What filmmaking techniques does The Boy and the Heron use?

CineCode breaks down 4 techniques in The Boy and the Heron (2023): Hand-Drawn Texture, Autobiographical Distance, Ecological Animism and Animation as Emotional Amplifier.

Who directed The Boy and the Heron?

Hayao Miyazaki directed The Boy and the Heron, released in 2023. CineCode also covers The Castle of Cagliostro (1979), Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), Castle in the Sky (1986), My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Kiki's Delivery Service (1989), Porco Rosso (1992).

What films are similar to The Boy and the Heron?

Films that share techniques with The Boy and the Heron include Ponyo (2008), Spirited Away (2001), My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Flow (2024).

Animation · Adventure · Fantasy

The Boy and the Heron

Hayao Miyazaki, 2023

A boy is grieving his mother's death. A talking grey heron lures him into a mysterious tower, and from there into a world between life and death where the dead and the unborn live side by side. Miyazaki came out of retirement to make it. The film is about grief, inheritance and how hard it is to build something that will outlast you.

1 Cinematography 2 Narrative 1 Editing

At a glance

The Boy and the Heron is a 2023 animation, adventure and fantasy film directed by Hayao Miyazaki. This breakdown covers 4 techniques (1 cinematography, 2 narrative and 1 editing), each with the scene where you can see it. If you like how it is made, Ponyo uses several of the same techniques.

Cinematography

Hand-Drawn Texture

Keeping the handmade look of traditional animation, including slightly uneven pencil lines and visible brushwork in the backgrounds. The small imperfections make the image feel warm and human.

How this film uses it

Studio Ghibli's animators draw every frame by hand, and you can see the texture of paint in each one. Water, fire, feathers and the buildings of impossible worlds all get the same care. You can see the work that went into it, and that makes its own case against smooth digital animation.

Where to see it

The heron's first appearances. The bird's feathers are drawn with the obsessive detail of a natural history illustration, and each feather is a deliberate mark.

Narrative

Autobiographical Distance

Drawing on the filmmaker's own life but keeping it at arm's length, often through a fictional stand-in. The result is precise and unsentimental, and it can question how memory flatters us.

How this film uses it

Mahito grieves for his mother and gets to know the old man who built the tower. Most people read both as Miyazaki thinking about his own career. That is, what he inherited from his mentors and who will carry on after him.

Where to see it

The old architect asking Mahito to be his heir. He wants Mahito to keep building the tower, and you can hear Miyazaki's own questions about succession and legacy in the scene.

Narrative

Ecological Animism

Treating nature as alive and aware, with its own will, hierarchy and sacred status. Animals and spirits respond to people, which argues that the natural world has value of its own.

How this film uses it

The world between life and death is full of parakeets, herons, pelicans and warawara, which are small animated spirits. Each group has its own society, its own hungers and its own sense of right and wrong. The natural world ends up feeling more complete than the human one.

Where to see it

The warawara rising from the sea toward the sky. These birth spirits float up together in a crowd that looks beautiful and solemn at once. It feels like nature is holding its own ceremony.

Editing

Animation as Emotional Amplifier

Using animation, for a whole film or for short sequences inside live action, to make emotions hit harder. Drawn images can show inner feelings that realistic footage can't reach.

How this film uses it

Miyazaki uses the animated world-between to turn grief into an actual place. There is a landscape you can walk through, a tower you can enter and a heron that speaks. What mourning feels like on the inside becomes as solid and easy to move around in as the real world.

Where to see it

Mahito entering the tower and crossing into another world. The place is strange and has its own rules, and his feelings now have a physical shape.

Questions

The Boy and the Heron: quick answers

What filmmaking techniques does The Boy and the Heron use?: CineCode breaks down 4 techniques in The Boy and the Heron (2023): Hand-Drawn Texture, Autobiographical Distance, Ecological Animism and Animation as Emotional Amplifier.
Who directed The Boy and the Heron?: Hayao Miyazaki directed The Boy and the Heron, released in 2023. CineCode also covers The Castle of Cagliostro (1979), Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), Castle in the Sky (1986), My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Kiki's Delivery Service (1989), Porco Rosso (1992).
What films are similar to The Boy and the Heron?: Films that share techniques with The Boy and the Heron include Ponyo (2008), Spirited Away (2001), My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Flow (2024).

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