Ponyo

🌊 Interesting Fact: Ponyo (2008) — Hayao Miyazaki completely isolated himself in a cliffside house in the small port town of Tomonoura for two months to deeply observe the ocean and local life before beginning the storyboards. His goal was to make the sea act as a living, breathing entity rather than a simple background, which resulted in the water having its own distinct personality and emotional reactions throughout the movie. The production team took a highly unconventional approach to the sound design by utilizing human voices to create the majority of the sound effects, including the movement of the heavy waves and the magical occurrences. This conscious decision aimed to give the movie a distinctly organic and warm atmosphere, purposefully distancing the final product from the synthesized and digital sounds commonly found in modern animation.