| SHEDDING
LIGHT ON THE LITTLE MATCHGIRL
© 2006 Ron Barbagallo
 |
| As
dusk comes on New Years Eve, The Little Matchgirl
watches as a street lamp is illuminated. |
Told with emotion reverent to Danish author Hans Christian
Andersen’s writing, Disney’s adaptation of The
Little Matchgirl follows on the heels of the studio’s
recent Academy Award® nominated shorts Destino
and Lorenzo. Offering a glimpse of what may be coming
from Disney’s newly expanded shorts program, The
Little Matchgirl marks Disney’s 5th adaptation
of Andersen and was directed by Roger Allers.
“Matchgirl got its start in 2002.” co-producer
Baker Bloodworth recalls, “Roy Disney was intent on
creating this Fantasia sequel which we were calling The
Music Project. It was intended to be a compilation of
shorts that featured music and was to be representative of
different sounds and cultures.”
“We were looking for international stories” producer
Don Hahn continues “and Matchgirl made sense
for this. It is something that could be done in pantomime
and to music. Hans Christian Andersen is a well we’ve
gone back to many times and was always good. He’s solid
and always timeless.”
The
placement of values and color were key to setting the right
emotional tone for The Little Matchgirl.
Visual development by Ed Ghertner (left) illustrates how soft,
almost dream-like tones blur and blend into each other as
they lead the viewer's eye down a long lonely street. The
finished screen shot (right) shows how yellow or orange tones
were used as a visual metaphor for warmth and hope, the feelings
which overwhelm the little match girl as she mourns her Grandmother
who passed away a week earlier on Christmas Eve.
Originally
published as part of Andersen’s fifth volume of Fairy
Tales in 1848, The Little Girl with the Matches is
an original Andersen story inspired by a Johan Thomas Lundbye
drawing and loosely based on an incident that happened to
Andersen’s mother when she was a child. Written nine
years after Andersen’s friend and colleague Charles
Dickens finished Oliver Twist, The Little Match
Girl shed a light on a very oppressed and silent group
in Europe -- its children. Andersen’s essay spoke out
for exploited children sent by their parents to beg in the
streets and for children of all economic brackets living at
the time when one out of every two children routinely died
before the age of five.
The task of translating Andersen’s somber, poetic prose
went to Lion King co-director Roger Allers, who continued
on with the project as it went from the music feature to short.
The veteran director led a team of artists and painters during
downtime from other projects at Disney’s Burbank and
Paris Studios to create a seven-minute short and turn Andersen’s
poignant words into meaningful animation.
Art
Director MIke Humphries skillfully employs the use of complementary
colors — blues and oranges to display the contrast of
feelings that sweep over The Little Matchgirl. Humphries'
concept art depicts a horse-drawn sled (top left), which whisks
the match girl from the cold wintry blues to the warm glowing
Christmastime embrace she received from her Grandmother just
a week before (top right). Similarly, Humphries uses blues
and grays to illustrate the cold cruel reality of the match
girl's day-to-day existence (bottom row).
This was
a challenge, in many ways, because the story of the match
girl is also a study in contrasts: life vs. death; rich and
poor; cold and warm, not just in temperature but also in temperament.
“Our lead character goes through a lot of emotional
changes;” Allers observes “We see her plight with
the bitter cold, and we see her shift in and out of visions
of comfort and escape. Aesthetically it was a big challenge
to make the shifts from dream back to reality.”
Finding
music with the right sort of feeling was important, which
Don Hahn did with Alexander Borodin’s dreamlike String
Quartet No. 2 in D Major: Third Movement: Notturno (Andante).
It also became the inspiration to move the Christmastime story
to the isolated streets of pre-revolutionary Russia. “The
Borodin piece has so much pathos in it, and seemed to fit
the construction of the story so well. Once Roger put the
storyboards to music,” executive producer Roy E. Disney
noted “you couldn’t help look at it and go ‘Oh,
that really works!’”
A
line drawing by Mac George (right) and a black and white value
study by Ralph Zondag (left).
Visual
development by Hans Bacher (left) and a pencil drawing by
an un-attributed production artist (right).
Early
during production Allers decided the film should be done using
2D pencil animation and have a hand painted look to it. Some
of that inspiration is owed to the character designs of Randy
Haycock and the thoughtful watercolors of Hans Bacher, which
became the springboard for some elaborate computer coloring.
“Roger was adamant that we pursue a watercolor look
for the film,” explains art director Mike Humphries.
“We spent several months experimenting with paints,
pigments, and just trying to find the right paper. We didn’t
want the texture to be terribly obvious, but we also didn’t
want it to be so subtle that you didn’t notice it was
art.”
Watercolors
using brisk washes of very diluted translucent paint were
created by Hans Bacher (all the art above). The way the paint
fell on the textured paper was the springboard for the look
of the film.
That watercolor look made its way into the background paintings
and can be felt here in these three conceptual paintings by
George Taylor. These three pieces illustrate how much care
was taken in developing the look of the film. The painting
to the left is the same image but with a more aqua blue hue
to it, while the painting to the far right has more of an
indigo blue hue. The painting in the center, the one with
the cold, gray-black hues is the one whose color palette appears
in the film.
“One
of our big challenges was figuring out how to integrate the
characters into the [hand painted] watercolor backgrounds,”
says the film’s artistic coordinator Dave Bossert. “We
were able to do this in our CAPS system by processing the
line drawings to give it the appearance that pigment pooled
towards the edges of the paint shapes as it does in real watercolor
paintings. We were also able to create a mottled grain within
the painted character.”
A
screen shot from the finished short showing the color influence
and visual development style of the film's pre-production
art on the finished look of the film.
The production
went on over a four year period where Allers was asked to
come back from projects outside Disney to attempt several
alternate, more upbeat endings. Ultimately the executives
let Allers restore his original ending, which was faithful
to Andersen’s original intent and is as much a mirror
for our indifference today as it was in the 1850s. “We’re
not in the business of sending political messages.”
Don Hahn explains. “But it is a story of hope and Roger
wanted to be genuine to the original story and to his credit
he persevered to tell that story. In a way the ending is almost
prayerful, too, without being religious. It was a way to show
hope and that all children have a right to exist, and that’s
a really poetic notion.”
The Little Matchgirl made its world debut at Annecy
in France on June 5, 2006. It went on to win Best Film For
Children at the 17th Festival of Animated Films 2006 Animafest
World Festival of Animated Films Zagreb and will be available
as part of the extras on the The Little Mermaid special
edition DVD, available for sale starting Oct. 3, 2006.
A
CLOSER LOOK -
Roger Allers on directing The Little Matchgirl
©
2006 Ron Barbagallo
When Hans Christian Andersen wrote The Little Match Girl
almost 160 years ago it was at a time in his career when he
was well past adapting spoken fairy-tales for the printed
page. Like The Little Mermaid or The Ugly Duckling,
many of Andersen's original stories often contained a moral.
However,
unlike those fables, the moral of The Little Match Girl
was not found directly within its storyline. Instead it was
written to provoke thought and to gain the attention of Europe's
privileged masses, many of whom could well afford to buy one
of Andersen's volumes but treated their children like property
or indentured servants.
Case
in point: Andersen's own mother as a child was sent out to
the streets to beg by her father, and on one occasion was
so scared to come home empty-handed that she hid under a bridge
during winter and nearly froze to death. Scenarios like this
where children are treated like possessions are more common
than we imagine and play themselves out today in many places
that escape our day to day notice in the poorest parts of
the world, in Africa, the Middle East and in Asia.
Like
many visionaries before him, Andersen's story of the match
girl was a societal wake-up-call, an artistic cry for help
and a slap at indifference.
Director,
Roger Allers understood the sentiment behind The LIttle
Match Girl and
discusses how he went about translating Andersen's written
words to animation.
Roger
Allers:
When Don Hahn came to me with a proposal to set Little
Matchgirl to music as a short, I was thrilled with the
idea because it was a favorite story of mine. The idea of
doing it as a musical piece and to do it justice was a thrill.
I was
one of the three main board artists on this short. It was
lovely to go back and spend time boarding since for many years
at Disney that's what I did. As I started to break down the
scenes and come up with the images to match up with the music,
the color palette became really obvious. It simply presented
itself to me while I was just drawing.
(I decided)
that all the scenes of her daily life and her struggles in
the city would be very cool and very colorless; a lot of grays,
blue-grays and that sort of thing to help you feel the cold
and to feel the emotional coldness of her existence.
I wanted
her visions in the fire, in the flame of the matches, to be
warm and bring out all the warm, earthy colors: the colors
of comfort, of home and hearth.
Two
pieces of visual development art by Hans Bacher.
Media: watercolor on paper (left) and gouache on paper (right).
© Walt Disney Company.
At the
same time I had Hans Bacher do some character sketch ideas
for the match girl. He was working with ink and ink washes.
He does this wonderful, quick shorthand when he’s working
with his designs. The way the ink would trail off and fade
out and the texture of the paper that came up underneath was
so exciting to see. That’s what initiated the idea to
do the whole movie as a watercolor wash and to really let
the texture of the paper play underneath and to keep it very
simple and very thin.
We had
to look for techniques to accomplish that, even though our
characters were painted in the computer. (We found) computer
techniques that we could use to create a sense of texture
and the way the color would bleed out towards the end of the
outline of the character.
There
were a few elements from Andersen's story that were altered
for your adaptation of the story. The location of the story
was changed to an Eastern European location, something that
resembles St. Petersburg. What was the reason for the location
change?
Roger
Allers:
It
was partly our choice of music [Alexander Borodin’s
String Quartet No. 2 in D Major: Third Movement: Notturno
(Andante)] and partly the opportunity of the visual allure
of doing pre-revolutionary Russia in terms of the architecture
and I guess also because, if you think about a place like
Russia, that place looks so archetypically cold. Holland is
so charming, not that it wouldn’t have been grim to
be poor in Holland I would imagine.
But setting
it in Russia said something little bit more to me, (about)
the division of the classes in pre-revolutionary Russia for
one thing, especially before the revolution when the people
were close to rioting on several occasions and were brutally
put down. I thought it would be a poignant stage to play upon.
Also the
people walking, the Russians walking with their fur coats
and the elegance of pre-revolutionary Russia, which also romantically
speaks to me; that era when Russia was all obsessed with France.
It was just really beautiful. Incredibly beautiful, if you
were of those classes.
Much
of Andersen's writing in The Little Match Girl
is told in metaphors and with poetic license. One of the tools
he uses in Match Girl is to contrast everything from
class structure to the contrast of emotions: compassion and
indifference and the worlds of life and death. An element
from the story alluded to in the short is the love the match
girl received from her beloved grandmother. In the short story
it is further explained that her grandmother died a week earlier
and that the match girl is left with an overbearing and cruel
father. What sort of filmmaking decisions did you make in
dealing with explaining her relationships at home?
Roger
Allers:
Well, for one thing, it’s a very short piece and we
were doing it with no dialogue, purely to music where it all
would have to be communicated in pantomime and it just seemed
like a complication to start dealing with the parental relationship
ahead of it. (It would have cut) into a lot of screen time.
As it
is, I think of it as being so incredibly compressed. It was
a rush to get through each of the four steps we did take through
it. So we decided it would be better to jump into the middle
of the story. I think it would raise more questions than it
would answered for people.
Two early
pieces of visual development art by Sue Nichols.
Both firmly illustrate the contrast of indifference and affection
within the match girl's home life.
© Walt Disney Company.
Even if
there was someone there, it was someone she could not go home
to. I didn’t want to have to address that it was abusive
on screen. So it was better to just go right to the heart
of it where it’s this girl against the world. A girl
alone. It seems like it made her pining for comfort and love
much stronger when she was alone among all those people and
then we can go to those visions of her being wrapped up in
warmth of her grandmother.
One
of the more poignant moments in the film involves the sequence
where the match girl finally greets her grandmother after
making several attempts. In many ways the emotion that plays
out in this scene foreshadows the ending of the short. Could
you explain what you did to layer the emotion from this scene
into the next?
Roger Allers:
Ah, the scene where the match girl runs into her grandmother’s
arms, that was part of that whole thing of her traversing
from one world to the other; from the cold world of reality
to the warm world of her dream and her desire, and to be scooped
up in the grandmother’s arms as an image of comfort
and everything.
And then
there was the idea of the Christmas tree, which was to represent
everything that was wonderful and warm and delightful about
the way a childhood was supposed to be. The feeling of looking
at your childhood Christmas tree and all that and she [the
lIttle matchgirl] gets to light the candles on the tree.
When
I showed the film to Glenn Keane at the studio, he got it
right away. After it was over, Glenn and I talked about the
scene where the grandmother was holding the matchgirl and
lighting the candles, and Glenn said in that moment when she
was in her grandmother’s arms and lighting the candles
and looking at the tree, he knew she was dead.
And I
thought, "Wow, that was fairly perceptive," because
that in my mind was also the moment at which the match girl
was fully embraced by the spirit of her grandmother.
(Then)
we went ahead and brought the grandmother (corporally) into
the alley, and have her (the grandmother) symbolically wake
up her (the little matchgirl) and carry her off. That whole
thing of being held in her grandmother’s arms was a
symbol of giving herself up to the warmth and the spirit of
her grandmother.
STORY
SKETCHES
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
All story
sketches were drawn by Roger Allers.
Media: graphite pencil and colored pencil on paper. Size:
5 1/2 inches by 10 inches.
© Walt Disney Company.
Roger
Allers:
And then, I have to say one of my favorite parts
was the idea that follows -- the idea of having the lit candles
fade when we go to dark. The lights of the candles fall and
become the snow as I transition back to the real world and
we discover the girl dead in the alley.
It’s
funny because you do use small things like snow and other
atmospheric elements, pinpoints really, whether it’s
the shooting star at the end of the film or the snowflakes
from the beginning and throughout the film or the candle lights
on the Christmas tree, as connective devices to link, move
or float one scene into another. It becomes like a ballet
of sorts and moves the short forward from beginning to end.
Roger Allers:
What you're talking about is the choreography, the motifs
that lead you through the storyline. You have your two points
of light that we play with in the picture.
First
it’s the snow. This is how the picture opens: with snowflakes.
So it’s the snowflakes and then flames. Each is the
opposite of the other, emotionally and temperature-wise. You
have the frozen snow and you have the warmth of the flame.
But in
a way they’re kind of the same thing and in the very
end, our last light is both warm and cold: the falling star.
There’s almost nothing colder than the distant star
but, at the same time, it is the symbol that she had gone
to heaven. The ultimate warmth of her condition.
It’s
interesting (that) sometimes, when you’re doing these
things, you’re not thinking about them entirely. I think
these symbols come up more spontaneously, or maybe that’s
just the way I work. It’s one of the things I love about
doing animation just to music is that it is a dance. Animation
and music complement the other.
All images
are © Walt Disney Company.
The author
would like to thank Baker Bloodworth, Don Hahn, Roger Allers,
Howard Green, Doug Engalla, Ramin Zahed, Sarah Baisley and
Ray Morton for their help.
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