I finally finished toning for the first third of Small Shen, and am taking a week off so I can work on a short story for a Bento Comics anthology. This month has really flown by… it’s 2012, but I’m wondering where all the time has gone.

I also noticed that I haven’t made a Recommendation for a while, so I’m recommending a no-brainer manga-but-not-quite today: Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (manga)
(1982-1994, Hayao Miyazaki)

If you’re familiar with the work of Studio Ghibli, then you probably know that Nauscaa of the Valley of the Wind was the studio’s first full-length animated movie (a big success for the time). What many may not know is that the director of the film, Hayao Miyazaki, actually started the story as a serialised manga, and continued to write/draw the manga over a period of 12 years, long after the animated film was finished and screened. The end result is two separate stories that start the same, are different lengths, and also end vastly differently. Needless to say, due to the length of the manga, the themes tackled in it are alot more complex than it was in the animated film.

Plot
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind is set in a post-apocalyptic world, where massive pollution has rendered much of the air poisonous to humans, and giant insects ruled the world. What’s left of humanity huddle together in tiny pockets, constantly at war with each other and with the denizens of the insect world. Much of this world is covered by a gigantic, poisonous forest known as the Sea of Corruption, where much of the giant insects live, but where the humans need to don gas masks to survive.

In this setting lives the main character Nausicaa, who is the princess of a small coastal kingdom called the Valley of the Wind. The sea air protects this little hamlet from the poisonous air, but trouble comes when an aircraft full of refugees escaping from the powerful kingdom of Torumekia crashes near the Valley. The aircraft was carrying precious cargo – a stone that can activate a powerful biotech monster that the Torumekians were planning to use (possibly against their arch-enemies, the Doroks). When the stone comes into Nausicaa’s posession, she becomes drawn into the battle between the Torumekians and the Doroks, under the command of Princess Kushana of Torumekia.

Why I Recommend this Manga
Well, it’s Hayao Miyazaki’s work. What more can I say? The man has crafted a complex eco-fable here, a highly-enjoyable piece of science fiction irregardless of which side of the global-warming fence you’re from. Perhaps the biggest joy for me was to read more about the characters I knew as a child from the animated film, and appreciate how Miyazaki was able to carve two different-but-similar stories from the same mould, each being self-contained and with a satisfactory ending. For that reason, I suggest watching the 2-hour animated film first, then reading the manga. The manga fleshes out fully what the animated film cannot, due to time constraints.

Apart from the complex story, the art is also worth a big mention. Animators always make interesting manga artist, probably because their methodology of story-telling comes from a slightly different place from those who only draw manga. I find the sequential art of animators simultaneously more complex and simple than that of manga artists. By that, I mean that while their character and world designs tend to be more simple, the way they place their characters and the details they place in their environment tend to be more complex. Miyazaki’s work is a perfect example of this.

If you’re familiar with his style, then you’ll know the man’s not particularly great at drawing faces. He has a simple style that is adequate for distinguishing different people, but that’s about it. Where he truly excels, is in his backgrounds, which are present in nearly every panel. Animators-turned-manga-artists almost never do the “character floating in a void” thing that some manga artists do. There’s also the incredible detail on the planes, the machines, the dress, the flora and giant insects that inhabit this fantasy world. The characters don’t have an awful lot of complex clothing designs on them, but they’re designed in a way that lets you know, at a glance, what faction they’re from. Either way, I have no complaints about his art.

His story-telling is also worth mentioning, since there is so much stuff happening on each page that it hardly feels like a Japanese manga. Infact, his style seems more similar to European styles, where the cinematic quality is in the detail of the individual panels, not so much in the panel-to-panel transitions. This gives the feeling of an extremely-compressed story, which may take some time to get used to. While I wouldn’t do this kind of story-telling myself, I must mention that it’s not at all a bad thing, because it’s consistent. Miyazaki is a consistent story-teller, and while things may get confusing in action sequences, there’s never any mistake about where he’s heading with the story.

All-in-all, there isn’t much more praise I can heap on Hayao Miyazaki, whether his work is in film or on the page. It’s just a matter of find his work to read, in a form that does justice to the details in his artwork. My Nausicaa books is printed in A5 format, which is smaller than I recommend. This work was originally printed in A4 format, which I believe is the best format to read it in. If possible, I suggest you find the bigger size.

I’ve finished the pencils of chapters 1 & 2 of Small Shen, and is waiting for feedback. I’m also attempting to make the white bird for Angry Birds, though I probably won’t do any more Angry Bird patterns after this next one. So far, it’s looking okay… we shall see next week.

On the other hand, this week I recommend an non-fiction book. On a subject not a great deal of people think about.

The Hollywood Economist: The Hidden Financial Reality Behind the Movies
(2010, Edward Jay Epstein)

I read a fair amount of non-fiction books, mostly about topics that interest me at any given moment (just about everything, all the time). I picked up this book after reading some of the columns written by journalist Edward Jay Epstein for Slate and the Financial Times, about how Hollywood runs itself as a business. I’ve been a fan of cinema for a while, but it always surprises me how very few people know how movies are made from a financial perspective. Sure, we all know about movie stars and directors and producers and screenwriters and gossip, but how many people actually know how contracts and deals are put together in Hollywood? Considering it takes at least $100 million to make a blockbuster movie these days, don’t anyone wonder where all that money comes from? And where it goes?

Why I Recommend this Book
The Hollywood Economist came along at a particular time for me, when I was looking for something to read about the business of movies in Hollywood. I wanted a book that was (a) easy to read, (b) about movies as a business, not movies as a cultural product, and (c) not about gossip or scandal, but about money, distribution and contracts. The Hollywood Economist filled all three of these niches beautifully. If you’re looking for something that will tell about the wheelin’ and dealin’ that goes on behind the scenes in Hollywood that is written in plain, simple English, this is the book to read.

• Easy to Read - Most of the columns in this book comes from Epstein’s blogs and articles, so they are written in an accessible language, and are reasonably short while also being packed with information. This was a good thing from my perspective, but some people may also argue that this book suffers from lax editing, since they are all articles written separately, then thrown together for this one purpose. I don’t have an issue with it, but this also means that nearly all the articles can be found for free online, either at Epstein’s blog or on Slate. So you don’t need to buy this book to read all the content, unless you believe that journalists should be paid for their hard work. I certainly do, so I bought this book (There’s also an e-book available).

• About Movies as a Business, Not as a Cultural Product – I believe that books about economics should be dry and readable, not emotional and opinionated. There are lots of books that claim to “rip the lid” off Hollywood, but as much as I love movies, I don’t want to read yet another article about how movies were so much better in the ’70s / before Jaws and Star Wars / before movie studios got bought up by multi-national corporations. The Hollywood Economist manages that feat nicely, by not mentioning the content of movies at all. In fact, it seems that Epstein could care less about whether Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (starring Angelina Jolie) is a good movie or not – he’s just interested in where the money came from (a combination of German tax shelters, international pre-sales, and British tax-relief), and where the money ultimately went (into a deep dark vault, where no one who was meant to get a cut of the money will ever get it). The press reported in 2001 that Tomb Raider cost $94 million to make, when Paramount only put $8.7 million of its own money in. The movie eventually made over $100 million from theatres, DVD sales, television and other rights, but on the profit-and-loss statement, it still claims to have lost money. Financial wizardry much?

• Not about Gossip or Scandal – Whenever anyone mentions Hollywood, the first thing people think about is scandal. Who is married to who, while sleeping with whom; who went on a screaming tirade at who, etc. This book is interesting in that while it manages to mention famous names without sound like a gossip column, it also shows a side of famous Hollywood stars you never get to read about in the tabloids. Arnold Schwarzenegger got a deal that benefited him to the max for Terminator 3, whether the movie was made or not. Tom Cruise may have alienated audiences on Oprah, but the man hammered out such a deal for Mission Impossible that he made more money than the movie studio. Michael Moore got paid $21 million for Fahrenheit 9/11. And so on.

This book also mentions things about the movie business I didn’t know existed. Apart from the magical accounting, there’s also the importance of insurance, the fact that movies nearly always lose money at the box office (even though that’s what entertainment journalism focuses on), and how you can make money by mining bits of silver from dead movie prints. All very eye-opening, but at the same time, a tad depressing if you’re a newbie looking to break into Hollywood. Truth is, the business painted in this book is not a pretty one, and it’s also a business in transition. With the dawn of the digital age, movies are increasingly being undermined by piracy, internet competition, shrinking distribution channels and the global financial crisis. Can the movie industry survive to make money another day?

The book never answers this question, which is probably the biggest problem with it. I mentioned earlier that I didn’t mind the book being a collection of blog articles, but this has also left it without a properly tied ending. That perhaps can’t be helped since the story is still developing, but that’s also exactly why other people would recommend a previous incarnation of the book, called The Big Picture, over The Hollywood Economist. However, I personally opted for The Hollywood Economist because I needed more up-to-date information, especially when it’s about an industry that is rapidly changing.

Epstein still updates his blog with new articles, and perhaps we’ll see yet another more updated book on the same subject in the near future. For now, The Hollywood Economist is a worthy read.