Bringing Characters To Life - Cinderella

The last fairy tale that I have chosen to use in my book is the Brothers Grimm version of Cinderella. I specifically chose to use this story as although it is probably the most well known fairy tale, the Brother's Grimm version isn't so well known. Most see the story of Cinderella as the typical princess story that has the ultimate happy ending of a prince finding his future princess and although elements of these are seen in the Grimm's version, theirs doesn't hold such a stereotypical happy ending.

When researching further into the Grimm's story of Cinderella, it began to unravel quite a gruesome and gory plot. The Disney remake of Cinderella failed to mention elements of the original plot such as both the ugly sister's cutting off parts of their feet so that they could fit into the glass slipper and again both sister's having their eyes plucked out for birds at the end of the story. I felt these elements would be a good way to show the dark and less glamorous side of the Cinderella story.

The original grimm tale opens with the theme of death which on it's own is a dark subject for a childhood tale. Cinderella's mother has died and now her father has found a new wife who has two of her own children, these will become Cinderella's stepmother and stepsisters. As her father is always out at work, Cinderella's new stepmother basically uses her as a slave, she cooks, cleans and washes for them and in return she is forced to sleep in a pile of ash by the fire at night.

It is important to create character looks based on information found in the story, these stories are the sources of the character. So I've used this element of the story to design Cinderella's first look, she is described throughout as being both dusty and dirty so I am going to use fuller's earth in the hair to create a dusty, dirty effect. With a darker coloured eye shadow or cream I will accentuate the lines under her eyes to make her look tired and worn, as well as using a stipple sponge and brown greasepaint to create dirty scratch marks.



Hopefully these techniques
along with styling of a ragged style dress will be successful in creating a dirty, tired and worn looking character, one that evokes sympathy from an audience.

To again show Cinderella's life as being both unglamorous and unpleasant and to continue to receive sympathy from an audience, I will have close ups in the same composition as these images seen here. One of Cinderella crouched on the floor in her rags crying and another of her dirty hands and fingernails up to her face as she is crying.

Although the main concept of this book project is too show the darker, more gruesome side of fairy tales, it is an important part of the Cinderella story to show her transformation from a dirty, unkempt character into a lady dressed in gold and silver that attracts the Prince at his ball. 

I am hoping to use this type of composition to show her transformation by taking several moving shots and using Photoshop editing - this will be the most complex shot seen in my book.

With the composition of shooting the look of the character of the ugly sister I want to try to re create a Victorian portrait style photo. To do so I have researched further into Victorian portraits of women both old and modern interpretations and all include a female standing just off centre with her shoulders and head turned slightly away from the camera. I will attempt to re create a similar composition with the character of the ugly sister but I'll also have her chin slightly tilted up to show how she feel superior to Cinderella and to also show how she admires herself and doesn't think of herself as ugly at all.

In many re-interpretations of Cinderella the ugly sisters are portrayed just as their name sounds - ugly. However nothing in the original story mentions that they are unusually ugly, it only mentions that they are 'fair of face but foul at heart' and this is the only thing that could interpret them as being ugly. I felt quite a gruesome way of interpreting this would be have a close up of the ugly sister holding a heart (you can buy pigs / sheep's hearts from butchers or supermarket.) Although this is quite literate, I feel it would be quite symbolic as well as quite disturbing.

The most dark parts of the story are focused around the ugly sisters. When the prince comes by their house to try and find the owner of the glass slipper, the stepmother encourages one of the ugly sisters to cut off her toe and the other her heel in order to fit into the slipper and become the princes wife. This plan works until the Prince notices blood streaming from the sister's stocking, to recreate this element of the story I will have another close up of this, simply by staining white stockings or tights with stage blood.









As I mentioned earlier the story ends with the ugly sister's getting their eyes plucked out by pigeons, this to me is the most important element in creating a dark and sinister feel to my book. Through my love of prosthetics I have learnt how to create this missing eye effect with special fx make-up. You start by cutting a piece of black card to fit the size of your eye shape, you then stick this down with wax and use a bruise wheel to create a bruised like effect around the cardboard, then use stage blood to fill in the black section of the eye and dap around the eye to create a bloody effect.