there is Magic in this world if you have the eyes to see it you don't have to go on an expedition
into the Lost heart of the Jungle you don't have to take tea with the fairies in their
court it's here right now it's just hard to notice but you could see it once it was there
in the tree in your backyard the video game you get lost in the fear you felt at the shadows in
your closet the world was bigger back then and more willing to play along it defied reality to
be what you saw in it that tree really did scrape the clouds you really were the hero in that game
the monster is really did want to come out and Gobble you up perhaps that's all changed now
perhaps you've forgotten how to see it maybe it's gone away
but the magic it's still there if you look carefully enough you could find it again and
in a way few other pieces of fiction I've ever seen could manage the movie My Neighbor Totoro
really helps there is no way to watch this film and come away unaffected if only for a moment
the clouds will lift from your eyes the world will seem so much wider and so much more wonderful it's
such an incredible thing for any piece of media to be able to do for its audience and I think
it could translate to any kind of art we want to make a magic that just about anyone could wield
[Music]
one of the best things in life is learning which is probably why you're here to begin
with unfortunately not everyone learns the same public school is not quite a one-size-fits-all
option and a lot of the artists and creative types Among Us end up missing out on a lot of
precious education as a result fortunately there is a shockingly easy fun and highly
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Studio Ghibli films are incredibly special to me I've slowly been picking my way through them for
years giving myself the time to savor each unique experience they have to offer watching one of
these is a little like a holiday to me can fill me with enough joy and wonder to last the entire year
but somehow I've not been particularly eager to watch My Neighbor Totoro it always seemed like
it would be a break from ghibli's tradition of leaving interpretation up to the audience
seeing images of these Fantastical little creatures and the children laughing and
just being super saccharine and adorable I guess I just thought it would Pander the
way any self-proclaimed kids movie does but I could not have possibly been more wrong
make no mistake Totoro is a cute movie exceptionally cute it's about two girls whose
father takes them out to live in the country near the hospital where their mother is recovering from
a long-term illness almost immediately May and Satsuki begin to discover a variety of Fantastical
creatures inhabiting this new world the Totoro goblins living in the forest behind their home
the soot Sprites clustered in the shadows the cat bus running through the night sky it's exactly
what these girls need during this time in their life and they embrace it with an amount of energy
and joy and love that only children are able to hold in their hearts these are the things that
draw us to the movie this is what we mistake as the source of the film's magic but the majority
of the film's run time is also very grounded full of carefully detailed realistic relatable moments
when they move into their new home it appears so much larger on the inside and the sisters become a
whirlwind of excitement running around exploring it when a typhoon rattles the house the family
has to find ways to comfort each other when may is lonely and sad and having a hard time coping
with the fact that their mother is in the hospital she shows up in the middle of satsuki's school day
and has to sit through class with her big sister it's surprising to see this much realism in a
Children's Fantasy movie normally when realism shows up in movies like this it's pathetic not
pathetic but pathetic with a B an attempt to undercut the Wonder and ground things a little
not so here they play it extremely straight to the point of being downright Stark at times but that's
what makes it so special the fantasy isn't some weird occurrence it's not a spectacle it's part
of their lives the notion that there should be a family of totoros living in the woods or an army
of soot Sprites in the Attic or a cat bus flying through the sky is no more an exaggeration of
the child's world than the impossible scale of their new home as they explore it or the
overwhelming weight of their mother's stay in the hospital whether or not Totoro is real isn't
important he affects them he is a child's hope in a dark place and that is a sort of magic [Music]
so far it just sort of sounds like I'm talking about magical realism movies like Pan's Labyrinth
and the killing of a sacred deer certainly have magic in them but it's more of a device magic is
a metaphor a vessel for a theme a spectacle that makes an otherwise very realistic experience very
enchanting without sacrificing the Deep tone My Neighbor Totoro might sound like it fits that bill
perfectly but really it's kind of the opposite of that in a talk he gave to his sixth grade class
Miyazaki tried to explain different perspectives and all the room for creativity they provide what
does the world look like through different eyes birds are so in tune with the wind can they see it
does it look and feel to them the way roads feel under your feet what about bumblebees they move
so fast and raindrops must be so large for them it must be a bit like looking at Water floating
around blob-like in zero gravity maybe they can even dodge raindrops that way and fish well they
must have no concept of being underwater to them we're just in the air the world truly seems to
change depending on how you look at it sure maybe a raindrop is roughly always the same size but the
experience of it is so vastly different from one point of view to the next if you were to
see it from a Bumblebee's perspective for the first time it would look like a fantasy world
to you and if we can capture that difference in perspective what it means what it feels like we
can change the world an act of magic a child's world isn't going to be quite as alien to us as
a bumblebees but there's still enough difference in scale and understanding for that magic to occur
this is why Totoro and the other magical creatures make so much sense beside the
rest of the more grounded material in the movie although it tries to show us the world through
May in sanski's eyes as adults most viewers are past the point of being truly awed by a piece
of rotting wood or some random acorns to the girls this stuff is exciting and fun and new
but the adult viewer needs the other part of their world too the reality that there could be
little creatures living in the shadows big furry goblins in the woods cat buses riding the wind
we need those to clear the clouds of Common Sense from our eyes and see the way that they do vanity
was planning the movie Miyazaki said he wanted to create a film about what we have forgotten
what we don't notice and what we are convinced we have lost believing that we still have these
things and he did if only for a moment My Neighbor Totoro helps us to see the world as a child might
that is the magic of this movie but not just this movie this can work virtually anywhere
Miyazaki calls this technique a moving perspective which he compares to a plastic model perspective
as an animator he spent years trying to figure out the best ways to convey experiences when it came
to mechs and vehicles he'd find himself holding a plastic model in front of his face and moving
it past his eyes to get a sense of scale spatial depth closeness but it always sort of fell short
it felt like a symbol for the experience he wanted the audience to have rather than the experience
itself he feels the same way about a lot of rote animation techniques like standardized walk cycles
and scrolling Parallax backgrounds but when you actually get into the vehicle and experience the
world in motion That's A New Perspective the world as you perceive it changes you can try to imagine
what it might look like from up high or whizzing by at 80 miles per hour but until you've seen
it for yourself it will be hard to actualize for any of you writers out there this sounds
a lot like an extreme version of write what you know as if you can't write about anything you've
never experienced experience certainly helps but I think when Miyazaki is getting that is that we
can do better than just accurately representing the material we can try to dig a little deeper
and find how the changed perspective affects the world's feel what that difference means to those
experiencing it and then let that inform how we convey it sometimes it makes things less rational
the tree is flying by it 80 miles per hour aren't actually a blurred ribbon of green and gray but
for that brief span of time it's what they become yes things might be quite a lot bigger Through
The Eyes of a bumblebee but what is it like to have enough time to avoid the rain as it falls
there must be a special kind of leisure within that world time must seem to move so much more
slowly and so much more comfortably I can almost imagine bumblebee sitting on flower petal couches
chatting about their day and sipping on nectar yes the wind must feel as familiar to a bird as
the ground does under your feet but what would it be like to walk along it I bet the air would seem
as though it were filled with Pathways highways roads hidden thoroughfares Birds must feel like
Trailblazers all the time yes fish must not think of being underwater at all so what creatures must
lurk up there in the Deep bright air we must be as mysterious to them as they are to us
and yes Satsuki and may our children their world must be larger and stranger and more
exciting Common Sense hasn't yet clouded their Vision there may yet be a Totoro in the trees in
their world that's not a fantasy at all but of course animals and children will see the world
a little differently that's a given the kicker here is that this works for other perspectives
as well a nurse sees the world differently from a butcher a mother sees it differently from a
maiden a lonely robot in an old foundry sees it differently from a human watching a YouTube video
by trying to acquire a moving perspective of the world you're creating in your art whether
it belongs to a bee or a bird or a fish or a child or anything else you can think of
you can create experiences that are more than accurate that change the world that
make us feel that change rather than just see it all you need is a good imagination
and a willingness to look past the concrete let things be a little weird if it's a more honest
perspective Let There Be toad Rose in the trees do that and you've found your magic again [Music]
speaking of which there's actually Another Kind of Magic that I think a lot of us creatives
have really been missing out on what I've been finding is that the more I venture outside the
realm of Fiction and Fantasy the more I'd learn about maths and Sciences the more creative I am
able to be there's a whole world out there that it's easy to see as inaccessible when you're in
the Arts but it doesn't have to be our sponsor brilliant.org can make all of that easier and
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anyway that's all for this one thanks for watching
and keep making stuff up I'll see you next week bye [Music]
foreign [Music]