Bringing Characters To Life - Hansel & Gretel

Another Grimm Brother's fairy tale that I have chosen to include in my book is the well known tale of Hansel & Gretel. Although this story is well known by most, the original Grimm tale is much more gruesome than the story that circulates now. I felt that I could use these more gruesome elements to again experiment with special effects make-up and to hopefully show to an audience the darker, less known side of these childhood  tales.

Hansel & Gretel are a brother and sister that live in a small house with their father and his wife (their stepmother). The husband is the breadwinner for the family and as work is low he is struggling to provide for his wife and children, so much so that he can't even feed themselves any longer. The step mother orders the father to send his children deep into the forest so that they can fend for themselves and he will then no longer have to worry about their welfare, the father refuses so the next morning the step mother alone walks them deep intp the forest and leaves them there.

 'Early tomorrow morning we’ll take the children out into the forest and give each of them one more piece of bread. They will not find the way home again, and we shall be rid of them.' 

 This on it's own could be seen as representing dark themes such as child neglection or a form of child abuse, a subject that wouldn't be suitable to read to a child.

Although the main characters of the story are Hansel, Gretel & The Evil Witch, I have chosen to recreate just two of the characters - Gretel & The Evil Witch as I felt these played the biggest part in the plot of the story.
After Gretel is left with her brother in the forest, both begin to walk aimlessly through the forest trying to find their way back home, on route they come across a little house that's built with cakes and bread and has little windows made of sugar, the house looked so tasty to them that the staving children began to eat away at the house. From this point in the story Gretel is seen as quite glutinous, to show this symbol of greed I researched into a term called 'sploshing', it is a name for the reference of mixing food and sex together however I looked mainly at the food side of the term.

To show this term in a less sexualised way I am going to have a mid shot and a close up of Gretel sat on the floor with her hands full of cake, eating messily as if she's never eaten before.  

Throughout the story Gretel comes across as being quite shy, timid and very childlike as she cries to her brother in despair several times. I feel the best way to portray this is through both costume and composition, I want to - for example as well as wearing a child-like piniform dress, Gretel could be sat on the floor or in a crouched position as seen her in Tim Walker's recreation of Bette Davis.

Gretel's character is very much about showing her transformation from a shy and timid child into a strong character that ends up throwing the Evil Witch into a hot burning oven of fire as apposed to a extensive make-up look, it is the Evil Witch that's going to be the more creative and visual character. In the story the witch lives deep in the dark forest and lies waiting for children to enter her land so that she can fatten them up with treats and then eat them. Through costume, make-up and special effects make-up I want to show the Witch as being actually part of the forest by using dark colour shades such as green, blacks and browns and through the use of materials such as vines and leaves in the hair and on the clothing. 

For my make-up design I have also taken inspiration from the new film released version of the fairy tale named Hansel & Gretel: The Witch Hunters. In this adaptation the witches change from normal looking humans into evil, scary looking witches and with this witch in particular her face becomes pale, dark and cracked. I have taken inspiration from this cracked effect with the make-up design for my witch, as I want her to appear as part of the forest I'm going to create branch like cracks coming from the outer edge of the face into the centre; I feel this will be both in keeping with the theme of the forest.

The Witch is described in the story as being as old as the hills, I have bought old age stipple from Charles Fox and I'm going to use this on both the mouth area, the eye area and the hands to create an old, wrinkled effect on the face. As I am having a close up of the witches mouth snarling I am going to use tooth enamel in brown to stain the teeth slightly, I feel this along with the wrinkled effect will look both effective in creating an evil and scary look. 

                                                                                             

In the same way that I'm using old age stipple on the face, I will also use it on the hands. I'll have another close up of the hand reaching out to imply the witch grabbing out for the children that lay waiting. I am also going to make my own long and pointed witch nails in the same style as seen in the image here.  

After the Evil Witch has lured the children into her house, she uses Gretel as a slave, she lights the fire each morning and heats up the water in the cauldron. One morning while Gretel was doing her daily chores the witch was stood near the open fire, with all her strength and mite Gretel pushed the witch into the burning fire and both brother and sister than escaped unharmed. On a six week prosthetics course I learnt how to create burns with latex, so I feel confident now in creating a burns look for my witch character, I am going to have a head shot of half of her face burned. I feel this will be both a shocking and terrifying image, one that an audience wouldn't expect from the story.