"Logic is using the front part of the brain, that’s all. But you can’t make a film with logic. Or if..."

“Logic is using the front part of the brain, that’s all. But you can’t make a film with logic. Or if you look at it differently, everybody can make a film with logic. But my way is to not use logic. I try to dig deep into the well of my subconscious. At a certain moment in that process, the lid is opened and very different ideas and visions are liberated. With those I can start making a film. But maybe it’s better that you don’t open that lid completely, because if you release your subconscious it becomes really hard to live a social or family life.

I believe the human brain knows and perceives more than we ourselves realise. The front of my brain doesn’t send me any signals that I should handle a scene in a certain way for the sake of the audience. For instance, what for me constitutes the end of the film, is the scene in which Chihiro takes the train all by herself. That’s where the film ends for me. I remember the first time I took the train alone and what my feelings were at the time. To bring those feelings across in the scene, it was important to not have a view through the window of the train, like mountains or a forest. Most people who can remember the first time they took the train all by themselves, remember absolutely nothing of the landscapes outside the train because they are so focused on the ride itself. So to express that, there had to be no view from the train. But I had created the conditions for it in the previous scenes, when it rains and the landscape is covered by water as a result. But I did that without knowing the reason for it until I arrived at the scene with the train, at which moment I said to myself “How lucky that I made this an ocean” (laughs). It’s while working on that scene that I realised that I work in a non-conscious way. There are more profound things than simply logic that guide the creation of the story.”

- Miyazaki Hayao (via hayao-miyazaki)