What I learned making The Red Turtle with Studio Ghibli Earlier this year, the latest Studio Ghibli film garnered the kind of critical plaudits the renowned Japanese animation giants are used to. […]

Earlier this year, the latest Studio Ghibli film garnered the kind of critical plaudits the renowned Japanese animation giants are used to.

But The Red Turtle was different.

For the first time in its 32-year history, the Japanese studio collaborated, drafting in Oscar-winning Dutch director Michaël Dudok de Wit for a co-production.

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The dialogue-free film, about a shipwrecked man who encounters the titular life-changing creature, was a hit. It scooped the Un Certain Regard prize at the Cannes Film Festival and received a Best Animated Feature nomination at the Oscars.

“I wouldn’t have dared [contacting them],” Dudok de Wit tells i when asked how the collaboration came about.

“They’re secretive, they do things their way and on their terms.”

Having been impressed by Dudok de Wit’s short films – especially his Oscar-winning animation Father and Daughter – the studio sent a letter expressing their interest in producing a film written and directed by him.

“It was an ecstatic moment to receive that,” he gushes. “I knew before arriving at the end of the letter that I was going to say yes.”

“I asked if I could borrow some animators. They said ‘no, we need them ourselves, they’re not easy to find.'”

Faced with the prospect of producing his first feature film, he wasn’t daunted by the fact he would have to be married to a project for an estimated four years.

It turned out to be nine.

“I knew I’d have to sacrifice a lot to be totally with the film,” he recalls.

But to spend that many years on one project and be “totally within a universe” was something that attracted the director.

‘You want me to to come to Tokyo?’

The studio was keen to keep a decidedly European production. “They said: ‘you write it, you propose a visual style, you’ll direct it, and you’ll make it entirely in Europe,'” recalls Dudok de Wit.

He admits that for him to direct a Japanese team would have been challenging; not least for the language barrier, but also for an unfamiliarity with “their particular way of working.”

“They have strong, well established methods; it’s a way that works, it’s efficient,” he says. “They’re very, very efficient.”

“I asked if I could borrow some animators. They said ‘no, we need them ourselves, they’re not easy to find.'”

To speak or not to speak

The film is notable not just for its beautiful, hand-drawn visuals and moving central story, but also for the fact it features no speech at all.

That wasn’t always the plan, says Dudok de Wit. The original script did feature “some” speech.

“There’s occasionally a Westerner working in a team but it’s unusual.”

But something wasn’t quite right, and despite tweaks and improvements from Dudok de Wit and his co-writer Pascale Ferran, “it felt alienating, like you were pulled out of the story.”

The director was still sure the film couldn’t do without speech, until one day, Ghibli phoned him, saying, “we think it would be even better without dialogue”.

He initially protested their suggestion. But after a back and forth he thought they were right.

“I liked the simplicity of it. The purpose was never to create a strange experiment, just an ordinary film where people talk, but you don’t see them talk – you don’t need to follow their conversations.”

Learning from Ghibli

Dudok de Wit says Ghibli were actually more interested in how he worked, rather than the other way around.

“It was alien to them. They’ve got a homogeneous team – everybody is Japanese,” he says. “There’s occasionally a Westerner working in a team but it’s unusual.”

“In the West we like reinventing the wheel. We like creating a team out of freelancers and re-establishing how we’re going to work.”

One thing the director took away from his time were the cultural differences that made working on a project that “cost millions, involved hundreds of people, and challenged the reputation of the studio” a relatively stress-free experience.

“They’re careful with creating relationships,” he adds, “but once a relationship’s there, they trust you deeply.”

“I worked for years without a contract because there was a direct trust. They didn’t always understand me, and they didn’t always agree with me – and vice versa – but in the long-term there was a deep trust that I could totally count on.”

A complex, poetic alternative to Hollywood

He argues the situation could have been different somewhere like America, where “if something goes wrong, you immediately take someone to court”.

“Because the trust isn’t good enough, it has to be established in a contract.”

The result of the process was one of Studio Ghibli’s most well-received efforts; a modern classic that’s both a love-letter to nature, and a heartbreaking examination of life and death.

The premise of the film starts simply with a man castaway on a tropical island, but Dudok de Wit points out that “it’s not a Robinson Crusoe story about creating a home.”

“It’s about who you are when you’re all alone in nature and have no one to reflect your individuality.

“He wants go home, but he can’t and he feels stuck there, then a young woman comes into the story, and there’s a chemistry between them.

From there, he says, the story “gets more complex and poetic.”

The Red Turtle is available on DVD and Blu-ray from 25 September