Japanese Animation and New Media
Lecture Four: Chapter Eight: Giving Up the Gun
The purist embodiment of the Forest is, of course, the Shishigami who takes the form of a giant multi-horned deer-like entity during the day. The scene in which Ashitaka first sees the Shishigami is interesting: it begins with a long gentle pan of the viewing position across the forest and then moves into depth to convey Ashitaka’s focus on a herd of deer in a distant clearing. What you do think of this kind of movement into depth? Is it cinematism? To what extent does it rely on closed compositing and optical logistics?
