Use of the rule of thirds in "Spirited Away"

Animated films have the unique advantage of being able to work many things to perfection. Hayao Miyazaki's "Spirited Away" is a prime example of this. In this case, I want to look at the camera angles used. As there are no real cameras used, there are things that can be animated that could never be done in real life, such as the shots where Chihiro and Haku fall out of the sky together. Although this shot could be done in real life, it would only be done with the use of special effects such as blue screen and a lot of work on the computer. However, what I want to get at is the precision of the camera angles used. When Miyazaki wants to use a shot that uses the rule of thirds, he does it precisely, making sure the shot is balanced perfectly, unless changing this reflects on the moment of the scene. Take a look at these stills from the film. I have added added to them to show where attention is directed and why.

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The perfect framing used in this film are probably going to be far better than anything a camera could achieve without a lot of cropping, which is why I have decided to make sure every shot in our film slightly zoomed out, so that the shot can more easily be cropped to perfection. For example, if we had the camera just on a character's face, and then realised that he was slightly to the left, we would have to take the shot again. However, if we filmed the shot as a mid shot, so there is a lot of room around the person, we would have a lot more freedom when it comes to editing, for example, we could slowly zoom in in the editing phase or move the frame to the perfect place. The rule of thirds will be something I will keep in mind for our thriller.