One of my favourite pieces by Roger Ebert is his “Great Movies” appreciation of Spirited Away (read it in full here). At the end of the piece he details an encounter he had with Hayao Miyazaki himself, where Miyazaki defines one of the key differences between the work of Studio Ghibli and mainstream American animation. I can see his words relating to comics as well, and these words are well-worth reading for any creative and parent.
Here is the excerpt from Ebert’s piece:
I was so fortunate to meet Miyazaki at the 2002 Toronto film festival. I told him I love the “gratuitous motion” in his films; instead of every movement being dictated by the story, sometimes people will just sit for a moment, or sigh, or gaze at a running stream, or do something extra, not to advance the story but only to give the sense of time and place and who they are.
“We have a word for that in Japanese,” he said. “It’s called ‘ma.’ Emptiness. It’s there intentionally.” He clapped his hands three or four times. “The time in between my clapping is ‘ma.’ If you just have non-stop action with no breathing space at all, it’s just busyness.”
I think that helps explain why Miyazaki’s films are more absorbing than the frantic action in a lot of American animation. “The people who make the movies are scared of silence” he said, “so they want to paper and plaster it over,” he said. “They’re worried that the audience will get bored. But just because it’s 80 percent intense all the time doesn’t mean the kids are going to bless you with their concentration. What really matters is the underlying emotions—that you never let go of those.
“What my friends and I have been trying to do since the 1970’s is to try and quiet things down a little bit; don’t just bombard them with noise and distraction. And to follow the path of children’s emotions and feelings as we make a film. If you stay true to joy and astonishment and empathy you don’t have to have violence and you don’t have to have action. They’ll follow you. This is our principle.”
He said he has been amused to see a lot of animation in live-action superhero movies. “In a way, live action is becoming part of that whole soup called animation. Animation has become a word that encompasses so much, and my animation is just a little tiny dot over in the corner. It’s plenty for me.”
It’s plenty for me, too.Yes
Yes.
(via ktshy)
The Process of Writing a Novel
I think I’m in the dark night of the soul right now …
(via felaxx)
Okay. Someone asked me how I feel about writing fiction in a world that still needs actual activism and hands-on work to make life better. They said something similar to, “I get pulled away from writing fiction because I feel guilty for not making tangible benefit to the world. Isn’t fiction just…
Why we do what we do.
There is a consistent problem I’ve been having with Season 7 of Doctor Who: in a constant effort to create the dramatic Hollywood-movie feel Moffat promised Season 7 would have, the writers have failed to create the actual drama of the plot which truly make those moments dramatic. The writing has…
I’m often told that the writing I do for Valkyrie Squadron isn’t like most other sci fi pieces. It tends to be a little more light-hearted than most, and that’s because I don’t write sci fi. I write light-hearted characters in a sci-fi story. Big difference.
Yesterday, I saw a tweet that read…
Excerpt from this awesome post on writing
“Everything good in the world has the potential to show up in your writing, but guess what also lives in your writing? Your self-doubt. Guess what else? Your desire to give up. And what else? Yes, that’s right: Fear. All kinds of fear. Fear cake covered in fear icing served with a glass of fear. And fear is some potent stuff, but it’s not all bad.
Yes, fear can be limiting. It can be what makes you not want to work on that hot-mess-of-a-novel and it can make you not want to talk to that cute red-headed gal who seems to not notice you exist and sometimes fear just makes you not even want to get out of bed.
But if you re-orient yourself to your fear it can be motivating. Let’s say you’re walking down the bucolic streets of Lancaster and an alligator comes out of nowhere and starts chasing you; I’d bet your fear of that alligator’s teeth would be pretty good fuel for running.
But since alligators don’t live in Lancaster and you are a writer and probably not being chased by anything at this moment, your alligator is Not Writing. And you need to run from that alligator. You need to write your alligator into oblivion. Everything else will happen on its own time as long as you keep writing.”
Ways to simplify plot: 1) collapse multiple characters’ functions into a single character; 2) pick ONE emotional thread; 3) explain visually
You simply can’t explain overcomplicated convoluted ideas visually. It’s a fallacy to think the audience will absorb it any better spoken.
They’ll retain visual + experiential ideas better than spoken ones, anyway. Unless you explain your plot in 100% snappy comebacks & 1liners
Way #4 to simplify plot: go blue sky, stop trying to cram the square peg into the round hole. Prioritize and take a different approach.
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Have I mentioned how much I appreciate having Pixar story artist Emma Coats on Twitter?
A friend recently asked this question on Facebook:
Creative types: How honest are we being with ourselves when we say that we do what we do for the love of art/music/film, or simply because “we have to” and don’t know how to do anything else. Are we just saying what we think others expect to hear? How much does the fantasy of one day achieving fame, glory and a decent living play into it?
It reminded me of the foreword to my current favourite-book-to-recommend-to-people, The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri. It’s a better book about writing than most of the others I’ve read, in part because I liked and could relate to the honesty of the foreword. It’s applicable to all forms of creativity or craftsmanship, too. Not just writing. I copied out most of it and put it behind the cut!
