{"post":{"data":{"id":"24478","type":"post","attributes":{"title":"

What makes for the best scenario?

","authors":"Hayao Miyazaki","publisher":"","id":24478,"created_at":"2020-12-10T01:02:46.396Z","updated_at":"2020-12-10T02:27:32.009Z","plugins":"{}","slug":"edlasj-what-makes-for-the-best-scenario-2","form_url":"/posts/edlasj-what-makes-for-the-best-scenario-2","body":"

When people talk about making films, they often use fancy and hip phrases like “being creative,” and in reality you do have creative choices until you select the topic for your film. Say, for example, that you decide to make a film where a heroine is a junior high school girl wondering how to live. Well, you can choose all that yourself. You’re choosing one possibility out of an infinite number of candidates, so when you all write your scenario, you have the choice of what motif to use.

Now, you may make this choice based on some deep subconscious desire, but once you have decided to make your film, you’re not really making the film—it will be making you. For example, you may decide that a particular person lives in a particular era in a particular setting, and you can go partway like this in developing your story. But then when things start to develop further these elements will start making the film. And then the problem will be that when you try to twist the story in this or that direction to fit your own tastes, the film may fall apart.

I often tell people that films are something that exist not in your mind, but somewhere above you [points above head]. Once you’ve decided to make a film and put the process in motion, in modern Japan, at this age, with the physical conditions imposed upon you, with the staff you have… well, there is only one ideal way for you to carry out your work with your own internal conditions and all the energy you possess. There has to be that certain way. And the trick thus becomes finding it.

It’s no use trying to get off easily, thinking that if someone else made such-and-such movie in such-and-such a way, then you can just use that way, too, because it won’t stick. Because it won’t be the best way. And when you realize it won’t work, you’ll simply have to start searching for your own idea. Yet you won’t find it inside your head.

It’s one of the reasons I spend a lot of time on continuity sketches when making a film. It’s something that you have to face directly and can’t run from. You just have to wrestle with it. And when you’re stuck, something deep in your brain will start thinking for you… That’s the only way to look at it. It’ll be some experience from the past that you don’t recall, some fusion of a variety of things, something that will make sense to you if you do it in a specific way, something that appears to be at the limits of your ability… And it’ll probably pop out all of a sudden. So the issue for me is whether I can force myself into that state. That’s the most important thing for me. And if I can, then I’m not making a film; instead, it feels like the film is making me.

What I am trying to say here is that, when you create your scenarios, there is always only one ideal scenario. There is always something with a particular motif that may not be in you, but will always be somewhere here [points above head]. To write a scenario means to search for this.

It doesn’t matter if you’re thinking about using a particular iconography or wondering how this or that will develop if you add some particular something. Films were once made from nothing. In fact the first films were merely moving pictures shot of plays being performed on stage. Film techniques such as close-ups and so forth only developed much later.

And actually, all this stuff about methodology of writing scenarios and making films is a fiction anyway. If you have an idea of what you really want to make, you can make it. Of that I’m certain. And once you feel that you can somehow make your film, you can. And when that happens you won’t make it using your normal common sense; the most important thing will be for you to try as hard as possible to find the intent of what you imagine, the thing that seems to be floating around here [points above head]. Without this, you’ll never be able to make a film.

When you do think of this—whether we call it your thoughts, ideas, philosophy, or even your feelings—in the midst of this thing that will be your foundation, you will find included not only your daily life, but world affairs, politics, and even economics. And, as I mentioned earlier, you may not be able to easily integrate everything—even the things that you are most interested in and are the foundation of your world—but the whole world is also struggling because it can’t do this; it’s normal that you can’t either. But as you struggle, I hope that you will finally experience being made by your film.

—

This is an excerpt from a speech given on August 6, 1994, from the Association of Scenario Writers, Japan; published in Scenario, January 1995.

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to find this?","user":{"id":1,"avatar":"https://storage.googleapis.com/jellyposter-store/user/1/avatar/2d06aaeb01db8fbc93b39c6ddf62d5df.jpg","username":"cindy"}},{"to":4483,"from":4402,"id":3374572471,"text":"✨","user":{"id":1,"avatar":"https://storage.googleapis.com/jellyposter-store/user/1/avatar/2d06aaeb01db8fbc93b39c6ddf62d5df.jpg","username":"cindy"}},{"to":1273,"from":1262,"id":667070239,"text":"Hayao directed his first film at 38 years old.","user":{"id":1,"avatar":"https://storage.googleapis.com/jellyposter-store/user/1/avatar/2d06aaeb01db8fbc93b39c6ddf62d5df.jpg","username":"cindy"}}],"contributors":"Cindy Wu","body_citations":[]},"relationships":{"uploads":{"data":[]},"citations":{"data":[]},"backlinks":{"data":[{"id":"24832","type":"backlink"}]},"figures":{"data":[]}}},"included":[{"id":"24832","type":"backlink","attributes":{"id":24832,"imprint_type":"","imprint_date":"","publisher":"","target":null,"post_id":25672,"generated_post_id":24478,"source_post_path":"/posts/tplubb-github-as-a-guide","title":" github as a guide ","authors":"Cindy Wu"}}]},"currentUser":{"data":{"attributes":{"name":"Anonymous","avatar_url":"/assets/avatar-bf489bd933e198667b26b776cbd7d0fc921ee585791fc68cca86a6187a8781f6.png"}}},"isProcessing":false,"editable":false}

What makes for the best scenario?

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