Why You Never Lose the Action in a Miyazaki Chase
Reading the Frame: What 40 Years of Castle in the Sky Still Teaches About Staging
Castle in the Sky just turned 40, and its train chase still teaches action better than almost anything made since. You can play that scene at full speed, with kids running, a car leaping onto the tracks, villains closing in, and you never lose the action. It is beautifully crafted. Once you can see how, you can use it in your own work.
Action is one of the hardest things to stage. When a shot is not working, most of us reach straight for more. More speed, more cuts, more movement. Usually that is what broke it in the first place. While I was working on My Freaky Family, the opening sequence was developed in parts, and when we put all the beats together it did not flow. It was choppy. We ended up going back over the whole sequence, and most of the clean-up came down to the camera reading the action. The lesson I keep relearning is to step back and ask why the sequence is not reading before I try to fix it.
Here is the idea the whole scene hangs on. Every action shot is a balance between two things: the point of interest, which is whatever the frame is really about, the character, the vehicle, the prop, and how the camera is viewing that action. When those two dance together, the shot is easy to follow. When they fight, you lose the audience. That is the whole game. Everything below is just Miyazaki playing it well.
The first move is restraint. In the opening of the chase the camera sits perfectly still and lets the characters do all the work. The kids start small in frame, run toward us, duck out of sight, then pop back up. Nothing fancy is happening with the camera, so your eye has one clear job. It is tempting to move the camera the moment things get exciting, but a still frame is often what makes a busy moment readable.
The second move is the one I love most, because it feels like a magic trick. In one shot Miyazaki clearly establishes that the train is moving. In the very next shot almost nothing moves. The train just wobbles a little, the character runs on the spot, and yet your brain reads the whole thing as fast and forward, because the previous shot already told it the train is travelling. He plants the motion early so a nearly static frame can carry the speed. If you did not have that setup shot, the same frame would look strange and stalled.
The third move is contrast, and directing the eye. The shot is split into three depths: distant, mid and foreground. The distant part shows how fast we are travelling, the mid carries the action of the characters, and the foreground holds the large, static shape that acts as a reference for everything else in motion. Nothing competes for your attention, because each depth is given one clear job.
So here is the thing to try this week. Take one action beat you are working on, a storyboard panel or a rough scene, and ask two questions. What is the single point of interest here, and is the camera helping it or fighting it? Then try holding the camera still and letting the character carry the motion, or planting the movement one shot early so the next one can breathe. You do not need forty years of Ghibli craft to use this. You just need to see it once.
If you want to watch me draw straight over the frames and walk the whole chase shot by shot, the full breakdown is up now on the channel.
👉 Watch the full breakdown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHNYDZHK888 · Subscribe for more animation craft breakdowns: https://www.youtube.com/@rememberKate-h5b
Until next time, keep animating that entertains.