Showing posts with label behind-the-scenes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label behind-the-scenes. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Enchanting Behind-the-Scenes Report by Ian McKellen of 1st "Beauty and the Beast" Table Read

So.. wow. We already know Sir Ian McKellen has a way with words but unless this is all in his imagination, it would appear Disney is not skimping in putting the "Fairytale" in their live action fairy tale production, Beauty and the Beast!

Take a read at his beautifully descriptive report of the first table read, posted on Twitter this morning:
Personally, I'm so touched to see how much McKellen is enjoying it all. as a veteran you'd be forgiven to treat it 'professionally' (ie like any other job) but clearly, he loves doing what he does - even after all this time.

There's mention of an actor we haven't heard about yet - Hattie Morahan - and I have no doubt reporters are all over this, nutting out whom she will be.

I can't imagine them doing a table read without Lumiere so unless Hattie is now Lumiere (or whatever the female version of that would be), then this is still a 'to be revealed' secret they're holding back to keep fans in suspense.

And this 'first cast photo' from Josh Gad's Instagram account went up yesterday too:
No doubt they will all look VERY different when we see them in character.
This & the image at the head of the post are from the Be Our Guest' restaurant (as is 'the grey stuff')

Friday, June 6, 2014

"Maleficent" - Article Round-Up Time! (mainly NOT reviews- list & summary)

I haven't had time to finish editing the plot point-and-spoiler discussion part of my Maleficent review, but along the way I've kept all these links to articles that may be of interest to people in the meantime. For the most part they're not reviews but concentrate on: 
  1.  the making of the movie (research and tech) and
  2. explore the origins of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale.
Enjoy! (And hopefully I'll have Part B up shortly as well.)

Links that may be of interest:





HIGHLY RECOMMENDED ARTICLE! If you'd
like a brief yet fairly thorough history of Sleeping Beauty summarized in the context of the revisionist story Maleficent, read this. It'll be great to pass on to someone as well.
Excerpt:
Had many people actually been aware of the true narrative of “La Belle au bois dormant,” they probably would have considered the story line too shocking for most adults.
Consider some of the plot devices found in the original story of “Sleeping Beauty” in the days of our distant past: adultery, bigamy, murder, ogress terror, the rape of a comatose woman and even human cannibalism.
And the high point of the story? An evil crone committing suicide by throwing herself into a cauldron of boiling water filled with toads, vipers, eels and snakes.
It doesn’t take much imagination to think how the Disney focus groups would have responded to the original story early in the script process.
So how did the tale go from one as horrifyingly frightening as anything George R.R. Martin could convey in a Red Wedding scene of “Game of Thrones” to something so beloved as an animated classic that it plays on a nonstop DVD loop in today’s day-care nurseries?
To understand how the story once was told and how it came to be universally understood by most of today’s audiences, it’s important to understand a distinctive set of creative figures who affected the work throughout history -- Giambattista Basile, Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm and, of course, Walt Disney.




Excerpt:
Although Aurora and Maleficent are spiritual opposites, Sheppard did link the two in terms of one costume piece. The first time teenage Aurora and Maleficent meet, Fanning’s character is wearing a hooded coat that is nearly a mirror image of the cape Maleficent wore the night she lost her wings and set forth on an evil, destructive path in life. When Maleficent first met Aurora, Sheppard wanted the villainess to briefly be reminded “of the younger, innocent fairy she once was”—not the mistress of all evil that she had become. “So its very similar coloring—of course, Angelina’s was more dramatic and bigger volume. But I wanted the hood because I think it also gives Aurora this little girl look.”



Filming in the ’Enchanted Forest’ at Ashridge
for Disney’s Maleficent
Excerpt: 
The Ashridge woodland with its otherworldly trees and abundance of wildlife provided the real location for the Enchanted Forest, where Maleficent, played by Angelina Jolie lives.
Inspired by the nature-loving faery folk from the Disney film, the Maleficent trail reveals more about the wildlife that calls Ashridge home, including rare butterflies and songbirds, as well as fungi and mini-beasts.




Don't go here unless you've seen the movie. There are before and after CG scenes on the page which may ruin some first impressions.
Excerpt:
At the start of the movie we meet the young Maleficent. She flies into MPC’s full CG Fairy World environment with colourful trees, lakes and waterfalls, interacting with MPC’s hero fairies as she travels. MPC’s environment team built a library of photographic elements taken from a second-unit shoot for their human and fairy environments. These included trees, rocks and bushes. This CG environment was built in Maya, using IDV Speedtree as a basis for tree geometry. The team created 15 different types of creatures, all with their own unique characteristics and features. These ranged from the larger, humanistic mushroom fairies and ‘Wallerbogs’, to the more animalistic ‘Cheeps’, smaller delicate dew fairies and water pixies.




(Although this is a little forced, it makes some nice points too and,
really, is just a very different and refreshing way to review a movie.)
Excerpt:
Shiny objects and good things appear to us all along our leadership journeys. There’s nothing inherently bad about moving to the next level of leadership or becoming a better man. However, if you take the wrong roads to get to these places, it’s not worth it. Don’t let the next big thing change you for the worse.



Excerpt:
What was Stefan's path when you were thinking about his development?Both he and Maleficent turn corners. She makes a right choice, and he makes a wrong choice. He becomes obsessive, and that obsession drives him a little crazy. Originally the other king wanted Maleficent's death, but Stefan couldn't kill her. There's a tiny part of him who is a decent human being, but he's so driven for power and riches.



On Perrault, the Brothers Grimm & Hans Christian
Andersen and how they shaped our perceptions of fairy tales.
Excerpt:
...long before they were material for children’s movies, fairy tales have been drawn into debates on the nature of literature, cultural evolution and national identity. They’ve been subjected to Freudian analysis, Jungian interpretations, feminist readings, postmodern readings, poststructuralist readings, Marxist readings… pretty much every –ism you can think of has laid a claim.
Writers from Aesop to Italo Calvino have been drawn to folk tales. And yet it’s surprisingly difficult even to pin down what we’re dealing with when talking about them. Where do we draw the line between a fairy tale and a fable, or a legend, or a myth? It doesn’t help that many stories we think of as old as the hills are actually recent creations, and others used to be told in so many wild variations that it hardly seems like there’s a single story there at all.
Three authors in particular have deeply informed our modern perception of fairy tales and folklore. Each, in their way, was tuned into the intellectual concerns of their time, as well as the concerns of kids clamoring for a story.




Excerpt:
Maleficent is a fairy, so the first challenge was that we had to give her wings. Because her character starts as a young girl, we also wanted to make sure these wings would work both proportionally with that young girl and with Angelina later on.
... Also, think about when you're simply talking, you're gesturing with your hands. We wanted those wings to have that type of quality and motion to them as well, just a natural extension of her gestures, so we knew we had to take a digital approach.
Once we came up with the design, we built a full-scale version of the wings. That served a couple of purposes. First and foremost, as a reference. As a digital artist, it's great to have something very realistic that you can model, and photograph, and really get the sense of what it will look like.
And then also for Angelina and for everyone on the set, we used them to show the mass of the wings. Fully extended, they span over 12 feet. Just having those here on set, we were able to show, "Here's what you're dealing with, and this is the kind of space that they occupy when they're fully extended."





Short but interesting article on motivations.
Excerpt:
...the original script was even darker.
"There was a version where he actually kills the King," Sharlto says. "He goes and takes Maleficent's wings and the King is like 'I meant one of my noblemen [should kill her], you're not going to be King!'"
"And then Stephan kills him, out of desperation, because he's betrayed the only person that he really loved -- and not being king is just not acceptable," says Copley.





Digital character effects explained with lots of
great videos
Excerpt:
“The character designs on this show were very fluid and required us to regularly rebuild the entire pixie articulated face on a new character design,” adds Port. “The transfer process proved so robust in the end that we could change the pixie face shape and rebuild the entire face complete with thousands of new face shapes conformed to the new bone and facial anatomy and have it seemly delivered into the animators without losing any work.” Character wardrobes were also introduced. The pixies wore complex multi-layered dynamic wardrobes made of flowers petals, hairy thistles, leaves, and twigs. These complex wardrobes required multiple dynamic free flowing cloth sims with special localised controls to look good though very dynamic actions such as flying and landing.




Although not the best title to describe the article
(because it sort of disproves it, apart from anything else) this article, rather than be a review, discusses how (recent) fairy tale films (not just Disney) have gone from being primarily child-fare to dark reduxes.
Excerpt:
The trailers teased glimpses of Sleeping Beauty's iconic villainess, accompanied by a gothic cover of "Once Upon a Dream." Gone were the 1959 animated film's Technicolor wonders, replaced with shades of blacks and blues, while Lana del Rey's vocals enveloped Mary Costa and Bill Shirley's airy duet with jazz-club smokiness. 
...This star vehicle for Angelina Jolie fits snuggly into a new ideal for fantasy films: Luring both older kids and their parents, studios raid the storybooks for classic once-upon-a-timers then singe the films' edges with PG spookiness.
And finally a (surprisingly short) list of fairy tale bloggers so far posting on Maleficent with their comments (this may be out of date by the time this posts, so please feel free to add any you know of in the comments and I will update the list & links!):


I haven't seen anyone write on Carabosse vs Maleficent from the ballet(s) - anyone want to tackle that? (Including the award winning one by New Directions, which has a whole other  - and very important take on the character.) That dark fairy (often played by a man because of the ballet tradition of character actors) has a lot of consideration by performers and directors for ballet (I was actually reminded of "her" henchmen when I saw the new raven men from the new Sleeping Beauty section of the Disney Land/World Fantasy parade that debuted this year - they looked like they were taken right out of a ballet!) and Tchaikovsky/Petipa's Sleeping Beauty has many of original notes available for good researchers to track down (I only have the Swan Lake notes, not the Sleeping Beauty ones - anyone have these?)

Part B of my Maleficent review is should appear tomorrow (or the next day as my Friday is looking a little crazy right now)...

Monday, June 2, 2014

"Maleficent" Fairy Tale 411 (A Review - Part A - The Non-Spoiler Part & Why I Felt It Was Worth Taking My Kid to the "El Capitan" Presentation)

The OUABlog one-liner review:
Maleficent = perfectly wonderful family movie + #YesAllWomen + better-than-average-but-still-Disney

"Whaa..?" I hear you say.
Note: Before I forget - do click on the images of the props and set to see them full size. :) I'm amazed I got as many photos as I did, considering how packed it was!
Onto the "more than one line review - Part A":
So here's the thing: Maleficent, as a movie standing on it's own, is pretty solid and entertaining, but with some substance too. I didn't even have to rap myself on the knuckles to quiet my inner critic while watching (at least not half as much as I expected to.)
As far as a fairy tale goes it's probably better to think of it as the film equivalent of a novel using the Sleeping Beauty tale but that's actually a good thing for the film, as I'll (eventually) explain. 
What is this? It's a family fantasy film that is built on a fairy tale, as well as an older sense of Faerie. And it's great for kids, but it's also not primarily aimed at kids either, which is another reason it works better than (I) expected.
            
Here's what went right:
- it's far more family friendly than the marketing made it out to be without being a mainly-for-kids movie 
- it's very colorful in a delightful way throughout (yes there are dark scenes but the majority of the film is positive and bright) 
- there's a ton of humor (I had no idea we'd be laughing so often through the movie, especially at and with Maleficent!) 
- the fantasy-faerie world is wonderful and everything you wanted in both magical world building and in Froudian-creatures brought to life (and possibly the best portrayal of Olde Faerie mentality I've seen - with both the light beauty and the dark power) 
- the big issues are dealt with in a manner a 5 or 6 year old could manage (without trauma, yes, even the "big" ones) 
- Angelina Jolie (who is on screen for a huge percentage of the movie) is pretty much flawless in the role and engages the audience for every second she appears  
- the film has enough layers to show this isn't a throw-away money-making production but that someone (probably lots of someones, considering the level of work and attention to detail) cared a lot about this movie on many levels
- it's also, regarding the timing of it's release, serendipitously, on point with all of the hot-button social issues of "right now", from the power of love and the importance of family, to the very real issues brought to light via the #YesAllWomen hashtag in the aftermath of the tragedies in Santa Barbara. (I will discuss the specifics of the film with regard to this in Part B.)
It may be the fortuitous timing of the release against this social backdrop that is the reason it survives beyond initial blockbuster status as well, although, it deserves to for other reasons. No matter that it's not what people expected, or how it has changed the perception of a Disney icon, this film takes many more risks that Frozen did and should be recognized for it... but I'll get to that later.
Although, admittedly, we were in a audience of people highly inclined to love anything Maleficent, it wasn't just this crowd that came out beaming, having very much enjoyed the movie. Almost everyone's (general) immediate experience (including many critics, when they're being honest) has been, at the moments the credits are rising up the screen: "That was fun!" 
 
But it's also clear, while it may be an audience winner, why it's not an overwhelming critical success as well. It's only as you start thinking about things exiting the theater that you begin to have issues. 

Why? How can people enjoy the movie so very much only to have pulled it to shreds by the time they get home?
 
There are two main problems:
1) It's a revising of a classic Disney movie so comparisons will be made and nobody (but nobody) is going to "not compare" and be able to take it as a work all by itself. The problem with this is you will have people who are upset about any revisions and other people upset by not enough revisions. It's a no-win situation from either perspective. If Maleficent were the first film retelling a popular Sleeping Beauty story book, rather than a Disney film, it would likely be received as far more radical, and welcomed by critics as well.  
2) It's live action, and, in reading a lot of criticism the past couple of days of the film, it's been made apparent to me what the biggest downfall of making something as real as possible is: Unlike for animation, stop motion and muppets, (and also live storytelling), audiences do not automatically PARTICIPATE by approaching a viewing with the agreement to suspend disbelief. Instead, with live action, the requirement of believability for every image and execution of a scene is assumed and audiences naturally relegate themselves to witnesses only - passive, distanced, critical and disengaged on a personal level; that is, they don't bring their own imagination to the story, requiring it to have everything - which it rarely can, especially with regard to fantasy. What does that lead to? Nitpickiness, misunderstandings and a general lack of satisfaction because something remains missing: it's "them" or, more specifically "you", the audience, and their/your own contribution to the story. (Be sure to read my first starred point * at the bottom of the article by the way - there are exceptions.)
  
For my part, although I do agree with critics that the film was uneven in places, I've determined that most of the important elements (including those that a number of critics complain are missing) were actually there. While I, personally, might have handled the telling/showing of them differently, they still exist. The fault isn't that they were/are missing, but the the blame is shared somewhere between the Director/Editor/Producer who didn't make it clear and people can't see these elements if they're not literal/obvious to that person. (Note: this is taking into account that the Director and Producers made choices I would not - but that is because it is their film and their prerogative.) The thing is, if this had been animation, (ie not live action and CG doing it's best to look like live action - which, to their credit, it often did) people would be busy having their minds blown about how much was woven into the movie and Tumblr would be a-buzz with "OMG did you realize that Maleficent ABC'd in that scene??!" etc

The reverse is also true. If you took, for example, Disney's most recent animated success Frozen, and made it live action, it would have severely struggled. The story is clunky, unbalanced, badly resolved and has a ton of problems BUT these can be overlooked if the audience participate in the storytelling and bring their own levels of meaning to it, which they clearly have - in spades.
    
Fairy tales suffer the same issue: the more details one adds in a retelling, often the less clear the story becomes. Fairy tales are wonderfully distilled capsules of story and human experience wrapped in wonder cloaks and, the listener willingly suspends disbelief as soon as the words "once upon a time" are uttered, bringing their own flavors and interpretive lenses to them. Because the stories are then "ours" they grow increasingly interesting and, often, personal, so much so that we can't seem to help but retell them in our own way, adding details we initially saw in our mind's eye, flavoring them with our culture and upbringing, and exploring issues our hearts discovered and resonated with. It's not that these things are not there, but rather, that these things are what the individual readers and listeners bring to the stories. That's a large part of what makes them so very powerful. They adapt to the teller and the listener, both. It's when you write down that form or immortalize it in film, that is, capture it in one shape only so that telling becomes static, that it ceases to have as much power and resonance.
                      
Simply put, when fairy tales are put on film, especially in "live form", there is rarely room for us to add our own details, our own flavor, our own emphasis and importance*. We are told: "this is how the story is, looks, goes and if you didn't see it there, it didn't exist/happen" and we are not engaged, except as observers. We have nothing to do with shaping the story. 
       
And this is the main reason I wanted to take my son to see this "fairy tale" (or whatever bit of fairy tale there was) as part of a whole experience, rather then just walking into a theater to watch a big screen. Though we aren't able to see movies regularly enough these days for a theater to seem routine (ka-ching$!) I still knew it would be worth making this "more" if I could. When I found out the El Capitan Theater were having a showing of props and set pieces from the movie at the theater, as well as a magic show and other little extras, my husband and I talked and agreed it was worth splurging for. We dressed up a little, took a huge drive into the city, walked the Hollywood Walk of Fame (and avoided the resident infamous characters), checked out the handprints and stars on the sidewalk, looked at all the fancy lit posters and, when we finally made it into the theater, took our time, despite the crowds (it was sold out) to look over all the details of all the props in the lobby and checked out the Sleeping Beauty Disney Parks model castle from every angle. The magic show beforehand made the theater space itself a "live space" instead of just a movie space and my little guy, already excited by the experience of the outing, was eagerly anticipating the movie by the time the it started. When the Sleeping Beauty castle from the film appeared at the beginning instead of just the usual Disney castle, my son was already engaged - "I know that castle! It's from the movie!"
Afterward, downstairs where the bulk of the props and the set pieces were, my son poured over every costume and pointed out things he recognized (as well as things he didn't) from the movie, reciting bits of the story, speculating on the scenes and musing over details. Although it's what I had hoped for, it worked better than anticipated. He completely enjoyed the movie and my husband, who miraculously avoided knowing almost anything about it (including that Maleficent had wings at all) was just as engaged. They both relived the story, reciting scenes, discussing aspects, musing on what might have been happening elsewhere etc

And it's for this reason that I also suggest considering it as the film equivalent of a novel that's written out of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, rather than a retelling of the fairy tale. Experiencing it like this and discussing it with props in front of us made it clear - this is one version of the story; not the be all and end all.
The opportunity also enabled me to discuss the tale version of Sleeping Beauty with my son as well and he is more interested than ever in the idea of nature beings and faeries but "...not the silly ones - the REAL ones." (More on the "sillies" tomorrow.)

I'll wrap this part of the review before I start talking specifics of story and film but suffice it to say, no matter what my mixed feelings are about Disney, when it comes to experiencing something, this company has it down. The Cast Members treated my son like he was special, like his opinion about the movie and all he saw was important. The made room for him and made sure he got to see everything he came to see, It's the same reason Disneyland and Disney World leave such an impression. It's real in a way that engages you and leaves a lasting impression. While it will help a lot that the film was solid family entertainment with enough fairy tale elements and layering to provide mental stimulation for my son** (and his parents - who he hears discussing all aspects of it), the fact that this experience engaged all his senses leaves me no doubt that Sleeping Beauty and Maleficent will have a lasting impression on him, in the best way. It was the closest we could get to having a personal storytelling for him of this alternate version of Sleeping Beauty and I couldn't be happier that we made it happen for a fairy tale.

Stay tuned for the "will be spoilery Part B" coming tomorrow. (Don't worry. I will mask them so you have a choice to read them or not.)


*This is not true of all film. Good directors who used stylized directing and work with images like poetry - choosing to imply as much as show, are successful in engaging our inner selves in the telling, but it's rare to see that in a mainstream film. It's usually the Indie filmmakers who, often by necessity, have to find a different, less literal way to tell the story, that are the most successful in doing so. They do't try to show everything, so the audience actually sees more.
** Today: conversations about spinning wheels and why it's important in Rumpelstiltskin as well as Sleeping Beauty - his out of the blue question, by the way, not mine.