It is a group project. I selected a totally different film with Oliver though, at the beginning of the project we’ve discussed what we will have at the end. Despite I always tell myself not to worry too much about what the final output is going to be. (It seems that I mentioned it from the very first week.)
I chose the film called 【The Secret World of Arrietty】. This is an animated film. I think you’ve seen the same series of Miyazaki movies — Spirited Away. This series of films always bring me a sense of warmth and let me think of my childhood so easily. Sunshine of childhood and the dappled shadows of the trees. That’s the summer in my memory — of course, and the fresh watermelon and my colorful imagination. There’s always a glimpse in movies that reminds me of them.
The Secret World Of Arrietty is a film adapted from Mary Norton’s 1952 British children’s book The Borrowers. It focuses on a family of tiny people who live beneath the floorboards of a country house.
Like nearly all the films from Japan’s justly celebrated Studio Ghibli, The Secret World Of Arrietty lacks anything resembling a traditional villain. When conflict does arise, it comes from people with moderately clashing agendas.
Arrietty and her family who are trying to survive in the human living environment are accidentally discovered by a human when borrowed tissue paper and a sugar cube. The human boy Shawn who had a heart condition tried to make friends with Arrietty. But he also brought Arrietty’s family lots of troubles. She and her family encountered a series of dangers and finally escaped with the help of Shawn and moves to a new home. These two main characters depend on each other and grow together. An indifferent and pessimistic boy is touched by Arrietty’s optimism and tenacity, hoping that they will all have a good result in the end.
Oliver and I watched the whole film together. In the first week, we talked about a few things that struck me about the film and what MindMap should do. In fact, in the first week, I had a wrong understanding of the theme “Structure and Morphology” of the project. I have been analyzing the narrative techniques of the film for a long time, so I did not extract too much useful information from the MindMap of the first week. Oliver said the structure of good films has been analyzed by many people already. I felt overwhelmed. Until I got the feedback from James.
So over the next week, I focused more on my personal understanding of the film. I went through several important plots and tried to summarize them in words. I also reworked the MindMap and mood boards. This brought me to my 6 major concepts. They are Symbiosis, duality, breakout, delicacy, scale, and Tenacity respectively.
The next step was to develop my visual language in these 6 directions. Symbiosis. It is represented very obviously in the film. Arrietty helped Shawn regain his confidence. After all, Shawn always thought he was going to die of a heart attack soon. And he? Shawn’s house provided the Arrietty family with necessities and helped Arrietty save her mom. Symbiosis came to my mind as an image of countless soft vines intertwined with each other. They depend on each other to grow, upward, and absorb the sunlight. So I drew these abstract lines. (If you observed, you will find a hand in it.)
Of course, I’ve tried other ways to embody. Shawn said “You are a part of my heart.”, so I was thinking, what if what was once a whole was forced apart? So, I sewed the sliced apples together forcibly and violently. And banana peels, of course.
Duality. All right. The cause was that Shawn had done more than Arrietty expected and brought her troubles. I started thinking about coins. There’s a saying that goes, each coin has 2 sides. I thought, the thing itself, is also two-sided. So it’s not hard to explain why I made a lot of coin stuff. Including the rubbings, this is the result of my coin flip. There is also a philosophical problem. When the coin stops spinning, do you know which side of the coin appears? Pattern or number? There is a one in two chance that someone will guess wrong. How’s that? Things tend to go out of your control. Then I came up with the idea of binary. In my concept, there are only 1 and 0 in the binary world. I converted them into simple shapes. Just like that. As for the light and shadow, it was a very interesting experiment. I made shadows with the simplest objects and let the shadows look like something else. Look at things from another angle, maybe they will be different.
Arrietty’s parents had told her that to survive, she had to hide. However, she broke the rule. She made friends with the human boy. These restrictions, which included going out only at night, curbed her curiosity and longing for the outside world. So when I talked about the breakout, I thought about breaking out of a cage, break out of bondage.
Delicacy. Arrietty is so tiny and vulnerable. In some ways, so is Shawn. I had to use some delicate flowers to reflect it.
Although they are all flowers, there are still some strong ones. The thorny rose, and the daisy in the ruins. That’s what I meant by “tenacity”. (The blueberry that I crushed was just trying to express a mood. Just feel it!)
The most obvious feature left is the contrast in size. I call it “scale”. I bought some mini character models (Oliver suggested! thanks!). It worked great to have them with my headphones or candies. Lastly, these models are an exhibit that I saw when I went to the mall in the holidays. They are so tiny that I thought of Arrietty when I saw them. I swear I didn’t choose this film for these early shots, but it was a coincidence that I used this material. Accumulation of materials is very important because you never know when you will need them.
I ended up making a book. There were some details I didn’t mention like I put in some lines from the film. I’ve put a link to the book here if you’re interested.
