I’m always on the lookout for new adaptations of lesser-known fairy tales, and just over a month ago I was lucky enough to find one practically on my doorstep, at the National Gallery of Art. De Vilde Svaner (The Wild Swans) is one of Hans Christian Andersen’s most beautiful stories, and I had high expectations.

The more I read about this production, an hour-long Danish production with art design created by–no joke–Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, the more apprehensive I became. A film with découpage backdrops and actors greenscreened in? I just wasn’t convinced that they’d be able to pull it off.

And oh boy, was I wrong!

I finally got around to uploading part of the film I worked on last year for my independent study. This is just a 4-minute clip, but it will have to do for now.

I briefly linked to two animated versions of Bluebeard in my last post, but they’re both so interesting that I wanted to do them justice. The first, “Blue Beard’s Last Wife” (“La Dernière femme de barbe bleue”), blends the Bluebeard legend with ancient Greek mythology in an unexpected (and humorous) way. The second, “A Very Blue Beard” (“Ochen sinyaya boroda”) is a Russian musical short about a detective investigating Bluebeard’s crimes… with a surprising twist! So take a break, put your feet up, and watch a couple of really neat shorts!

In addition to the more traditional storyboards, I thought I’d try a photographic approach for a couple of early scenes in my new film.