Hello!
If you’re reading this then you’re probably someone who likes behind-the-scenes content. Welcome. You’re just like me. I’m going to briefly break down some of the more interesting bits here followed by the list of sources used.

THE IDEA

I began writing this piece on February 27, 2022. Throughout my years digging through Zelda interviews and articles, I had come across the “Miniature Garden” phrase numerous times, and quickly got a sense that this phrase was important to the series. Initially, the plan was to make a short 10 minute video explaining the meaning behind this phrase. Something quick and snappy and easily digestible.

The more I discovered during my research phase however, the bigger the project grew. Coming across the term “Hakoniwa” blew the walls down and opened up a whole new aspect to the research. Suddenly things weren’t only Zelda-related anymore but Japanese culture related. This made things tricky due to the fact that I’m not Japanese. I always err on the side of caution when it comes to recounting history and events that belong to a culture other than my own, and so I doubled down on my sources, cross-checking every sentence and phrase.

The end result of this dense research is a video packed with quotes and research papers. I figured the more I can get others talking for me, the more confident I can be about my thesis. You’ll find that this video contains no opinions, but is a mass delivery on what is pretty close to every mention and discussion on the subject.

The gathering of the data though was only one third of the struggle. The next challenge was organising all this research into chapters and attempting to craft an arc. Naturally, this took some thinking and much trial and error. There were rewrites upon rewrites and commonly, these rewrites happened during production as well, some of them all the way up to the day before launch.

Bringing it all together with voice over, music, design, footage and animation is the last challenge and lately I’ve been finding this phase the most difficult. Not because I find the production process hard, but because it doesn’t grab my interest as much as the research does these days. The hunt for information, and maybe even the hunt for truth, is much more exciting to me now. I have a feeling that this is how it’s supposed to be.

WHAT IS THE SOUL OF THIS?

Almost since the beginning, I knew this video was going to feel different than my others. My last few videos leant on the more dramatic and cinematic side of things. At the heart of those videos was a personal question of “can I move an audience?", and dramatic music and emotional storytelling was the result.

But for this piece, a video about gardening and design, I knew I had to do something different.

In the back of my mind, I was imagining this piece to be one that calms people. In the modern age of frantic dopamine-chasing snackable content, my feeling is that we’re thirsty for something more soulful. Something that is bursting with intention and artistic integrity. Something that slows us down and touches on something human and relatable.

Thats the experiment this time around. I’m excited to hear everyone’s thoughts about this.

THE VISUAL IDEA

Running with this idea of creating something human and soulful, I decided on a paper-craft visual aesthetic early on. For this, I recruited my good pal Nickolai Boulton to help me out and he designed a collection of flowers and plants for me to use. These elements pop up many times throughout the video as a recurring visual motif.

When it came to the overall mood, I chose to lean into a warm sunset feel. You’ll see that a lot of the animation work has a window shadow overlay over the top. Like the afternoon sun is shooting through the window and illuminating some documents scattered on a desk. I wanted this whole thing to feel cosy. Like a close friend. I know Zelda already means a lot to a lot of people and so my hope is that this cosy sunlit feel combined with discussions on Zelda design makes people feel nice.

One other decision made, and one that would cause me a lot of grief in the long tun, is to try my best to purchase and then film on tabletop, each research paper, magazine, and book referenced in the script. This process was very lengthy and sometimes involved days of scouring ebays and japanese online marketplaces to track down a specific text. I mostly succeeded with all of it and I’m stoked about that.

It wasn’t until later in the production did I decide on crafting a visual story arc. At around the halfway point in the video, things turn from happy to dire as it kicks off an exploration into some of the failures of the Zelda series. You’ll see that the colours of the video shift from warm to cold as I swap out green and yellow backgrounds for blue. My ultimate goal was to make the final colour shift, when Breath Of The Wild is introduced, to feel like a victory. In this moment, colours snap back to the warm tones of earlier and we feel like we’re home again. Hopefully this lands like I hope it does.

THE AURAL IDEA

Sonically, this piece goes for a calmer sound. I chose music that isn’t charged with drama but tries to be a calm bed for audiences. Music you could fall asleep to. Light orchestras, synths and acoustic guitar. The sound design is minimal as well. This time around, there are no great booms or impacts. Instead, there are calm forest and river sounds.

One unfortunate thing though, is that as the script evolved throughout the production phase, I was required to rerecord the voice over for certain paragraphs. We moved house towards the end of production and something about the move changed the way my mic picked up my voice. Maybe the mic got knocked during the move? I’m not sure but ever since then, I couldn’t quite get the same sound. After days of attempting to problem solve, I had to call on my friend and emmy nominee, Andrew Miller, to smooth out the dialogue and EQ it all together. If you listen closely, you’ll hear some slight shifts in the EQ in certain sections but I’m hoping it all goes mostly unnoticed.

REFERENCES

(In order of appearance)

INTRO
1998 CNN ARTICLE:  http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9812/04/nintendo.zelda/
1999 NINTENDO ONLINE: https://web.archive.org/web/20030329181052/https://www.nintendo.co.jp/nom/9811/p06/index.html
2004 NINTENDO OFFICIAL MAGAZINE: https://diehardgamefan.com/2004/02/09/7865/
2005 NINTENDO POWER: https://www.zeldadungeon.net/wiki/Interview:Nintendo_Power_July_2005 
2006 NINTENDO POWER: https://www.zeldadungeon.net/wiki/Interview:Nintendo_Power_May_2006
2007 IWATA ASKS: https://www.nintendo.co.za/Iwata-Asks/Iwata-Asks-Wii/Iwata-Asks-Wii-Hardware/1-Unprecedenced-Use-of-the-Latest-Technology/1-Unprecedenced-Use-of-the-Latest-Technology-205699.html
2016 GAMEKULT INTERVIEW: https://www.gamekult.com/actualite/interview-miyamoto-un-equilibre-difficile-a-trouver-165131.html

HAKONIWA EXPLANATION
2011 JAPANESE INTERVIEW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adw0svmhIsY&t=800s&ab_channel=TheFamicast
2003 HISTORY OF ZELDA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVMCaflcwSI&ab_channel=GamerNightLive
2017 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF COPYING by TOYAMA TERUMI: https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/26170/1/4459_Toyama.pdf
GREENWISE HAKONIWA: https://greenwiseitaly.com/projects-en/event-exhibition-mdw2021-hakoniwa/

REDUCTION & SUGGESTION
HITOSHI MATSUDA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQE96pTgX_U&ab_channel=MasteryoBonsai
1993 STAR FOX & STG: https://shmuplations.com/starfox/
THE COMPACT CULTURE by O-Young Lee: https://www.amazon.com.au/Compact-Culture-Tradition-Young-1992-05-02/dp/4770016433
SUPER MARIO RUN MIYAMOTO INTERVIEW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VL47n61uihs&t=767s&ab_channel=StarSessions

PLAY & SURPRISE
1989 TV GAMES: https://amzn.asia/d/fNF7SxY
https://shmuplations.com/miyamoto1989/
https://archive.org/details/tv-games/tv-games/mode/2up
2003 HAKONIWA: JAPANESE SANDPLAY THERAPY: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247736940_Hakoniwa_Japanese_Sandplay_Therapy
MARIO MANIA PLAYER’S GUIDE: https://www.ebay.com/p/1000014380 https://archive.org/details/Nintendo_Players_Guide_Mario_Mania_1991
1997 BEST GAME: https://mega.nz/folder/e2piGJJK#naPK7qfUuYUaXTOV4x_TYg
SUPER MARIO SUNSHINE - 2002 DEVELOPER INTERVIEW: https://shmuplations.com/mariosunshine/
GABIN ITO COMMENTARY: https://web.archive.org/web/20050124022354/http://hotwired.goo.ne.jp/bitliteracy/ito/990126/textonly.html

BUT THERE’S A PROBLEM HERE
1997 BEST GAME: https://mega.nz/folder/e2piGJJK#naPK7qfUuYUaXTOV4x_TYg
2016 GAMEKULT INTERVIEW: https://www.gamekult.com/actualite/interview-miyamoto-un-equilibre-difficile-a-trouver-165131.html
2000 NINTENDO POWER #134: https://www.ebay.com/p/1300888085
https://archive.org/details/nintendo-power-issue-134-july-2000
2002 NINTENDO DREAM #83: https://goodblood.games/wind-waker-interview
2005 NINTENDO POWER: https://www.zeldadungeon.net/wiki/Interview:Nintendo_Power_July_2005 
2011 WIRED.COM: https://web.archive.org/web/20111214031941/http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2011/12/miyamoto-interview-transcript/
FAMITSU MAGAZINE: https://www.zeldadungeon.net/wiki/Interview:Famitsu_November_16th_2011 
https://web.archive.org/web/20120202194455/https://www.1up.com/news/miyamoto-twists-turns-skyward-sword 
2011 IWATA ASKS: https://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/wii/zelda-skyward-sword/7/24/

BREATH OF THE WILD
2016 IGN: https://www.ign.com/articles/2016/06/24/6-cool-things-we-learned-about-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-at-e3-2016

ADDITIONAL REFERENCES

OTHER “MINIATURE GARDEN” MENTIONS NOT FEATURED
1996 MIYAMOTO ON MINIATURE TRAINS: https://archive.org/details/Nintendo_Power_Issue001-Issue127/Nintendo%20Power%20Issue%20080%20January%201996/page/n25/mode/2up

TORU OSAWA ON BEING A GARDENER: I need to track this exact article down again. I copied and pasted the text here:
Toru Osawa (Script Director): For a little while when I started making the game, we were working on the first Zelda. So, I became the gardener in the garden of Miyamoto’s Zelda, and I felt like I was being allowed to tamper with things. There were times when I restrained myself, wondering if I could mess around as I pleased, but there were also times when I’d respond to “That’s a little too far,” or “The way you cut that tree isn’t good,” with “Ah, sorry.” It’s definitely Miyamoto’s creation, so I as always thinking about how I could meet both the players’ and Miyamoto’s expectations.

MARIO BEING MINIATURE GARDEN (NINTENDO POWER): https://web.archive.org/web/20040617115658/http://www.miyamotoshrine.com/theman/interviews/0908.shtml

KOIZUMI ON MARIO SUNSHINE AS MINIATURE GARDEN 箱庭 : https://web.archive.org/web/20070821183704/http://www.nintendo.co.jp/nom/0208/sms_inte/page02.html#02

TWILIGHT PRINCESS ASSISTANT DIRECTOR ON MINIATURE GARDEN (NINTENDO POWER MAY 2006):
https://www.zeldadungeon.net/wiki/Interview:Nintendo_Power_May_2006

KOIZUMI ON SUPER MARIO GALAXY AS MINIATURE GARDEN: https://www.wired.com/2007/12/interview-super/

SUPPORTING TEXTS NOT FEATURED
https://japanesegardening.org/handbook/courtyard-garden/
https://openedsource.medium.com/kish%C5%8Dtenketsu-hakoniwa-dd5a568da169
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1937586720924729
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042814065513?ref=pdf_download&fr=RR-2&rr=7a52727e2a59a938
https://www.japanpolicyforum.jp/culture/pt2022091614565812474.html

HAKONIWA & GAME DESIGN
https://yuzu.news/game/17458.html

Great little breakdown of hakoniwa “not quite sandbox” : https://m.3839.com/zixun/675/2763675.htm

https://nintendotreehouse.tumblr.com/post/161799433482/whats-in-a-box

Miyamoto likes to garden: https://www.zeldadungeon.net/wiki/Interview:Camp_Hyrule_August_13th_2003

Miyamoto on imagination: https://shmuplations.com/miyamotodesign/

Decoding the charm of Japanese games: https://www.nippon.com/en/views/b00101/

”I Am Error” brilliant little breakdown: https://books.google.com.au/books?id=1r34DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA189&lpg=PA189&dq=zelda+HAKONIWA&source=bl&ots=gkKmHgw2Tn&sig=ACfU3U3yYmx-8vS5uQzuum8tt8ZJui7zuw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjzw7_e8cf2AhXrzDgGHdaJAIwQ6AF6BAgWEAM#v=onepage&q=zelda%20HAKONIWA&f=false

Hakoniwa worlds: https://www.heterotopiaszine.com/2018/02/16/hakoniwa-worlds-super-mario-odyssey

Miyamoto on Zelda games ‘exploring first then gaining a new item…’:
https://archive.org/details/Game_Players_Issue_40_May_1994/page/n21/mode/2up

Mario 64 dioramas: https://www.ignboards.com/threads/coolest-super-mario-64-thing-ive-seen-in-a-long-time.454582775/