Observation Journal: Five Things to Steal from Porco Rosso

This page of the observation journal features five things to steal from that delightful Studio Ghibli film Porco Rosso, which at the time of these notes Grace Dugan and I had just been to see again.

(Related: previous Five Things to Steal posts and an explanation of what it means, drawn from Austen Kleon’s Steal Like An Artist.)

everything lit golden, then frosted with blue light

I made these notes the day after the Five Things to Steal from Midsomer Murders post, so you might notice recurring characters.

• Reliance on/use of very particular visual language to carry weight of story forward, while story is doing finer work.
  • (Language of Casablanca, etc, here — and I compared this to Sunshine on Leith which lets expected cliches do a lot of quick lifting for characterisation.)
  • I really liked the idea of making a choice of a very distinct aesthetic pay its way, and also to use it as misdirection to conceal a secondary story which is happening in the clues.
  • I made a note to practice writing scenes from different aesthetics (which I was already doing — see posts on aesthetics).

Adding an era and setting aesthetic to the previous page’s mouse

• A story that subtly passes a baton — the role of main character gets passed over and someone else ends the story.
  • Here it’s Fio, who was always the narrator — and it’s worth comparing to Nevil Shute’s No Highway (filmed with James Stewart as No Highway in the Sky), which ends with the narrator’s attention already being turned to new safety complications, and taken away from the winding-up of the main story.
  • I like the potential for combining this with an apprentice/journeyman/master transition (as noted on the previous page).
  • And also a connection to stories where a minor character gradually increases in importance, with a note to play with that in pictures.

somewhere, they still…

• At some point, heroes and villains being rolled together to be allied in gentle nostalgia, and bundled away together into the past as time accelerates.
  • There’s a note here about the passage of a time/dream being the plot rather than the characters.
  • The trick of playing with this is not to be too easily merely sentimental.
  • That sense of the focus of a camera receding on (ex-) main characters.
  • And then the eternal charm of an entirely isolated independent hotel/island/refuge. The last homely house, little groves…

• A character exists who is, incidentally, probably something significant (e.g. a spy), and that is never addressed by the plot.
  • Such a good trope.
  • Connected to notes on secrets.

• Two characters from separate strands of plot who only meet at the very end of a plot, and become instant friends.
  • (Or instant-ish, with respect to Oscar Wilde.)
  • Another variation: where their later relationship has been hinted (allusions, or the story is in flashback), but because they still only meet at the very end you never get to see any of that later connection.

At the bottom of the page, you can see I’ve made a little list of ways to explore some of those fascinations further.

Art/writing exercises

For general five-things exercises, see the end of the previous Five Things to Steal post.

Here is one way to turn a fascination into an activity of your own — basically a situation generator or a make-your-own Mad Libs:

• Pick a story mechanic you find fascinating/a trope you like. (I find it easiest to limit myself to a certain genre).
  E.g. here, the baton-passing between two characters.
• Identify the variables.
  Here, two characters/roles and a metaphorical baton.
• Make a short list of possibilities for each variable. I usually try for at least five of each, often limiting it to the genre, but not always.
  With the example above, it would be two sets of five character roles/jobs (apprentice, journeyman, journalist, head of guild, patron, etc), and then five ‘batons’, which could be e.g. pursuit of justice, delivering a message, investigating a mystery, etc…
• Mix and match.
  By the end of this story, a wealthy patron who has been investigating a mystery eventually passes responsibility for that to an apprentice cabinetmaker. Or vice versa.
• Make a few notes (drawn or written) of characters or scenes this suggests.
• Rinse and repeat.

Crow at McDonald’s

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