Avatar: The Last Airbender

Yes, I know.  I'm 10 years late.

I backed into this series due to my interest in the work of comics writer/artist Gene Luen Yang.  Having read his books American Born Chinese, The Eternal Smile and Boxers/Saints, I discovered that he had written several graphic novels based on the Avatar TV series.  I read them and was extremely impressed with the political sophistication of the stories.  The Promise has to do with two ethnic groups both laying claim to the same land.  Anyone who follows the news can easily see the resemblance to the middle east or Ukraine.  The Rift has to do with the tension between technological progress and ecological preservation.  Like life, these books don't present easy answers, showing that there are valid claims on all sides.

I should also mention the art by the Japanese team known as Gurihiru, which is very attractive.

So, knowing nothing of the backstory of the animated series but being impressed, I wrote Yang and asked where the stories came from.  Did he originate them?  He replied to me that they were written in collaboration with the series' creators Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino.

Hearing this, I wondered if the series reached the same standard that the graphic novels had, so I've now watched all 61 episodes.  I am very, very impressed.

Briefly, the series is set in an Asian world where there are four tribes based on the elements of fire, water, earth and air.  In these tribes, there are some who can manipulate their namesake element.  In essence, they're superheroes, though free from the cliches that have encrusted themselves around superheroes.  The fire nation has attempted to conquer the rest of the world and the Avatar, who is the only one to master bending all four elements, works to end the war and restore a balance in the world.

I can no longer claim to be an expert on animated TV series.  I haven't watched a lot in the last 15 years.  However, in my experience, I've never seen a series like Avatar.  When I was working in production, there was a strong resistance from broadcasters for continuity between episodes.  They wanted the ability to run them in any order without causing audience confusion.  I'm amazed that Nickelodeon agreed to letting a story play out in continuity over several seasons. 

The result is a story that is novelistic.  Characters come and go and their histories are filled in bit by bit.  They have time to truly develop based on their experiences, so they grow organically.  Just about every character gets screen time to become fully rounded.  In too many children's TV shows, there are a handful of personality traits assigned to a character that they never move beyond, but in Avatar, characters reflect on their pasts as they try to figure out how they should move forward.  The characters are driven by their emotional needs, not simply manipulated for the benefit of the plot.

In addition to well-developed characters, there are themes here that are also rare for children's TV:  war, genocide, racism, fascism, brainwashing, reincarnation, mysticism, loss of loved ones, and family relations that run the gamut from nourishing to dysfunctional.

The fights and action scenes remind me a lot of Jack Kirby's work at Marvel in the 1960's.  While there are explosions, collapsing buildings and characters thrown through the air who slam into objects, there are no broken bones and practically no blood.  I was surprised to find myself caught up in what would happen to the characters.  With so much formula storytelling on TV, for adults and children, that was a novelty for me.

I would love to know how the creators managed to get this series approved.  Did they reference The Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter in order to show that children would accept material this dense and downbeat?  (There is a lot of comedy in the show, but a story built around a hundred year war is hardly a giggle fest.)  I consider it something of a miracle that this show ever got produced, as it breaks so many of the accepted norms of children's TV, which tends to be relentlessly shallow and cheerful.

It isn't perfect, but TV animation never is.  The animation itself, done in Korea, suffers from the compromises of TV budgets, with animation on 3's, 4's and 6's.  There's a six-legged bison character  they never did get a believable walk cycle for.  There are lots of held cels with only parts of characters moving.  However, there are fight scenes and action scenes that are elaborately choreographed.  The facial expressions are sometimes pushed too far based on the rest of the design approach, but even with the limited animation, the characters genuinely act.

There are some episodes that feel like padding, included to fulfill a 20 episode season.  However, there are interesting episodes that break expected patterns.  "Tales of Ba Sing Se" features vignettes of each of the leading characters, allowing them time to develop outside the overarching plot.  "The Ember Island Players" is meta-textual, where the characters watch a play based on their own adventures in earlier episodes and reflect on how they're being portrayed.

I know that the creators followed this series with The Legend of Korra and I'll now work my way through that.  Yang and Gurihiru have another Avatar graphic novel coming out in September called Smoke and Shadow.  Their novels are broken into three parts and come out at three month intervals.  This week, Yang's first written issue of Superman is in comics shops.

I am surprised and encouraged that material this good has made it into TV animation.  I might be the last person to discover this show, but if I'm not, I highly recommend it.  It's been a long time since I've felt this good about an animated TV series. 

Inside Out

(Mild spoilers below.)

I'm in in the minority on this, but I was disappointed with Inside Out.

There is no question that Pete Docter has the ability to emotionally affect an audience.  My problem with this film, and on reflection with Up, is that he focuses too much on invention, and it gets in the way of the characters and the story.

In Up, everyone remembers the montage of Carl's life with Ellie.   Nobody talks about the absurd age and inventions of Charles Muntz.

In this film, what people will take away is the characters inside Riley and the ending, but the world they inhabit is overly complicated.  There is an lengthy journey for two of the characters inside Riley's head and there are all sorts of rules of the world that are introduced too conveniently.  Characters and props appear during the journey that change the audience's sense of what is possible and what is not.  It's hard to generate suspense when you never know when the equivalent of a magic wand will show up to help the characters. 

The problem is structural.  The film makers had too many good ideas to fit in the beginning, and so by introducing them mid-film, the world was continually redefined to the detriment of the story.

Here's a spoiler.  If Joy can be sad and cry, why can't the other characters inside Riley's head go beyond their dominant characteristic and grow as well?  The problem is that if you have characters who are incapable of change, you have no drama.  But introducing change into one character reveals the other characters as nothing more than stereotypes, no matter how entertaining.

The solution would have been to spend more time outside Riley.  Because she contains conflicting emotions, it's natural that the drama should have played out there.  But Riley is a puppet who can't experience emotions outside of what the characters in her head allow.  While her experiences moving to a new city, entering a new school and screwing up in front of peers are all easy for the audience to empathize with, they are done in a perfunctory manner.  We never see her interacting with the others in her school and so her experiences are left at the level of the generic.

Inside Out contains a lot of good character comedy, inventive concepts and striking design.  However, the dramatic logic of the film often gets broken under the weight of those things, and that's why I find the film unsatisfying.

Annecy Signal Films

The Gobelins signal films for this year's Annecy festival are turning up online.  They are all dedicated to women animators.  As usual, the art and animation are beautiful.  However, I'm a little wary of some of the historical interpretations, particularly the ones for Mary Blair and Evelyn Lambert.  The Blair piece implies that Disney heavily edited Blair.  Disney heavily edited everyone, but in Blair's case, he was always trying to get more of her look on the screen, much to the frustration of the animators.  Blair was one of Disney's favourites and there are many artists who are better examples of being victims of Disney.  In Lambert's case, the film is not very flattering to Norman McLaren.

I wish the Lotte Reineger tribute had been done cut-out style.  The film does use silhouettes, but it would have been more satisfying to me if the style was closer to Reineger's own.

Is This Progress?

There's going to be a new 3 Stooges animated series.  Let's look at how the Stooges have been treated in animation in the past.

And now, we have this.

Hairy Nuts

Click to enlarge

I was neutral regarding Peanuts being done in cgi.  Now, seeing this poster, I shudder at a bad design choice.  Putting photo-realistic hair on top of characters whose eyes and mouths are squiggles is ridiculous.  It looks like they're all wearing wigs.  I don't know if the hair is made of individually generated strands or done with textures, but the detail and the specular highlights are overkill.

I'm curious to see these characters in motion.  I wonder if the hair will have a lot of follow through, as that would be even more of a distraction than the way it looks in this poster.

Brad Bird, Ayn Rand and Frustration

Brad Bird

I haven't seen Brad Bird's new film, Tomorrowland, yet, but once again various reviewers are connecting Bird to novelist Ayn Rand's work, something that Bird denies.  This article in Slate by Forrest Wickman says that Bird is drawing more inspiration from Walt Disney than from Rand.  I think that both are missing a key point, possibly because nobody in the discussion has ever worked in the film or animation business.

The criticism of Bird is that his films contain characters who are innately superior to the majority.  This strikes many as elitist, though common sense tells us that we all know people who have an aptitude for something, whether it's music, math, sports, languages, drawing, etc.  It's interesting that the idea of talent has become so controversial.

Many claim that Bird expects his characters to be treated differently than those without their talents, and there's some truth in this, but not in a way that Ayn Rand would endorse.  I am no Rand expert, but what I know of her writing is that it is elitist; those who are superior should not be dragged down by the inferior and should it happen, then the superior are justified in withdrawing their talents from society.

As the Slate article points out, the idea of the elite going on strike is nowhere present in Bird's work.  Rather than springing from elitism, I think Bird's work springs from artistic frustration and I think his career should make that obvious.

In The Incredibles and in Ratatouille, the characters are trying to exercise their talents in ways that are beneficial.  A key scene in The Incredibles is when Bob witnesses a mugging while being dressed down by his boss.  His frustration doesn't stem from his inability to exercise his powers, but from the altruistic need to help someone who is being victimized.    In Ratatouille, Remy risks his life repeatedly to get closer to cooking, something that would benefit people if only they didn't let their prejudices get in the way.  Both are frustrated by a world which stops them from being who they are, even though the world would benefit.

Now look at Bird's career.  He was an animation prodigy, being tutored by Disney animators at the age of 14.  His time at Disney after Cal Arts did not lead to any films of note.  It was a low point in the company's management history, where no one with vision (artistic or economic) was willing to take a chance on the kind of animation that Bird wanted to do.  At that time, Disney had Bird, John Lasseter and Tim Burton on staff and essentially wasted them all.  Talent went unrecognized and unfulfilled.

Bird tried to get several projects off the ground, such as his animated adaptation of Will Eisner's The Spirit and his own Ray Gunn without success.  He didn't get to direct his first animated feature, The Iron Giant, until he was in his forties, twenty years after leaving Cal Arts.  In moving into live action, he wanted to make 1906.  He took the Mission Impossible film as a way of gaining credibility, but even after the success of that project, he couldn't get 1906 into production.  Instead, he directed a film with a link to a Disney theme park.  While fans are no doubt happy to hear that Bird will be working on a sequel to The Incredibles, he's going backwards at the age of 57, having to revisit an earlier success.  As he's closer to the end of his career than the beginning, there are a limited number of films he has time to make. How many of them will be the films he wants to make as opposed to what Hollywood will allow him to do?

Forget Ayn Rand and look at the animation business.  It's filled with artists who would say that they're not doing their best work or are stuck labouring on projects that they have no great love for.  It's true across the industry, which is why so many artists are involved in side projects that are an escape from the frustration of their day jobs.  Bird has been more successful than most, but he still can't get his chosen projects onto the screen.  The Incredibles and Ratatouille are fantasies where characters overcome obstacles to fully realize their talents.  Unfortunately for Bird and the rest of us, it rarely happens in life.

Amazing Video Interview Collection

Courtesy of Mark Evanier, here is a link to a page of rare video interviews with animation personnel, many of whom were not usually the focus of attention.  Subjects include Willie Ito, Milt Gray, Larry Harmon, Irv Spence, Bill Berg, Norm Blackburn, Alex Lovy, Lew Keller, Bill Hurtz, Philo Barnhart, Leo Salkin, Ward Kimball, Carl Urbano, Hicks Lokey, Al Bertino, Rudy Larriva, Grim Natwick, Pete Alvarado, Tom Ray, Owen Fitzgerald, Lloyd Vaughn, Lillian Astor and Bob Carlson.

Evanier has some background about Paul Maher, the person responsible for the interviews, here.

Brad Bird quote

"There are great animators just as there are great actors I gave a talk once using [digital] animation from the [1996] movie Dragon Heart. I showed two sequences and asked the audience which they believed; they said one sequence but not the other, as they said it looked fake. I said, "Yes, but why?" They couldn't tell me. The interesting thing was, it was the same technology and the same [animation] model; the only thing different was the animator. You can be convincing without being real."

Brad Bird is everywhere right now, promoting Tomorrowland.  This interview has a fair amount to say about animation.

Don't Pitch a Buyer, Pitch the Audience Video

In March of 2014, I had the pleasure of giving a talk at Animatic T.O, an informal lecture series founded by Barry Sanders and continued by Andrew Murray when Barry took a job in Halifax.  Grayden Laing of the Canadian Animation Blog videotaped the presentation and now it's available online, courtesy of Grayden and John Righton.

I developed the talk into a series on this blog.  The first part of that series has been read almost 10,000 times to date.  Since giving the talk, my opinions haven't changed.  I've seen nothing in the intervening time to suggest that creators are getting a better deal anywhere.  I would love it if someday, a stranger walked up to me and told me that as a result of my talk, he or she kept ownership of their property and are making a living from it.  Hope springs eternal.

Tax Credits, Exchange Rates and Thin Ice

(Updated Below)
Canadian Animation Resources has good coverage of Nova Scotia's decision to reduce it's tax credits for film and TV production (1, 2, 3).

It's going to be a painful disruption for many people.  Undoubtedly, some studios will close, and some will shift work to another location.  Those lucky enough to be offered jobs elsewhere will have to uproot their lives and relocate to another province.  I'm sorry for everyone who will be affected by this.

This is an ongoing problem in Canada and I've seen it in multiple industries over multiple decades.  Too many companies base their existence on some kind of government protection (such as content quotas, tax rebates and before free trade, import duties) or on the exchange rate, as the Canadian dollar is generally worth less than the American.

The problem with this approach is that it adds more variables to the already difficult puzzle of making a profit.  Creating a product or service, pricing it properly, marketing it and fending off competition is never easy.  When government policy or exchange rates are added in, companies are at the mercy of things they cannot control.

There is also the upcoming issue of the CRTC's pick and pay decision.  As of next March, cable subscribers will be able to abandon packages of channels in favour of only paying for what they want to watch.  To date, YTV has been paid for by everyone in Canada who subscribes to cable, whether they have children or not.  They will undoubtedly lose subscribers.  Teletoon is part of a package, and no one knows what percentage of the people who purchase it actually watch it.

(Update: Canadian Press is reporting that the number of cable subscribers fell by 95,000 in 2014.  That compares to a drop of 13,000 in 2013.  It estimates that Netflix went from 3 million to 3.9 million subscribers in Canada last year.  Even without the CRTC decision, revenue for cable channels, where the majority of Canadian animation appears, is dropping and that is bound to have an effect on production levels, budgets and deadlines.)

While the animation business in Canada is booming at the moment, I'm not optimistic.  I worry about a contraction coming within the next two years.

Canadian gaming studios tend to be either very large or very small.  There are branches of Ubisoft, Rockstar and Electronic Arts in Canada.  There are also small indie studios that are often less than a dozen people.  Those small studios are surviving due to low overhead and a business model that allows them to sell directly to consumers over the web.

I suspect that Canadian animation studios are too married to series production and international financing to be able to work the low end of the market.  I'm waiting (and hoping) to see the entertainment equivalent of indie game companies arise, where small groups develop their own intellectual property and take it directly to the audience.

So long as Canadian studios depend on government regulations and the exchange rate, they are skating on thin ice.  We'll see how well Nova Scotia withstands the reduction of the tax credit, but what's happened in Nova Scotia could happen anywhere in Canada.   I hope that studios are preparing for that eventuality.

The Upside and Downside of Influences

When a baby goose hatches, it starts following the first moving thing it sees.  As that is usually its mother, instinct serves it well.

People don't have an instinct that strong, but from around the ages of 5 to 20, humans are deeply influenced by what's around them.  Sometimes these influences cause an ignition moment; a person sees someone or something and suddenly knows the path to take.  I'm old enough to remember the first appearance of the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show, and my classmates were utterly transformed by the event.  I'd love to know how many guitars were sold in the weeks after that appearance.

Even when an influence isn't instantaneous, it still shapes shapes a person.  The things you are exposed to during your impressionable years contribute to who you are.  As they say, the child is father to the man. 

There's a strong emotional component to being influenced at that age.  The emotions generated by the things one likes cement their influence on you.  While I have seen many good movies since my twenties, few have the emotional impact that films I discovered as a teenager had.  When you reach maturity, something happens to how you respond; the impact is not as great. 

Creative people are formed during that 15 year period.  It's why you can look at the mass culture of any decade and find that it's distinctive.  It's because the people creating during that period grew up with the same influences.  While they don't reproduce those influences exactly, they shape the work in similar ways.

The emotional affection for something in its simplest form results in nostalgia.  It's fun to share childhood memories with someone the same age.  There's a pleasure to re-experiencing something you loved when younger.    The original emotional is evoked.  That's why there are oldies stations on the radio, even though the decade(s) they feature are constantly advancing with the age of the listening audience.  Good luck finding an oldies station playing '50s rock and roll now.

The emotional attachment to the things that formed us have repercussions for creators.  It's why animation studios and broadcasters hunt for young talent.  That talent is closest in age to the audience, so it shares more of the same influences.  Those people are often inexperienced in the ways of production, but studios think it's a worthwhile risk.  Production smarts can be bought more easily than an emotional link to the audience. 

It also means that everyone who is creative is in danger of losing the audience over time.  As media content shifts, creators often can't shift with it.  Because newer approaches rarely evoke the emotional response of the work they grew up on, staying current often produces a superficial result.  It apes the surface but can't connect to the core; it lacks sincerity. 

This has become very obvious to me recently.  I mentioned to one of my classes that I haven't really watched TV animation in 20 years, though I've stayed reasonably up to date with animated features.  Partly this is because I know first hand the limitations of TV budgets and schedules and when I watch TV animation all I see are the compromises and shortcuts.  The bigger issue is that I'm past the age where I can emotionally connect with shows aimed at children or teens.  The influences that formed the people making these shows are alien to me.  While my students may love Gravity Falls or Steven Universe, I'm never going to love them in the way that I love Chuck Jones or even Bosko cartoons, something I admit have little absolute value.  While I admire the work of Miyazaki, Takahata and Kon, I'm betting that younger people exposed to their work love it in a way that I can't.

(One of the oddities of growing up in the early TV era is that my generation was exposed to older work our parents grew up on: theatrical cartoons, the Marx Brothers, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Abbott and Costello, The Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy, and The Little Rascals.  This  proves that the work that influences you doesn't have to be contemporary, only that you experience it during your impressionable years.)

Twenty years from now my current students will discover that they're estranged from the younger people entering the field as they won't have the same influences.  Agism in the media is very real, and this is the root of it.  The gap between creators and the audience results from a difference of influences and the less common ground that creators share with the audience, the harder it is to connect.  Steven Spielberg's latest films are no longer the events they once were, and Spielberg is as audience-wise as anybody.  And I suspect that when we reach the point where young adults no longer grew up on The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King, I'm guessing that the desire to make drawn animated features will be a lot less widespread.

While we are less instinctual than goslings, we may also be less flexible. Goslings eventually move beyond their mothers, but do any of us escape our childhood influences?

Sheridan Industry Day 2015 Trailer

Some students have inadvertently been left out, so there may be an updated version coming.  If so, I'll replace this version.

Heritage Animation Art Auction

Heritage is running an animation art auction and you can see the complete, illustrated catalog here.

The art that is in this catalog is increasingly limited to the nostalgia market.  People growing up now will see this material as old fashioned and they don't have equivalent art to buy from the shows they grew up watching.

There was a time when animation art auctions were common, but since the field has gone digital, whether 2D or 3D, there is no longer any original art to sell.  The art that goes into pre-production is generally now available in the books that seem to accompany every animated release.  However, the animation business has lost a revenue stream and they seem to have lost interest in the high end collectibles market.

I don't follow the collectibles market closely, but is Disney still putting out limited editions and expensive pieces?  With DreamWorks diversifying and looking for revenue wherever it can, I'm surprised that they haven't tried to develop this market.  With cgi and 3D printing, I can see a market for turning out limited edition figurines that are actual poses from films.  The characters from the How to Train Your Dragon films seem a natural for this.

It will be interesting to see if animation art returns to being a small, esoteric piece of the art market or if studios figure out a way to get back into it in a big way.  If it remains a nostalgia item, it will eventually have its customer base die off.

Pete Docter in Toronto

Pete Docter was at the TIFF Bell Lightbox on Monday, March 23, starting the publicity rounds for his next film Inside Out.  He was interviewed on stage by film critic Richard Crouse in front of a sold out audience.  Crouse took Docter through his career and asked some very naive questions about animation, but Docter handled himself well.  At the end of the session, the opening to Inside Out was screened.  It is unquestionably a Pixar film in design and tone and it has the strong emotional core of Docter's earlier films.

This was followed by Docter introducing a screening of Up.

On Tuesday, Docter appeared on Q, the CBC radio arts program.  He covered much of the same material as he did with Crouse, and you can listen to the segment here.

Michael Sporn Remembered

Journalist and animation historian Thad Komorowski put together a segment on Michael Sporn for the WBGO Journal on March 6.  It includes short interviews with animators John Canemaker, Ray Kosarin, actress and Michael's widow Heide Stallings and a brief quote from me.

Michael has been gone more than a year now, and I still find myself missing him every time I see a new film or hear a new bit of industry news.  Michael's views were always interesting and hearing them often sharpened my own views.  Had he lived, I'm sure right now I'd be hearing stories about the production of his first feature based on Edgar Allen Poe's life and stories.

New CRTC Rules

The world of television is changing rapidly and the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission is attempting to catch up.  It set forth new rules today and while the new rules do not mention animation specifically, they will undoubtedly affect animation production.

Where in the past, specialty channels (which include channels like YTV and Teletoon) had individual requirements for the amount of Canadian content they ran, now all specialty channels will have the same requirement to run Canadian content 35% of the time.  I can't find YTV's former requirement, but Teletoon's was 60%.  They can now run considerably less Canadian programming.

While the CRTC has mandated that broadcasters must spend the same dollar amount as before, reducing the requirements for Canadian shows means fewer shows with higher budgets.  This may be a problem for studios that don't own broadcast outlets.  Nelvana and DHX are well positioned, as they will undoubtedly favour themselves with higher budgets rather than have their channels purchasing more expensive shows from other Canadian studios. If Nelvana subcontracts, will their subcontractors see any of the increased budgets or will the the subcontract budgets remain the same with any increase staying with Nelvana?

I'm afraid that these new rules will put the squeeze on smaller studios that rely on broadcasters and cable channels for their sales.  Can Netflix or Amazon take up the slack?  If not, there's a chance that we're going to see less production in the near future. 

The Canadian TV animation industry is presently as large as it has ever been.  At Sheridan, we are being approached by studios that are trying to get a jump on Industry Day and hire students before they graduate.  Those of us who have been around for awhile have wondered how long the industry expansion can continue.  It's possible that these new rules, put in place to improve quality and give broadcasters more flexibility, may not be good for Canadian animation. 

My post-Oscar Thought

I wish the media paid as much attention to the Nobel prizes in science and medicine as it does to the Academy Awards.

Toon Talks Podcast

Friend Jim Caswell pointed me to a podcast featuring animator Charlie Bonifacio.  It's the latest episode of the Toon Talks podcast, hosted by an animation professional named Sandra.  I don't know if she's choosing to keep her last name secret or if it's an oversight.

In any case, besides being an excellent draftsman and animator, Bonifacio is highly articulate.  I've listened to his episode and look forward to hearing the others in this series, which feature people like Mark Henn, Carlos Baena, Tomm Moore and Sergio Pablos.

Twice Upon a Time

On Saturday night at 2:15 A.M. Eastern Time (really early Sunday morning), Turner Classic Movies will run a genuine rarity.  Twice Upon a Time (1983) is an animated feature that uses backlit translucent cut-outs in stop motion produced by George Lucas and directed by John Korty and Charles Swenson.  The film has never been on DVD and rarely runs on television.

The film features voice work by Lorenzo Music and Paul Frees.  There are many names in the crew recognizable from other work, such as David Fincher (who did special effects), Henry Selick, Kaj Pindal, and John Van Vliet.

TCM's blog Movie Morlocks discusses the career of John Korty and the circumstances surrounding the making of the film.   Ward Jenkins collects a bunch of YouTube clips and interviews Harley Jessup, the art director of the film.

The 1980s were an odd decade for animation.  Disney was rebuilding, Don Bluth was attempting to overtake them and Bakshi was in his rotoscope period.  The decade also saw lots of independent animated features that were interesting but failed to have much box office success.  It wasn't until the later '80s, when Disney got back on track and Spielberg got involved with animation that a new normal was established.  Prior to that, films like Twice Upon a Time, Heavy Metal, Grendel Grendel Grendel, The Plague Dogs, Rock and Rule, The Adventures of Mark Twain and When the Wind Blows were looking to take animation in new directions, but due to inexperience and audience prejudices, they failed.

While these films had small, but professional budgets, this kind of film is made today on a shoestring by independents like Bill Plympton, Nina Paley and Signe Baumane.  If those types of films are interesting to you, take a look at Twice Upon a Time.

The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness

Mami Sunada's documentary on the creation of The Wind Rises, The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness, is a fascinating film for a wide variety of reasons.

The main one is Hayao Miyazaki himself, a gruff, prickly personality who has a love/hate relationship with making animated films.  He has devoted his life to something that he has large doubts about.  He says, "Today, all of humanity's dreams are cursed somehow.  Beautiful yet cursed dreams.  I'm not even talking about wanting to be rich or famous.  Screw that.  That's just hopeless.  What I mean is, how do we know movies are even worthwhile?  If you really think about it, is this not just some grand hobby?  Maybe there was a time when you could make films that mattered, but now?  Most of our world is rubbish.  It's difficult."

I would love to know if Miyazaki thought this way when he was younger or if there has been a darkening of his view over time.  There are artists who create to escape from themselves; to imagine a world better than the one they live in.  Miyazaki may be someone who has created pleasant fantasies to counterbalance his tendency to pessimism. The film reveals that Miyazaki's original intention was to have Jiro, the main character of The Wind Rises, die at the end, but he changed his mind.  Miyazaki affirms life, even as he questions its result.

The inside of Studio Ghibli is a lovely workspace, with large windows providing natural light and a rooftop garden that Miyazaki visits often.  It was interesting to compare the technical process to what's common in North America.  No animation disks are used, just floating pegs on tables with built in light boxes.  The Japanese all use the pegs at the top, in contrast to the North American preference for bottom pegs.  The backgrounds are still painted on paper and shot on an animation camera, though the animation drawings are brought into the computer for colouring and compositing with the backgrounds.  I was aware that voices are post-synched to picture, but the voice of Jiro was not even cast until much animation had been done. In North America, characters and animation are built on top of voices.

I knew nothing of producer Toshio Suzuki before seeing this film, but I have nothing but admiration for him now.  He is the producer that every director wants and needs.  He is level-headed and patient.  He is an ambassador for the studio with merchandisers, distributors and the press.  He works very hard, but never seems tired or on edge.  He is the calm in the middle of any storm.  While Miyazaki seems intimidating at times, Suzuki is never less than friendly.  Of the two, I suspect that spending time with Suzuki would be a lot more pleasant.

Unfortunately, the film has very little of Ghibli's other director, Isao Takahata.  We never see any part of his Princess Kaguya in production.  We do, however, meet the young producer in charge of that film, Yoshiaki Nishimura.  Takahata is apparently famous for being unable to stick to a schedule.  Initially, Ghibli intended to release Princess Kaguya simultaneously with The Wind Rises, but Takahata was unable to make the deadline.  Nishimura is the one who had to deal with trying to get the film finished.  In the DVD supplement called Ushiko Investigates! (Ushiko being the studio cat), Nishimura says, "I believe many works in this world are unnecessary.  I think there are a lot of them like that.  At one point, I thought if I had the time to be making anime like that, I'd rather devote my energy somewhere else.  A Takahata-san movie will be a masterpiece for 10 years, 20 years.  I figured it would be a work you'd want to see again and again.  Create 100 things in 10 years or create 1 thing in 10 years."  At Ghibli, while money must play a role in shaping the films, it isn't the only standard that's applied.

The same DVD extra contains a moment so brazen, I am amazed that it was included.  John Lasseter visits the studio and on camera talks about his admiration for Miyazaki's films.  The two of them seem to have a warm, personal relationship as they talk to each other and move through the studio.  When Miyazaki is alone, Sunada asks Miyazaki, "What do you like about Lasseter-san?"  Miyazaki's response is "What do I like about him?  That's not the kind of relationship we have with each other.  I need Lasseter.  He's necessary."  The same man who can create the warmth of Totoro can be cold, calculating and inconsiderate.

If you wish to know more about Studio Ghibli and if you wish to get closer to Miyazaki, this documentary is essential.  It supplements the two volumes of Miyazaki's collected writings.  There are no documentaries about North American animation studios that are like it.  Even The Sweatbox doesn't come close, as everyone at Disney is always conscious of public relations.  No one speaks as bluntly on camera as Miyazaki.  Furthermore, if you have worked in animation, watch Toshio Suzuki show how a brilliant producer operates.

This documentary is a precious record of a great director and a great studio that have earned a lasting place in animation history and in the hearts of animation fans around the world.