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Author
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Comment
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cmoore0013
Unregistered User
(3/12/05 1:00 pm)
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Gore in fairy tales!
Hi,
As most of you know, I'm making low budget 1 hour-2 hour long fairy tale films for my series Golden Movie Tales. The films will be given to libraries and made avalable for purchase over the internet.
I would like to know, how much vioilence and gore should be in them. Most of the tales are heavy with it, and I don't want to cut down from it. Many of the tales are already too frighteneing for some children, so I've turned a couple of them into more adult film(such as Hansel and Gretel into a suspensful and tense 70's survavalist film like Texas Chainsaw Massacre). I'd like to know your opinions abut how far to go, how to go further, or just any comments on things that you would like to see in the films.
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Black Sheep
Registered User
(3/13/05 2:30 pm)
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Re: Gore in fairy tales!
I personally strongly believe that depictions of violence (cause) should be accompanied by depictions of gore (effect) and not sanitised as in Hollywood kill-porn (and Bollywood kill-porn too). The Japan and Hong Kong based film industries tend to be much more honest about the pain and suffering involved in wounding, maiming and murdering.
(Stopped before commencement of non-SLL related rant.)
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cmoore0013
Unregistered User
(3/13/05 8:23 pm)
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Blood
So your telling me to show everything?
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Erica Carlson
Registered User
(3/13/05 8:26 pm)
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Re: Gore in fairy tales!
Hmm. I would suggest that you define your target audience before deciding on how much violence and gore to include. If it is important to you that pre-schoolers can watch your film, then yes, you're going to want to cut down on some of the scarier elements. If you're not set on any particular audience, then you have much more freedom. I do get the impression from some of your earlier posts that you're drawn to the darker elements of tales, so maybe an audience of kids isn't something you want. Fairy tales certainly don't have to be for children.
I agree whole-heartedly with Black Sheep on the topic of violence, though. Depictions of violence should disturb people instead of glorifying violence and de-humanizing the victims of it. I'm currently out of patience with revenge-themed movies, though. I'll follow Sheep's example and take my own little rant elsewhere:)
Best,
Erica
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Heidi Anne Heiner
ezOP
(3/14/05 12:41 am)
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Re: Gore in fairy tales!
Well, not the answer that is sought, but I reside in the school of less is more. Gore and violence in film is usually a deterrent for me. I find it takes over the story and spends more time as a special effect than a plot device. And then again after I have seen so much of it, I also become immune to its effect, requiring more to get a horrified emotion. When I become immune, I get worried. Unless the effects are weak and then there is always of the trap of "That doesn't look real, this is so fake, I'm laughing my guts out at the filmmaker's attempt to scare me." I'm right out of the story at that point, too. And I prefer to watch movies for characters and plots, not the special effects.
I like fairy tales and folklore because they contain violence and other realities, but allow more room for your imagination to fill in the blanks. Hitchcock was a master of this, of course.
But then I am a tuxedo over speedo type of person, so it all depends on the person.
And I agree with Erica. Choose your primary audience before you make these decisions. And remember that the horror film viewers are pretty sophisticated these days, too. There will be a fine line between pure horror and campy horror and it's best to decide which side of the line you want to be on.
Heidi
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Black Sheep
Registered User
(3/14/05 3:09 pm)
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Re: Blood
"So your telling me to show everything?"
No. It's an if...then suggestion. IF you choose to depict violence THEN you should also depict pain and suffering.
There's another, irrelevent, if...then going on behind the scenes at my end which is: IF a film depicts violence (of the seriously wounding, maiming or mudering sort) THEN I prefer not to watch that film.
I don't want to become desensitised to my horror at violence in real life.
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cmoore0013
Unregistered User
(3/14/05 4:46 pm)
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Target audiance?
Some of these are asy to find a target audiance than others. Stories like Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, and Bluebeard are films that would get hard R ratings if they were rated, because of the violence and scariness aspect. With those films it's nessisarry and is needed to convey certain things. Others, I'm a little confussed on. Cinderella isn't exctly a violent tale, but the last 10 minutes feature a fair amount of blood(stepsisters cutting up feet and then being blinding by the spirit of Ella's mother). Sleeping Beauty and Beauty and the Beast are other ones. There are creepy elements but nothing in either tale is violent. I don't know if I should judge these by scariness level or by blood and violence level. How should I? And how can I pump in some creepiness to other tales like Sleeping beauty, Beauty and the Beast, and Red Riding Hood?
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Random
Registered User
(3/14/05 5:17 pm)
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re: Target Audience
As a matter of fact, the Grimms' "Briar Rose" really creeped me out as a child because of the thorns in the hedge which caught would-be rescuers and caused them to suffer a miserable death. All the bodies would make quite a terrifying tableau by the end of a hundred years (and, of course, I couldn't stop imagining it). If you're doing Perrault's "Sleeping Beauty in the Woods", there's the Ogress mother who wanted to eat the girl's children and who died an awful death at the end. In both stories, there is also a fairly good image of the prince entering a deathly silent courtyard and castle where everyone seems to have died suddenly.
I can't really help with Beauty and the Beast - there aren't any particularly frightening elements, except the general scariness of the Beast at first and Beauty's anticipation of being killed by him.
Red Riding Hood is pretty scary already, I'd think. I mean, the wolf stalks a little girl, eats her grandmother, and generally her as well. There's also a lot of anticipation going on there with the exchange between the girl and the wolf before he springs. If you like, there's also the cutting open of the wolf and his subsequent death, which is at least presumably gory.
However, I have to join the other people who don't like to see a lot of violence in their media, and my meter for creepiness is awfully sensitive, so it may be that none of these elements are very creepy at all.
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Erica Carlson
Registered User
(3/14/05 8:18 pm)
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Variants
If you want to make a film (or a couple of them) for younger viewers, it might be worth researching some of the folk tale variants. Not ALL Cinderella tales end with bloody shoes, for example. Are you sticking to the better-known tales, or would stories like "The Three Spinners" or "The Frog Princess" work?
Best,
Erica
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cmoore0013
Unregistered User
(3/14/05 10:21 pm)
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Other tales.
The lost castle in Sleeping Beauty is pretty creepy. I'm just wondering how I'm gonna buy all those thorn bushes.
Also, should I keep in Rapunzel's pregnancy? It seems more logical than Rapunzel suddenly turning into a ditz and spilling her secret.
Rumpelstiltskin isn't a scary story, is it? I wonde what I could do to spice that one up. Any ideas?
Well, I thought that I ned to start ona familiar note first. I was
going to go in to other tales like The Red Shoes and Wild Swans,
mabye evn Frog Princess(that's the one where the prince saves the
enchanted princess from the evil king, right?) I love all the tales!
I'd love to adapt all of them. I think the fact that these films
are musicals will lessent he rating a little bit. It won't make
them so dark that it's intolerable. And for my Cinderella(which
starts production next month. Yea!!!!), I've combined both versions
of the Cinderella story. It's mostly Grimm and Paurraut, but there
is the element of the helpful dead pet that helps her get to the
ball. We started on Snow White, but that was a cursed production.
The cast kept dropping out. I have a link for the cover art though.
Here it is: www.freewebs.com/goldenfi...etales.htm
I hope the picture still works. If not, e-mail me at cmoore0013@aol.com
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tlchang37
Registered User
(3/15/05 12:51 am)
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Re: Other tales.
I have to second the 'less is more' camp. Part of what gives these tales long standing power is that they aren't safe and sanitized - but I am actually more effected by implied creepiness or violence (my imagination can do it SO much more effectively than any screen visuals) than graphically shown gore... I remember as a kid being scared silly when I saw "Jaws" for the first time - not so much by the few graphic scenes, but by the incredible suspense and fear-of-impending doom... It's a hard balance to achieve, and takes being much more creative than just out-and-out 'showing' everything, but I think it is ultimately more effective.
Tara
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(3/15/05 11:37 am)
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Re: Other tales.
Rumplestiltzkin seems pretty damn scary to me, what with the threat of death if one fails to perform the impossible, and then the coerced promise to give up one's child, and then the threat of being kidnapped from one's mother. It's scary. It's just not gory.
I think less is more, too. In my opinion, there's a big difference between violence imagined in hearing/reading stories and violence seen on film. The latter can quickly turn into grand guignol comedy. Slasher flicks, for example, are all about showing the blood and hacked up bodies, but I don't think they help promote a respect for the pain and suffering of violence. Quite the opposite, actually.
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cmoore0013
Unregistered User
(3/15/05 7:15 pm)
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Rumpelstiltskin
I guess it's just hard for me to imagine, since I'm not a parent and If I was a young chid, I wouldn't know what was going on anyway. Although, I do think we can all agree to having experianced the threat of performing badly. Even if it's something as simple as getting a bad grade on a test.
Now that I think of it, since most of these tales are so unrealistic, it's hard to imagine it ever happening. It's like oltergesit or The Ring. It just seems so strange.
Snow White is the hardest one to classify, because kids won't get the themes that it suggests, the queen isn't exactly scary for most kids until she turns into the old hag(well in the Disney one). The forest might add a little creepiness as well as the secret chamber where the queen plans to kill Snow. There just isn't enough creepiness to put in to even make it a PG-13 type of scary movie, let alone a sophisticated horror film for adults. '97's Snow White: A Tale of Terror had this same problem. The story and characters were excellent(even though I didn't care if Snow lived or died). The creepiness was just not good for an R rated film. It relied too much on it's bloody scenes of cut out hearts, blood splattering, zombies, and exploding glass shards in the queen's face. I want to make a creepy film, but theres not much to go on.
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AliceCEB
Registered User
(3/15/05 8:00 pm)
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Re: Rumpelstiltskin
Although I don't particularly like the Disney Snow White, in my experience it's actually pretty scary for young children--I'm talking age 3 to 8 (depending on the child). After that, they tend to get jaded b/c of other media (video games, tv, movies, etc.). In a darkened theatre, the scenes in the woods and with the queen--even before she transforms into a hag--are frightening. My mother still counts it as one of the scariest films she ever saw as a child. I think it works on the "less is more" principle: the fear of the horrific possible is what's frightening.
Best,
Alice
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Erica Carlson
Registered User
(3/15/05 9:49 pm)
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Re: Rumpelstiltskin
Actually, the Frog Princess I was thinking of is very similar to The Monkey Girl story. A young prince ends up with a frog as a bride and she helps him gain a kingdom. Here's a link to one online version:
The
Frog Princess
And I don't want to give the impression that I want movie screens swimming in blood and gore. I think that it's important that we sometimes see violence from the perspective of the person who is feeling it instead of just from the perspective of whatever gun-toting or sword-wielding warrior hero is currently mowing down extras with video-game like precision on-screen.
And less-is-more can work very well. Imagine a movie of Snow White ending with a shot of iron shoes being heated in a furnace...That would certainly disturb me. In fact, I'm going to go read something pleasant now in the hopes of ceasing to think about it.
Best,
Erica
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Crceres
Registered User
(3/15/05 10:05 pm)
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Alien
While not a fairy tale by any standard definition, 'Alien' is one of the classic horror films. Aside from the famous dinner-table scene, however, it's not especially gory. The suspense comes from knowing that terrible things are around the corner, and only being shown at very specific times. Could you use a similar tactic with SW? (Of course, now I have this bizarre vision or a mix between SW and Alien...)
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(3/16/05 2:53 am)
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Re: Alien
I thought the scariest part of the Disney Snow White was the transformation into the hag, because it was clearly so painful. Second place, in my opinion, goes to the witch demanding Snow's heart.
The problem with Snow White: a Tale of Terror, as far as I was concerned, was that it didn't quite know what to do with itself. The witch goes from being vaguely sympathetic to being a monster and the movie wasn't smart enough to pull off that degree of complexity. And what's up with the mirror? We never find out.
And yeah, the special effects were silly.
I disagree about children not getting the themes of fairy tales. I think they do, though they can't articulate them the way we adults can, and that's why fairy tales are so persistent.
Here's my SW question: if you're the wicked witch, why on earth do you agree to attend the wedding, much less without a retinue of bodyguards?
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cmoore0013
Unregistered User
(3/16/05 6:42 pm)
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I may be wrong....
I may be wrong, but didn't the queen's mirror only say that the prince's bride is more fair? I don't think it said that"Snow White is still the fairest". If I am right, I'm sure the queen wanted to see who her new rival was and to possibly kill her or harm her. Then, of course she finds out that it's Snow and she flips out.
It's been such a long time since I saw the Disney version with a child's perspective. The queen's transformation was a wonderful scene to me. All that color, the music, the moans. Just such an amazing scene. I do agree that it looks very painful. I must have been an odd kid, cause I don't remember any scene scaring me in that film. Nothing really frightened me. I thought it was just cool, not scary. I do remember that many video boxes in the video store's horror section used to terrify me. Now, I look at a cheesy cover of some 80's slasher flick and laugh at how stupid it was. I guess that when your a child, everything is much different and you don't understand that the killer on the video can't come out and kill you.
I must agree that Snow White: A Tale Of Terror was very confused. It seemed to start out as a creepy little supernatural horror film and then turn into a gory Sci-Fi channel original movie. A couple of sequences were done well. The chase in the woods was pretty interesting, as well as some of the lines that the charactrs speak. The atmosphere was impressive and Sigourney Weaver's performance was nothing less than excellent. The mirror seemed to be almost represenative of her mind. As she goes crazier, her mirror gets more and more strange. I'm not totally sure, but I sure did love the apple scene. Nice makeup work.
I know that I want weird costumes and strange sets in all of these films to give it a sense of oddness. Blood is going to be used where it is need. I'm not making a slasher film, the only one that comes close is Hansel and Gretel.
One question, I want the red shot shoescene to be disturbing. It's jsut so hard for me to imagine something like that. It seems too surreal to be disturbing. How could somone die from that? It would make the feet useless, but not kill you, right? They would probably have to cut off her head of something.
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(3/16/05 7:26 pm)
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Re: I may be wrong....
You're probably right; it's been a while since I saw the flick. I was thinking of the scene in the beginning when little Snow is hiding under the bed and her nanny comes to look for her, opens the mirror, and dies--that's in this version we're talking about, right? Or is that the Hallmark version with those wretched rainbow dwarves? Anyway, I was never sure exactly why the mirror killed the nanny. Aside from pure malevolence. Weaver was good, but I guess I wouldn't expect anything less from her.
I'm not a doctor, but I suspect the third degree burns combined with untreated shock would kill you. Does that sound reasonable?
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cmoore0013
Unregistered User
(3/16/05 8:11 pm)
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Yes, that's the version.
Yep. That's it! I agree that the Hallmark version was horrible. Miranda Richardson was decent, but her part wasn't really scary. Kristen Kruek was definatly beautiful and what they did to make her look so white was pretty amazing. It was supposed to be dark and faithful to the origianl tale, but it was so odd that I didn't feel Snow White much. The queen didn't seem like a real threat, the father was a total dope, Snow White seemed to be a little bit menstrual, and the prince turned out to be the only one likeable, cause he didn't say much. The visual effects were really cool(the queen being absorbed by her mirror and flying to see Snow White to kill her). The plot was just too confusing and I didn't find the film the least bit disturbing or scary. The queen is killed by zombie dwarves who have been turned into lawn orniments by the queen, for crying out loud!
Your explanation sounds good. I forgot about shock.
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(3/17/05 6:10 am)
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Re: Yes, that's the version.
Heh. I forgot about the zombie dwarf-lawn ornaments. That's the mark of a quality picture. The only thing I liked about it was the sort of homoeroticism going on between the queen and Snow, what with Snow's head coming out of the mirror and kissing the queen on the lips, and the queen turning herself into a young woman (Snow's mother, I know) and putting her arms around Snow and telling her to eat the fruit. That was fun. The rest of it? Bleh. Wasn't this also the one in which Snow's father wasn't originally a king but met a giant/genie who gave him one wish and instead of wishing that his wife hadn't died or anything like that, he wishes he was a king? And the stepmom was really an ogress? That movie was so damn long, I can barely remember any of it. And I think that may be a blessing.
Those dwarves were truly awful.
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