Anime feature film director Kenji Kamiyama has taken on The Lord of the Rings universe and the new film The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim. With the help of his translator Joseph Chou, he discusses the level of difficulty that this film has not just with the scope but with the expectations of fans of both Tolkien’s original work and Peter Jackson’s films. His deepest hope is that fans can be immersed in the world.
The Contending: What attracted you to the story?
Kenji Kamiyama: When we were looking over the possibilities about what we could adapt into a film the story of Helm Hammerhand was very attractive. The story itself is very short, described only in a few pages, but it has elements that are very familiar to Lord of the Rings. There is no magic happening here, but even without that you know that it fits into this world that Tolkien has built. So in telling the story of Rohan it felt like something that the fans of the original trilogy could appreciate. The story of Helm Hammerhand is a very tragic tale for him as well as for the characters around him as we see the events and motivations that push the story forward. It had so many cinematic possibilities, that is what drew me to the story.
The Contending: You have worked on several anime feature films. With this film, was there a challenge or something that was particularly different from the other films you’ve worked on?
Kenji Kamiyama: I usually work on original titles from scripts I write myself. So this is the first time I worked with a Japanese writer and a New Zealand writer. The expectation around this was another level. You are dealing with the fans of the original text that Tolkien wrote as well as the fans of Peter Jackson’s original trilogy, which creates a whole new level of expectations. So I had to think about the creation of the images in a different way–how the fans would respond. And that has been a constant thought throughout this whole project. The scale of the film was another thing. This is Lord of the Rings so you have to do certain things even though this is hand-drawn animation. So it was just a whole nother level of difficulty and challenges. I’ve said frequently this was the hardest project I have done in my career.
The Contending: I got to see the beginning of the film and I admire the animation, especially some of the background with the detail that went into it. The city of Rohan especially felt very lived in. What was your involvement in creating that animation?
Kenji Kamiyama: This is hand-drawn animation but there are certain things in the script like huge battle sequences with a lot of horses and intricate designs appearing on screen. I wanted to commit to that level of detail. So I employed every technique that’s imaginable. For example, using motion captions for human movements to really help the animators understand how certain human movements would be done, like getting on and off of a horse. Something like that really had to be presented to give them a consistent guide to all the companies we had to work with to get this project done on time.
We also let the animators get experience with horses, literally sending people to horse farms and making them watch and ride and record some of it to have visual information. I also made the horse models for the movement but also to capture the different angles. All that detail needed to be thought out and disseminated to animators for them to pick up and understand what I was trying to achieve. The level of detail that exists in there was part of me not wanting to compromise on any of it. At some point you have to compromise so there are battles you have to choose. But my first instinct is to not pull away from the difficulty and tackle it head on because of the expectation that is around this film. There is a requirement that you have to have battle sequences that will excite people visually.
The Contending: Final thoughts?
Kenji Kamiyama: Me and all the staff poured our hearts and souls trying to craft this film, so that it can be enjoyed by fans of Lord of the Rings but also for the fans of anime as well. All that effort goes into it to make it something worth seeing in theater, because it was built for the theater experience. The highest compliment for me is that people come and are immersed in that world. I can’t wait for the film to be out there and be presented to the world.
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim opens Friday nationwide in theaters only.
