{"id":169910,"date":"2021-02-03T21:00:09","date_gmt":"2021-02-03T18:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/goro-miyazaki-interview-on-directing-earwig-and-the-witch-film\/"},"modified":"2021-02-03T21:00:09","modified_gmt":"2021-02-03T18:00:09","slug":"goro-miyazaki-interview-on-directing-earwig-and-the-witch-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/goro-miyazaki-interview-on-directing-earwig-and-the-witch-film\/","title":{"rendered":"#Goro Miyazaki Interview on Directing Earwig and the Witch \u2013 \/Film"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Goro Miyazaki Interview on Directing Earwig and the Witch \u2013 \/Film<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n

\"goro<\/p>\n

When\u00a0Goro Miyazaki<\/strong> returned to Studio Ghibli in 2015, he found the offices to be completely empty.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody was here and it was like storage, very empty,\u201d Miyazaki recalled in an interview with \/Film over Zoom ahead of the release of his upcoming movie\u00a0Earwig and the Witch<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0\u201cAnd I thought, \u2018Okay, so I won\u2019t be making films anymore.’\u201d<\/p>\n

But it would be just three years later that Miyazaki would get back in the director\u2019s chair once again, for a kind of film that had never been done at Studio Ghibli before: a CG-animated movie.\u00a0Earwig and the Witch<\/em> was always conceived as a computer-animated film, but the Japanese anime<\/a> industry more often uses that tech as a tool to imitate a cel-shaded\/ hand-drawn look, as Miyazaki had recently done in the CG-animated TV series<\/a>\u00a0Ronja, the Robber\u2019s Daughter.<\/em> But something about doing a fully CG-animated film app<\/a>ealed to Miyazaki because \u201chere at Studio Ghibli, doing a cel look, emulating hand-drawn animation at a studio that specializes in hand-drawn animation didn\u2019t really make sense.\u201d
\nAnd it was Miyazaki\u2019s father, the legendary\u00a0Ghibli filmmaker\u00a0Hayao Miyazaki<\/strong>, who actually encouraged him to pursue the film with this approach.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was actually recommended, or suggested, by Hayao Miyazaki and [longtime Studio Ghibli producer] Toshio Suzuki that I would do a film adaptation of this story,\u201d Miyazaki said.<\/p>\n

Read our full interview with Goro Miyazaki on\u00a0Earwig and the Witch<\/em> below.<\/p>\n

Earwig and the Witch is your first feature film in nine years. What was it about this story that drew you to the film and back to Studio Ghibli? <\/strong>
\nIt was actually recommended, or suggested, by Hayao Miyazaki and Toshio Suzuki that I would do a film adaptation of this story, of this book. So I went back and read the book and I really enjoyed it. And what I loved about the story was that Earwig is not your typical good girl. She\u2019s always direct. She is very honest about what she wants in life, how she wants to live her life. And if she has goals, she doesn\u2019t hesitate to manipulate people. If somebody treats her bad, she actually fights back. She\u2019s quite strong in that way, and I really, really loved how she was portrayed in the book so I wanted to make that into a film.<\/p>\n

Studio Ghibli had shut down productions for three years before it was announced that it would be back in operation with the announcement of your film, Earwig and the Witch<\/em>, and your father Hayao Miyazaki\u2019s How Do You Live<\/em>? Can you describe for me the environment at Ghibli as the studio came back after so many years on hiatus?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I did Ronja, the Robber\u2019s Daughter<\/em>, a TV series, with an outside studio. After doing that, when I came back to Studio Ghibli, nobody was here and it was like storage, very empty. And I thought, \u201cOkay, so I won\u2019t be making films anymore.\u201d And when I saw Toshio Suzuki, our producer, he actually looked happy, and said, \u201cI can retire now!\u201d But then Hayao Miyazaki, he wasn\u2019t able to stay away that long. He needed to create something in order to live, basically. So he started with making a short film for the [Ghibli] museum, and then he went on to making his new feature-length film. And that is around the time that I started working on Earwig<\/em> too, and everyone came back.<\/p>\n

Hayao Miyazaki\u2019s wife, who is my mother, she used to say [to him], \u201cI wish you would retire and take it easy and enjoy the rest of your life.\u201d But recently, she\u2019s come to accept the fact that he cannot stop creating, so she knows that, so she\u2019ll be like, \u201cOkay, if you\u2019d rather create until the end of your life, then go to the studio, go to the office everyday.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking of Ronja, the Robber\u2019s Daughter<\/em>, it was also a computer-animated project. Did your experience on that series help you in crafting Earwig and the Witch<\/em>?<\/strong>
\nYes, definitely. So with Ronja<\/em>, we used computer graphics, but it was using cel-shading techniques, so basically emulating the hand-drawn animation look. So when we came back and did Earwig and the Witch<\/em> here at Studio Ghibli, doing a cel look, emulating hand-drawn animation at a studio that specializes in hand-drawn animation didn\u2019t really make sense. So we decided we might as well go full 3D CG. It was a challenge, for sure.<\/p>\n

So was Earwig and the Witch always conceived as a CG-animated movie or did that come a little later in the process?<\/strong><\/p>\n

So, I had already decided to go to do a CG film. It started as a CG film. However, I was wondering whether I should go for a cel shading approach, or a full CG. I decided to go full CG for the audience here in Japan.<\/p>\n

Since this is Ghibli\u2019s first CG-animated movie, did you have to create or bring in the technology<\/a> yourself? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, because Studio Ghibli, we didn\u2019t have a system or hardware to create CG-3D films. So it started from hiring key staff members who are able to do that, and also building the system for us to be able to make 3D-CG films.<\/p>\n

Can you tell me about the computer animation process? Did you start with hand-drawn animation then convert it into computer animation?<\/strong>
\nSo the beginning of the process is pretty similar to what we do with hand-drawn animation. You start sketching the character designs and the set designs on sketchbooks using pencil. From there you start thinking about the plot, and the storyboard is also hand-drawn. Those processes are actually not that different with hand-drawn animation.<\/p>\n

There were some intense, complicated scenes, especially the ones having to do with magic. What was the most difficult scene to animate in computer animation, that might have been different to animate as a hand-drawn scene?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to tell because every scene was very hard. It was very challenging. [Laughs<\/em>]<\/p>\n

So because each scene has its own challenges, there\u2019s not much difference in how they were in the level of [how challenging they were]. It\u2019s hard to say. Even in the quieter sequences, that requires the acting, and the facial expression, and the performance of the characters, while with action scenes, obviously, you need to create dynamics, so the camera moves a lot. There\u2019s a lot of different things required depending on what you\u2019re trying to portray in each scene, so each scene has different challenges. Having said that, the workshop where Earwig and the witch, Bella Yaga, are making potions and spells, that room took us a long time to create. The modeling of that particular room was done in the course of a year, a whole year by one artist who just devoted himself to that room.<\/p>\n

A lot of CG animation movies nowadays is about trying to make things look as realistic as possible, but Earwig and the Witch<\/em> doesn\u2019t do that. It retains that kind of anime style that you see in a lot of Studio Ghibli films, especially in the hair. When you approached the character designs for Earwig and the Witch<\/em>, how did you decided how much realism you would have and how little?<\/strong><\/p>\n

You\u2019re exactly right. If you went the photorealistic path, you could go on forever, you could explore forever, and it\u2019s really not the Studio Ghibli style. \u201cWhere do I go?\u201d was something that I thought about a lot. And what I referenced was stop-motion animation by studios like Laika and Aardman, especially with the level of deformation in the characters and also the sets. And so with the character design, I really referenced and made a similar look [to] the stop-motion animation, especially with something like the hair, like you mentioned, instead of trying to portray each strand of hair, we have captured it in big chunks.<\/p>\n

Also, something like the pupils of the eyes, usually we have highlights in the pupils of the eyes. Instead of doing that with a CG approach, we use more of a hand drawn technique to draw those highlights.<\/p>\n

In the future, do you hope to make more CG animated films under Ghibli? Or will you go back and forth between this and hand-drawn animation?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, if I were younger, I would be able to go back and forth between the two worlds and CG. But I\u2019m not done young anymore so I probably don\u2019t have that much time left to do many films in my life. I would love to challenge a couple more films using CG.<\/p>\n

As the first Ghibli film in four years, what do you hope Earwig and the Witch<\/em> will signal for the new era of Ghibli?<\/strong><\/p>\n

That Ghibli will keep on making films nonstop. And I hope that this symbolize the fact that in order to stay true to our style here at Studio Ghibli, that necessarily doesn\u2019t mean that we should stick with hand drawn animation. I really believe that challenging new things within the studio is the key to staying true to ourselves.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Earwig and the Witch<\/em>\u00a0opens in select theaters February 3, 2021<\/strong> before it makes its streaming debut on HBO Max on\u00a0February 5, 2021<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Goro Miyazaki Interview on Directing Earwig and the Witch \u2013 \/Film” When\u00a0Goro Miyazaki returned to Studio Ghibli in 2015, he found the offices to be completely empty. \u201cNobody was here and it was like storage, very empty,\u201d Miyazaki recalled in an interview with \/Film over Zoom ahead of the release of his upcoming movie\u00a0Earwig and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":169911,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/d13ezvd6yrslxm.cloudfront.net\/wp\/wp-content\/images\/earwig-and-the-witch-1-e1612185784708.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[1568,2970,35109,1570,2086,10294,24695,24697],"class_list":["post-169910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-featured-stories-sidebar","tag-anime","tag-earwig-and-the-witch","tag-features","tag-goro-miyazaki","tag-interviews","tag-studio-ghibi","tag-studio-ghibli"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}