Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/916056
This was my first time working with Bill, although I had met him a few times before, most recently in the deserts of Morocco. I really admired both his work and the fact that he jumps between independent films and big blockbusters, and can combine the sensibilities of both in his approach. Where to start? I last saw the Disney animated version of Beauty and the Beast when my son was small, so that would have been more than fifteen years ago. This was about creating the story, not just recreating the animation, so I chose not to refer back to it in detail. I relied on my sense of the story's DNA, coupled with the wonderful songs that one can't help but remember. The reality of the period was a touchstone for the production. Unlike many Disney fairy tales, Beauty and the Beast is not set in an imagined "fairy tale" land. This story is set in a real time and a real place, or at least that is where it starts, France 1740s in a little village called Villeneuve…and we were off! At the beginning of any film, my starting point is to accumulate visual research. Here I work very closely with Phil Clark, Phil and I have worked together on many films and pitches over the last six or seven years. He and I have in-depth chats about every aspect of the script, the characters, and the journey. We look at many facets of the period and place and then let our imaginations run…for a while. Sometimes we can end up with thousands of images, but with looking comes the knowledge and the process that informs everything. It is the best starting point. Then comes the refinement, finding the elusive key to many things and anything, colour or lack of, contrasting images, times, periods, abstractions, simplifications. In the world of Beauty and the Beast, it was a pair of eighteenth century etchings! One was relatively straightforward rococo the other was rococo gone mad (or even madder than it was already)! Rococo was a very short-lived but influential exuberant French style of design. It was mainly used in interior decoration and architecture that exemplified the organic style, characterised by fanciful curved asymmetrical forms and elaborate ornamentation. The Art Directors and Set Designers took part in something called "Rococo Boot Camp," where they spent approximately four weeks becoming coherent in this crazy style! A major discovery that needed to be found was the key to what had happened to the castle and its characters when the curse was put on it. Bill talked about it having a dark heart. What happened to this vain and selfish prince and the world around him? I wanted it to have a sense of memory, of its origins in its decay. What I didn't want was a feeling of straightforward dereliction and damp neglect. It needed a sense of magic. I wanted it to feel that every time a petal fell, another twist was taken, and that ultimately, the magic would take over. This is where the rococo imagery came to play. It was used to illustrate the architecture and furniture continuing to grow and form and become alive. Once I had this key, everything began to make sense. As much as magic ever can! Things were up and running. There was ample time given in preproduction to conceive all the household characters that populate the enchanted castle. Here, Katie Spencer (set decorator and longtime collaborator) and I had the most fun translating the characters into "real objects," looking at what period elements would best reflect the characters as written. How would they move and sing and dance? How does a teacup talk to a beast? Where and how would they work within the sets? Making Plumette fly and Chip use his saucer as a skateboard helped with all of this. We worked closely with costume designer Jacqueline Durran, as their look also had to feed into their final costumes when the characters are transformed back into real people after the enchantment is lifted. A B