Following on from my last post, the film below is my adaptation of the story "The Ugly Duckling".
All of the music has been made using the Audacity program, and I have changed some of the words from the original song, using my beautiful singing voice to get this fun and cheeky message across.
This version of the well known childrens story, starts in the same way, with an "ugly duckling" (me without make-up), and she turns into a beautiful swan- but only one half of her face is pretty!
The girl then has to decide whether, she will be nice (and ugly), or pretty (and vain)!
I am going to improve on this film, change some of the audio, to make it clearer, and add more photographs..
Whilst looking for stories about beauty to base my work upon, I came across the story of "The Ugly Duckling", and although I remember it from childhood, nursery rhymes and fables and such usually have a deep and meaningful message behind them, which we don't always pick up on as children.
So I looked into the story , to find out where it originated from, and have found a few different adaptations.
"The Ugly Duckling" became one of Andersen's best loved tales and was reprinted around the world. The tale was adapted to a variety of media. Films based on the tale include two Silly Symphonies animated shorts produced by Walt Disney called The Ugly Duckling. The first was produced in 1931 in black and white, and a remake in 1939 in Technicolor.
The latter film won the 1939 Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons),[8] and was the last Silly Symphony to be made. The main difference between the Andersen story and the Disney version is that, in the latter, the little bird's ordeal lasts for only a few minutes, not for months. The anime Princess Tutu is about a duck that turns into a swan-like ballerina. In 2006, the Danish animation studio A. Film produced a spin-off CG feature called The Ugly Duckling and Me!, and later produced a children's CG television series Ugly Duckling Junior which featured the same characters as the movie. The 1954 Tom and Jerry cartoon Downhearted Duckling is also based on the famous story.
The tale has seen various musical adaptations. In 1914, the Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev composed a work for voice and piano based on Nina Meshcherskaya's adaptation of the tale and, in 1932, arranged the work for voice and orchestra. This was transcribed by Lev Konov in 1996, and his opera was a great success in Russia. Other musical versions include the song “The Ugly Duckling” composed by Frank Loesser and sung by Danny Kaye for the 1952 Charles Vidormusical filmHans Christian Andersen, and Honk!, a musical based on the tale which was produced in Britain and won an Olivier Award.
In 1998, the musical played the Piccolo Spoleto for seventeen days. In 2009, the Dance Theatre of Bradenton, Florida, presented the ballet version of the popular tale (Allison Norton: The Ugly Duckling). In 2010, Garri Bardin directed a feature-length stop-motionmusical of the story set to Tchaikovsky's ballet music. In 2012, a musical adaptation of the story, with ten original songs, was released by JJ’s Tunes & Tales. The album, titled “The Ugly Duckling: Story with Songs” contains both songs and spoken narration.
The song for "The Ugly Duckling" was also recently used to advertise the Audi A5. And unlike some of the previous videos, where a woman is singing, this version is sung by Danny Kaye.
Then i found this very, very strange video, produced by 'Muffin Songs'.
To conclude this post, ignoring that strange last video, I am now going to transform myself from an ugly duckling into a beautiful swan, photograph it all and make it into a film!
I have come across a few artist's websites through "It's Nice That" and here are some images and links for future use.
Owen Silverwood
"Silverwood has just finished assisting photographer Dan Tobin Smith for the past year, and is currently on a roll of creating work of his own for clients such as Nokia and Liberties. Multi-talented in more than one discipline, he is currently forging his way into moving image scene as one half of directing-duo Bison."
This artist/photographer has been commissioned, by Belgium theatre company 'Toneelhuis', to break away from the traditional images we see of actors, and she has created these moody images, one for each person in the theatre.
Looking into the different uses of handkerchiefs in a new book "The Printed Square", which I bought in Leeds Art Gallery Shop last week, I have been searching online.
I found this video, where two hankies have been re-used to make a bra!
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Looking up 'silk scarves', I found The Telegraph had an article in the fashion section about the history of scarves, and why, as Huey Lewis and the News tell us, it is "hip to be square".
These are my favourite two scarves out of the ones displayed in this article, because I can see my own illustrative style in them, and can imagine my work translating into elegant scarves like these.
Using Twitter to help further research into hankies, I came across this website, which doesn't sell hankies, but i really liked the layout of the owebsite, and the images used are great!
The photographs remind me of music videos for Britney Spears&Will.I.Am, or Nicki Minaj, they have a similar style and creative flare!
