Determining a Topic and Learning from Others

My definitive topic selection for the Spring Research Project is Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Out of the two potential topics, this topic interested me the most because I love Studio Ghibli films and I want to give a try at film analysis, which I haven't done by myself before. 

I learned many things from the student presenters at the Research Symposium. One of the things that many of them emphasized was to get familiar with the terminology that my secondary sources are using so that I can start narrowing my search. Nausicaa is a pretty popular scholarly primary source, and I've found a lot of secondary sources focusing on it. So while it's a little intimating for me to find something new to add, one of the presenters said to consider the genre as a whole to find other scholarly works and eventually apply that back to Nausicaa. With my first two secondary sources, I have already started creating a massive evidence notebook where I am picking specific quotes that I think has potential, so that later it'll be a lot easier for me to go back to them. I intend on grabbing quotes and connecting them to other quotes or ideas that I will encounter in my research. I will definelty be rewatching Nausicaa and using the film analysis tools that I learned from my seminar professor Ben and Dr. Jeun. 

Going into this project, I have many provisional research questions:

• What was happening during the time the film/manga was being made(1982-1984)? What time period is the film set in?

• Since this was Miyazaki's early works, what inspired him to make his specific style of film? Does the hand-drawn art style/materiality add to the meaning of the film? 

• How does the film compare to the manga version? How does interacting with the film different than the way the original audience interacted with the manga? Who is the intended audience of the film and manga?

• How does the dystopian environment reflect nuclear threats? eco-disasters? human-exceptionalism (othering of animals)?

• What are the different perspectives of the characters in the film, and what perspectives do they mirror in the real world? 

• How is Nausicaä presented in the film? What makes her different from others? 

• How does Nausicaä challenge gender roles and expectations? What are the binaries in the film that are being challenged?

• What film techniques does Miyazaki use? Exposure, Framing, Lighting, Scale, Camera Movement, Mounts, Special Shots, Editing, Sound, Diegesis, etc.