UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI _____________ , 20 _____ I,______________________________________________, hereby submit this as part of the requirements for the degree of: ________________________________________________ in: ________________________________________________ It is entitled: ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ Approved by: ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI GRIMM REALITY: A DIGITAL VIDEO FEATURE PRESENTATION DOCUMENTATION OF THESIS PROJECT SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE SCHOOL OF DESIGN IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF DESIGN FROM THE COLLEGE OF DESIGN, ARCHITECTURE, ART & PLANNING BY ERIC CHATTERJEE, BA Psychology CINCINNATI, OHIO 2002 Committee Chair: J. Chewning iii ABSTRACT The entertainment industry may be on the verge of a major change. For more than a century, celluloid film has been the artistic medium for the motion picture industry- the third largest industry in the United States. However, recent advances in video technology may allow this visual media, once thought suitable only for broadcast television, to become the new industry standard. Although, at the time of this writing, only one Hollywood feature (The Anniversary Party) entirely shot on digital video has been released, in the coming years many more are sure to follow. Even more remarkable are the number of amateur filmmakers that have taken advantage of the medium of digital video to produce highly polished short films and displayed them on the Internet. In the following project, digital video and related technologies were used to produce a program that can be viewed as a series of shorts or as a feature length adaptation of some of the Grimm’s Fairy Tales, in a manner faithful to the original tales, some of which have never been adapted to the screen before. iv Copyright © 2002 by Eric J. Chatterjee All rights reserved v To Jakob and Wilhelm who spent sixteen long years on the first edition. vi PREFACE My first movie memory is of seeing The 7th Voyage of Sinbad with my father at the movie theater up the street from where we lived. From that time onward I had a love for both movies, and for mythology and fairy tales. When digital video made moviemaking affordable enough to do fantasy type stories with little or no budget, I began work on an independent “film” that would break away from the mold of the dressed-up-stage-play, “Generation X”, Slacker-type comedies that characterized much of the domestic independent films of the 1990s. Drawing inspiration from a diverse range of genre producers (Roger Corman, Lloyd Kaufman, Sam Raimi), independent filmmakers (Kevin Smith, Julie Taymor), studio auteurs (Francis Coppola, Alfred Hitchcock) and foreign directors (Tsui Hark, Jean Jeunet), I set out to create a movie that would be equally at home in both the art house theatre and the drive-in, the two traditional (albeit shrinking) venues for independent movies, as well as perhaps on the Internet, the growing new forum for “indies”. Beginning in the mid 1990s I began working at the world’s largest publisher of books on writing and thereby acquired about two dozen of the best books on writing for the screen. After sharpening my skills at writing screenplays, adapting novels, and a few years of working on independent feature films, vii I met Dennis Puhalla, then the director of the graduate program in digital design at the University of Cincinnati who upon hearing my conviction that digital video was poised to transform the film industry, encouraged me to apply to U.C.’s digital design program. After writing two scripts that were undoable (one for budgetary reasons, the other because it was based on a location that was demolished) I wrote Grimm Reality (GR), an unflinching look at the violent, lurid and salacious fireside tales of the middle ages which make up the foundation of children’s literature to this day. Grimm Reality immediately set itself apart from the other scripts on my shelf and, at least in my mind, from other no-budget independents in both unique subject matter, and fertile possibilities to emphasize production design – an oft overlooked area in shoestring budget movie making. So, with script in hand, I began to study yet another field on the road to making the one-man movie-show: design. The process of creating a well-designed featurette is the undertaking concerned herein. However, before plunging into a detailed account of the process behind the project, I must take time to acknowledge the help of one Eric Smith who, in addition to lending administrative help, had me watch Jim Henson’s The Storyteller, and whose influence, by loaning me a copy of the book Grimm’s Grimmest when I was looking for inspiration, cannot be overlooked. viii Along similar lines was the help of Kevin Grace in the Archives and Rare Books department of the University of Cincinnati’s Classics Library for his help in my study of the history of book illustration. Many images that were incorporated directly or indirectly into the final project were the result of his ability to retrieve material based solely on my descriptions of “look” rather than by specific call numbers or titles. Finally, the movie itself couldn’t have been completed without the help of a great number of people who believed in the value of the project. A complete list of acknowledgements can be found in the credits of the movie. ix The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve; Lovers, to bed; ‘tis almost fairy time. - Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream x CONTENTS ABSTRACT . iv PREFACE . vi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS . 3 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS . 4 GLOSSARY . 6 EDITORIAL METHOD . 10 Chapter INTRODUCTION . 12 1. BACKGROUND . 16 2. SURVEY OF THE LITERATURE . 22 3. SYMBOL, MOTIF AND MEANING IN FAIRY TALES 33 4. DECONSTRUCTING SYMBOLISM: “Little Red Riding Hood”. 39 5. ANALYZING MOTIF: "Fitcher's Bird" . 54 6. ADAPTING THE TALES . 61 7. VISUAL STYLE . 75 8. CREATION OF A NEW FONT . 84 9. TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS . 90 10. THESIS COMITTEE . 93 Appendix 1. SCRIPT . 94 BIBLIOGRAPHY . 139 Design reference . 139 1 Source material . 141 Technical reference pre-production . 143 Technical reference production . 144 Technical reference postproduction . 145 Theory / inspiration . 146 FILMOGRAPHY . 149 INTERNET RESOURCES . 151 2 ILLUSTRATIONS Figure Page 1. Mezco Toys "Little Red Riding Hood" & "Wolf" figures 32 2. Grimm Reality shaky cam shot, "Red Cap" sequence . 76 3. Grimm Reality hand held shot sped up, flashback . 76 4. Grimm Reality montage, "Robber Bridegroom" sequence . 76 5. Grimm Reality stylized lighting . 77 6. "Luftwaffe", a public domain font . 86 7. Side by side comparisons of letter modifications . 88 8. "Grimm Luftwaffe" font . 88 3 ABBREVIATIONS ADR Additional Dialogue Recording, AKA Automatic Dialogue Replacement AIFF An .aif file AT Aarne-Thompson index AVI Audio Video Interleaved (.avi) files CD-DA Compact Disc Digital Audio format CDTP Histoires ou contes du tempes passé (1697), Perrault, Charles CFTBG The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm (1987), Zipes, Jack (trans.) CSS Cascading Style Sheet D-cinema Digital Cinema DV Digital video DVD Digital Video Disc format, AKA Digital Versatile Disc format EFX see F/X F/X Special effects FB Fitcher’s Bird, AKA Fitchers Vogel, Fitcher’s Fowl, Fowler’s Fowl, Fowler’s Bird, etc. FW FireWire®, AKA iLink®, IEEE1394 GFT (The) Grimms’ Fairy Tale(s) GR Grimm Reality JPEG Joint Photographic Experts Group, or a .jpg file employing that group’s standards. Kbps Kilobits per second 4 KUH (Die) Kinder- und Hausmärchen (1812), Grimm, Jakob Ludwig Karl and Grimm, Wilhelm Karl LRRH Little Red Riding Hood, AKA: All About Little Red Riding Hood, Le petit Chaperon Rouge, Lil’ Red Riding Hood, Little Golden-Hood, Little Red Ridinghood, Little Red Cap, Little Red-Cap, Little Riding Hood, Rotkäppchen, Very Red Riding Hood, etc. Mbps Millions of bits per second, AKA megabits per second miniDV mini digital video format NAB The National Association of Broadcasters also the name for that organization's annual convention NLE Nonlinear editing OM Ölenberg Manuscript OTC Opening Title Card PPD Postproduction RB The Robber Bridegroom SFX Sound effects USB Universal Serial Bus W3C World Wide Web Consortium WAV A .wav file 5 GLOSSARY 24P. High end DV format wherein tape is spooled at 24 frames per second with each frame stored and displayed progressively rather than by scanned fields as in traditional analogue video. Aarne-Thompson index. An international categorization table for folklore, which classifies all traditional tales by a type number between 1 and 1,000. Acquisition. see Principal photography. AIFF file. Audio Interchange File Format AKA Apple Interchange File Format. A computer audio file format which contains raw audio data, channel information, bit depth, sample rate, and application-specific data. The extension for this file type is .aif . Auteur. A filmmaker- generally a director- who creates a body of work with a unified sensibility that reveals, through the interplay of themes and styles, a personal worldview. Sometimes used to describe any filmmaker who is intimately involved in all aspects of the moviemaking process (writing, directing, producing, editing, etc.). AVI file. Audio Video Interleaved files are sound and motion picture files that conform to the Microsoft Windows Resource Interchange File Format (RIFF) specification. AVI files (which end with an .avi extension) require a special player that may be included with a Web browser or may require downloading. Cascading style sheet. W3C standard that allows a web page designer to define the order of preference among stylistic elements that may be drawn from various sources. Digital Cinema. Projection of a digital print of a movie regardless of the means of capture (analogue or digital) a digital print can be made for theatrical projection. 6 Emphasis font. The font used in connection with a movie, other than for the title.