International_Film_Research_Paper

International Film Research Paper “To examine the work of Two Japanese Film Directors and examine cultural representations In Japan” ‘Hayao Miyazaki’ ‘Mahiro Maeda’ The following is a research paper on two Japanese Film Directors, Hayao Miyazaki and Mahiro Maeda. Hayao Miyazaki, born in Tokyo, Japan in 1941 has become a prolific director of animated films. In his early years, Miyazaki had a fascination with aviation, influenced by the fact that his father and uncle were directors and owners of Miyazaki Airplane, a manufacturing company who made rudders for the zero fighter plane used by the Japanese air force during World War II. We will discover that aviation and flight became a recurring theme in his future works, as you can see in ‘My Neighbor Totoro’ during the spinning top flight scene as well as in ‘Spirited Away’ when ‘Haku’ turns into a flying dragon. During his school years, influenced by the film, ‘Hakujaden’, a feature length colour animation film, Miyazaki realized he had to concentrated his efforts away from drawing aircraft to perfecting the human figure. Hayao Miyazaki founded the Studio Ghibli in 1985. This Studio is responsible for the production of many of the most popular animation films and television series. ‘My Neighbor Totoro’ was produced at Studio Ghibli and to this day the company logo takes the form of ‘Totoro’, the central character in the film. Studio Ghibli is now a renowned production studio and academy for the Japanese animation industry and could be compared to Disney Studio’s in America. Disney have been provided video rights to eight of the films produced at the Ghibli Studio, including ‘Princess Mononoke’ and ‘Spirited Away’. You can even visit the Ghibli museum in Mitaka, Tokyo. In 1978, at the age of 37, Miyazaki directed his first animation TV Series, ‘Conan, The Boy in future’, which he was also responsible for storyboarding. The successful series ran for 26 episodes and led to Miyazaki’s first film, directing ‘The Castle of Cagliostro’ in 1979 adapted from the ‘Lupin III’ adventure series. In general, the work of Miyazaki is intended for family viewing produced for children rather than adults. His films are feel good films and always result in a happy ending, much like most fairy tales. In 1984, Miyazaki wrote and directed, ‘Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind’. The story is set 1000 years after an event which destroyed human civilization and most of the Earth’s original ecosystem, known as the ‘Seven Days of Fire’. The leading character is called Nausicaa, a captivating young princess, also a physically powerful warrior who has a gift for communicating with giant insects. One species in particular is the ‘Ohmu’, a giant, intelligent, caterpillar-like creature, with a tough armored shell for protection against enemies. ‘Nausicaä’ also has a glider called a ‘Mehve’, which she flies over the valley of the winds. Moved by his mothers illness and ongoing treatment for Spinal Tuberculosis, Miyazaki wrote and directed ‘My Neighor Totoro’ in 1998, a feature animation based in the 1950’s where a university professor moves to the outskirts of Japan with his two daughters to be nearer the mother who is in hospital nearby recovering from an unknown illness. The daughters set off on an adventure of discovery in the house. They soon stumble on the fact that they are not alone in the house as there are also inhabitants known as ‘dust bunnies’. They then journey into the garden where they find two small magical creatures, which take them to a large Camphor Laurel tree where they meet ‘Totoro’, a larger version of the two small creatures. Her father tells her this is the ‘keeper of the forest’. From here we follow the friendship built between the girls and ‘Totoro’. The film features a character called ‘The Catbus’ which is quite literally a cat shaped like a bus with numerous legs similar to a caterpillar. The ‘Catbus’ is a fictional character made up, combining animal and machine, which would never be associated in reality. The ‘Catbus’ is used to make a journey to visit the girl’s mother in hospital. This character is based on the Cheshire Cat from ‘Alice in Wonderland’, whom the author, Lewis Carrol has inspired Miyazaki for many years as well as Ursula K Le Guin whose novel ‘Earthsea’ had influences on Miyazaki’s works. Miyazaki, in many of his films, frequently uses flight to add magical content to his characters and the film. In ‘Spirited Away’, the character ‘Haku’ is a young boy who has the ability to become a dragon and fly, uses his powers of flight to carry ‘Chihiro’ to the bathhouse. ‘My Neighbor Totoro’ also features simulated flight on a spinning top, which takes Totoro and the girls for a ride across the countryside. The use of flight in Miyazaki’s films reverts to his passion for flight and aviation from his early years. In 2001, Miyazaki directed ‘Spirited Away’; winner of a 2003 Oscar for Best Animated Film and The Golden Bear Award at Berlin Film Festival, the film is about a young girl named ‘Chihiro’, who accidentally discovers a world of spirits. At what they think is an abandoned theme park, Chihiro’s parents find themselves at a food stall where they start to ‘scoff’ and ‘gorge’ at the free food that is available. Chihiro finds them having changed into pigs. Chihiro then goes on a journey through the spirit world, meeting new people, some friendly, some evil, in order to save her parents. Like a lot of Miyazaki’s films, the protagonist, who is usually a girl, starts off as a child, immature, unwise, and selfish and has a lot to lean about his or her self and the world around them. During the contrasts in the film, the child is confronted with challenges and discovers aspects about themselves that they were unaware of. Throughout their path their character matures, developing their personality and inner strength, which will later help them to make a tough decision, which will in turn, affect the resolution of the film. With the example of ‘Spirited Away’, Chihiro is a young girl struggling to find herself in a world unfamiliar to her. She is just a child who is scared at the fact she doesn’t know where she is and that her parents have turned into pigs. Fantasy storytelling often uses the magical transformation of humans into pigs to illustrate greed and obesity, which Miyazaki uses to his advantage. However, she accepts her current situation, and to stay in the spirit world, to find her parents, she gets a job working in a bathhouse for spirits, something atypical for a girl that age. To free her parents, Chihiro must perform one final task: she must select them from a group of pigs. With her character, having developed strength, wisdom and knowledge, she comes to the conclusion that none of the pigs are her parents, consequently setting free Chihiro and her parents from the spirit world. Miyazaki liked to play around with the idea of space and open environments. In many of his films he exemplifies vast landscapes, which represents the large surrealistic world. In these environments, Miyazaki uses similar shots such as leaves or grass blowing softly in the wind to allow a brief insight into the dynamic world. Such examples of these shots are in ’Spirited Away’, when Chihiro first enters the spirit world, she sees a boat of spirits slowly coming towards her from the distance. In ‘My Neighbor Totoro’, the branches on large Camphor Laurel tree and the leaves and grass on the ground are blowing in the wind. This gives you an idea of how large the world can be just from the size of the tree. In ‘Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind’, the destruction of the environmental paradise is the main theme to the film. Mahiro Maeda is another well-known Japanese Animation Film Director. Born in Tottori, Japan, 1963, having spent his earlier years learning his trade at Studio Ghibli and worked on the animation of films such as ‘Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind’ and ‘Castle in the Sky’, which were both directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Maeda’s work as a director have included many of Japan’s top animated television series where he has also provided his skills as an animator and character designer. Working closely with the animation studio Gonzo, Maeda directed ‘Blue Submarine No.6’ and ‘Final Fantasy: Unlimited’, a very successful TV Series which was cut down from 52 episodes to 25 episodes due to the failure at the box office of the film, ‘Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within’, but highly acclaimed for it’s computer animated graphics. Released in 1998, ‘Blue Submarine No. 6’ is a four part series which takes place in the future, with the sea levels dramatically risen and civilization on the losing side of a mysterious war against the antagonist, ‘Zorndyke’ and his hybrid children. The story revolves around the Blue Submarine No. 6, a futuristic submarine with a talented military crew. Very few Japanese animation film directors work within the Hollywood film system, however, Maeda was asked to provide his expertise to the animation sequence in ‘Kill Bill: Vol. 1’ directed by Quentin Tarantino. In this scene, the main character narrates as the audience is shown, in animation, the story of the antagonist, ‘O-Ren Ishii’ and how she rose to the top of the Japanese crime world. Graphical scenes of violence, gore and blood lust are over exaggerated, which makes the scenes more surreal for the audience. “The Second Renaissance” is made up of two short animated film, part 1 and part 2, from the Animatrix series, directed by Mahiro Maeda in 2003. It is a graphical context composed of hand drawn animation and Computer Generated Imagery. The short tells the story of what happened before “The Matrix”, how Earth became destroyed as a result of the ongoing war between man and machine. “The Second Renaissance” is structured as fictional documentary, I.e., a mockumentary. The only slight notion of a character is ‘Mandala’, the keeper of the Zion Archive, who tells the story, and ‘B166ER’, the first machine to step up against their masters, mankind. These characters have no lines and are featured in the short for a very minimal period of time. The narrator takes the viewer through the story of how the war started. It is a brief look back at the history of mankind over an extended period of time. The film is slightly shocking and depicts scenes of violence, gore and of a disturbing nature. “The Second Renaissance” actually provokes the viewer to think, due to frequent symbolic occurrences. In one scene, three men attack a woman screaming for help who then turns out to be a robot. This shows the humanely characteristics of the robots and also the heartless violence embedded in the humans. A significant scene shows an apple, the fruit of all knowledge, which rots away and then turns into a human brain, showing that man is not forgiving and does not wish to sympathise or be friendly towards the robots, but instead destroy and inflict violence upon them. The film is portrayed as irony as the first part shows man overpowering machine and the machines being used primarily as workers. The second part of the film shows mankind paying for their foolish mistakes and are now overruled by machines. Man is suffering for their ignorance and underestimation of the machines. The two directors I have chosen, Hayao Miyazaki and Mahiro Maeda are both well respected directors in the Japanese film industry. Miyazaki’s chosen path is to create animated films which are associated with the spirit and fantasy world, where characters are taken on an enchanted journey, which usually involves problem solving and help from fictional characters to guide them along their way to a eventual happy ending. His target audience would be for children and family viewing. Maeda films and TV Series have taken a more aggressive, mature path aimed at mainly adult audiences. His animation techniques show no mercy to the human form and can be quite horrific to watch. Overall, both directors have contributed greatly to the Japanese animation industry earning millions of pounds worth of revenue and investing their talents towards the future of Japanese animation. Appendix Films that Miyazaki has directed and storyboarded are: • Sherlock Hound, 1982 • Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, 1984 • Laputa: Castle in the Sky, 1986 • My Neighbor Totoro, 1988 • Kiki's Delivery Service, 1989 • Porco Rosso, 1992 • On Your Mark, Short animated music video featuring music by Chage and Aska, 1995 • Princess Mononoke, 1997 • Spirited Away, 2001 (winner, Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, 2002) • Howl's Moving Castle, 2004 (nominee, Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, 2005) Films which Mahiro Madea has directed are: • Second Reconnaissance, 2003 • Nayorani, 2002 • Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo, 2004 • Final Fantasy: Unlimited, 2001 • Blue Submarine No. 6, 1999 • Kill Bill chapter 3: The Origin of O-Ren, 2003 Bibliography DVD’s – The Animatrix Spirited Away My Neighbor Totoro Metropolis Kill Bill Vol 1 Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within Websites - http://www.imdb.com http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/ http://en.wikipedia.org/ http://www.youtube.com - ‘My Neighbor Totoro’ http://www.totoro.org/ http://www.onlineghibli.com/ http://www.studioghiblidvd.co.uk/ http://www.intothematrix.com/ Books- The Anime Encyclopedia: A Guide to Japanese Animation Since 1917 (Paperback) by Jonathan Clements (Author), Helen McCarthy (Author)