in this one.
Great coverage of this topic! It's certainly one I think about a lot - I think everyone wants to see these kind of moments in their film, but it takes a lot of guts to actually do it, and a lot of skill to actually do it well. Those quotes about WHY they go slow are so insightful. I do feel like we've been getting a lot more gentle, slow shows here in the States but they are also some of my least favorite because they feel more self-indulgent in their pacing, rather than honest like Miyazaki & Takahata's approach.
Thank you! And, for sure, there's been a desire to emulate Takahata/Miyazaki pacing for a lot of years now, even if it doesn't always end up on screen (or doesn't turn out as well). We have a real problem with self-indulgent pacing ourselves and tend to check out quickly when a film lapses into it. Sometimes, there seems to be a misunderstanding about what exactly Takahata and Miyazaki were doing. They were still trying to keep people locked into the films/shows -- just without the shortcuts (nonstop loudness and flash) that others often took.
As a new filmmaker who enjoys making films about everyday life, this was such a relief to read! Thank you!
Ah, so happy it was encouraging! There are a ton of valid ways to approach filmmaking/pacing out there -- glad we could highlight this one.
It never occurred to me the influence Miyazaki had on pacing in animation. Add that to his influence on aesthetics, making his villains human, and solving conflict through diplomacy.
In our studies for the newsletter, we've come to the realization that Miyazaki's influence has reached pretty much everything there is to reach in animation. Just the impact of his use of "space" and physical/temporal continuity (https://animationobsessive.substack.com/p/miyazaki-disney-and-eisenstein-514) is pretty unbelievable. Pacing is another big one. Honestly, in animation, no filmmaker besides Walt Disney himself has had an influence as wide. Miyazaki has expressed a hope that younger generations will break away from him and his own reference points, but it hasn't really happened yet!
Thank you for the link. I am so pleased to be greeted by a still from Castle of Cagliostro... It is actually my favourite of his.
With my browser's translator, I can read these always interesting animation reviews. It's what I'm most excited to read on this social network!
I studied animation for several years, I know all the topics you post, but I always learn about unexpected aspects.
Yes, Jules, the Odyssey does have something of a journey to the past about it.
Thank you so much! This is awesome to hear.
Looking forward to seeing what Ukrainian artists make. What a fantastic investment. I wish there were more of that around the world.
It was a really encouraging headline to come across, especially right now. We'd love to see money go to Anastasiia Falileieva, for one, whose film I Died in Irpin was Oscar-shortlisted this year.
Hey good day! Had an awesome time reading!
Okay so going out on a limb out here but, I write a short story for a competition called "When the wind blows" about a girl named Sai who loves to ask questions and learns that sometimes, you just don't get the answer. (Very brief summary) Its about faith, family, butterflies, and growing up.
I really love this story and even though it never placed, I suddenly had the idea to see it become a animated short film.
About 5000 words, and even though I am also an artist, I've never stepped into animation before. Do you know any Christian animators or other animators that would be interested in a project like that?
Have a blessed wonderful day!
- Jewelle
So glad you enjoyed! Thanks very much. We're not in touch with many animators on the hunt for commissions right now, but there are plenty of folks seeking work out there. You might want to ask around on someplace like r/animation -- anywhere that allows want ads for animators. Wishing you lots of luck!
Thanks for replying!
Correction: Firefies
Thoroughly enjoyed this article, thank you! It's wild that for at least 60 years, even internationally, children's attention has been bemoaned and maligned as hopelessly short. As these masters demonstrated, pacing and attention are very different spheres of influence, and children are fully capable of enjoying the "lived process" of familiar sights and experiences. There's obviously ample room for rambunctious and zippy animation, but audiences of any age deserve the respect of appreciating subtle, unmomentous moments guided by amazing artists.
Really glad you liked the piece! And yeah, that tendency to make children's shows fast and loud was very much not just an American thing. It didn't die out with the success of Heidi, either -- although that series did have a tremendous impact on sections of the industry, and many of the World Masterpiece Theater shows were made in a similar style.
It's not often you see people give SOME credit to Jeffrey Katzenberg, especially when the Disney corporation themselves are perfectly fine lampooning his past "sins" (see documentary on a A Goofy Movie "Not Just a Goof", streaming on Disney Plus). One of the underrated aspects to running an animation studio on any level is that sometimes you're going to have to be person to shoot down creative endeavors that you believe won't pan out well financially, and Jeffrey was the guy who was willing to do that for more than a decade. Even having spurs of inspiration you have can turn up flat on their face in the position you're in, like Jeffrey's desire to make more adult-targeted animation resulting in the infamous "Black Friday" version of Toy Story.
The topic of "slow scenes" and "ma" is something I feel we have all discussed (great write-up by the way!), so I won't spend too much time on my thoughts outside of 2 points.
The first is that there is a noticeable trend in most mainstream animated movies and movies in general now where a scene that was originally quiet is filled with dialogue and over-explaining what is happening. The YT channel Accented Cinema made a good video on this last year, talking about how this is a conscious choice made to prep the films for streaming and how it connects to the death of movie theaters in North America (15 1/2 minutes):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEAQm8Op3Hw
The 2nd is that I'm reminded of the shows of my youth that take a quieter approach to childrens' TV, such as Oswald or Charlie & Lola. Animation Obsessive has covered Hey Arnold! and Samurai Jack before, and I think those are neat TV examples of where there was an incentive to create an atmosphere and or world for kids to grab onto. There's a very vocal group of people online that lament the absence of wacky, off-the-wall shows in TV animation to the point where they hold envy towards slice-of-life shows like Hey Arnold! or atmosphere "anime-like" shows like Samurai Jack, but my take is that a wacky face or constant "sakuga" wouldn't work for what these shows are aiming for. It certainly wouldn't mesh well with Jim Lang's fantastic score, or the idea of taking in the painted backgrounds of Samurai Jack. It all comes down to purpose.
P.S. I think it's worth noting how Takahata's, Miyazaki's and Studio Ghibli's talents at making atmospheric moments in their films have taken a whole new life of their own regarding peoples' perception of them. Their mastery at this quality has lead people to mistakenly assume or categorize their films as "cozy" or "conflict-free", despite the subject matter and plots of these films, possibly because the look of these films are so good and unlike what they've seen before (It's certainly a take the AI machine has been more thna happy to exploit). It's one example of pop culture (or in this case, an algorithm) feeding folks a narrative about a work of art, to the point that it sinks so deep into our brains that we stop being able to process the information that is actually in front of us.
My personal news bit is the new Dragon Striker show by La Chouette Compagnie is streaming on Disney Plus now.
Thanks for the kind words! And Katzenberg is someone many, many people dislike inside and outside Hollywood. From what we've read, he could be pretty obnoxious and difficult to deal with back in the day. At the same time, the reality is that he made hits and was willing to take certain risks. He wasn't the sole factor in the Disney renaissance, but it started on his watch, and that wasn't a coincidence. Many of the folks who argue that Katzenberg was simply poison to Disney love movies that have Katzenberg's fingerprints all over them. So, it's a complicated thing (especially in light of Disney's current struggles), and we tried to acknowledge that.
Thanks as well for the Accented Cinema link -- lots of good insights in there. We'd already read the n+1 article cited in the video, and many of its claims do seem to be reflected in the way these movies are constructed.
About Ghibli's work being "cozy": we completely agree that this is a mistake. Miyazaki and Takahata battled similar perceptions in Japan during the '90s -- the word "healing" often got used for Ghibli's work. They resented those labels and went out of their way to subvert them, but Ghibli's films are still co-opted as sort of comfortable, indulgent escapism to this day. It's very strange, and, like you wrote, algorithms have definitely played a role in it. We really aren't crazy about Ghibli-inspired art that leans into the cozy/conflict-free/healing/escapist stereotypes around the studio, and GenAI is being used to create a ton of it.
高畑勋没有错，卡岑伯格也没错，重要的是信息量。