Original subtitles

Storyteller came about because Jim Henson, I worked with him on Labyrinth

and I was doing the music videos for David Bowie for the film. We got

together to chat about those and I showed him some other music videos and

we You know, we got chatting and he asked if I was interested in doing a TV

series, a storyteller.

And about a storyteller, they didn't know quite what it was then. He said he

was thinking on video, on television, and you held on the storyteller. You

didn't really have a lot of coming away to the world because he was trying to be

practical with it and obviously telling these stories and what you could do in

the time and how much it would cost.

And all that was a big issue.

I mean, my immediate thing was, well, I'll show you. And we were in the edit

suite with David Yardley, who was the editor.

And I said, I'll show you what we do in here, just online. This is the way we

digitally, we start with 35 mil.

We come straight from NAIC, straight into the edit suite where we're putting

it all together digitally.

And we put these, we can do what we're...

the effects and just do them in the cutting room and I showed him another

video I just after Take On Me for Aha I did a video called Hunting

High and Low and it was all silhouettes and it was kind of based on Jan

Piankowski who is a Czech illustrator and he did children's books and tales

and things and I was fascinated by them because You couldn't see any detail in

any faces or anything. You just saw silhouettes and you told so much about

the language of the story from the silhouettes that you saw. You just

really embraced it. I just loved it. And then when I was in the cutting room with

David Yardley and we were playing around on Hunting High and Low on that video,

I just realized how strong it was.

to get a silhouette, how well you could do a VFX with a silhouette rather than

something that was a lit character, a lit figure.

Lottie Reiniger as well was the other person who did silhouette animation.

was an inspiration.

Where it was also coming from were lesser known European folk tales that

then became Cinderella, that then became other stories that we know, we've come

to know, but at the time they were just different worlds and they told the story

in very different ways and often very hard and scary.

hedgehog learned he was strange and he learned he was ugly and he learned to be

sad and he learned the name that was given him

yeah he was very he was very inspiring Jim

but he was also not demanding in any way and just let let me do whatever came

into my head which sometimes was and sometimes was tricky and other times

worked really well. In the background, I think he just went in and fought for

everything. I didn't need to.

I just was kind of throwing out ideas and I don't remember any of them being

edited in any way. I think everyone was excited about what it could do. Yeah, he

was really great and very creative.

interested in what we were doing because we were kind of at the cutting edge of

things and Take On Me had become a big hit and at that point and Hunting High

and Low was you know lots of it ended up looking really strong and we did the

transformations from human to eagle to you know and did those in silhouette as

well and I think he really loved it he did really love it and he let me run

with it he said well you know, will you do the pilot for the storyteller?

And he said, you know, we don't know whether NBC will buy any more episodes,

but it'll be a half-hour pilot. And he introduced me to Antony Minghella, who

was a writer who I loved.

Just lovely people to work with as well.

And also, when I first read some of the pages of Antony's writing,

I just loved his language, the way he, the poetry of his scripts

were beautiful. His little, tickly little fish and, you know, like kind of

phrases that were just jumping off the page and kind of felt warm and

embracing. He came to the set, definitely came to the set, Anthony, and

he was, you know, was a lovely, personally have eyes on it

and he I was a bit naive actually to be honest I didn't know that you know when

you get a script even though I'd already done a movie and I'd done quite a lot of

music videos but because I'd done them I'd been kind of given a lot of control

in the music videos generally total control generally you do you interpret

what you're doing however you want to do it. And so I'd get these scripts from

Anthony and be inspired by the script and go off on other ideas that I

actually sometimes forgot to tell anybody about.

I'd just be working with the crew and the things and I'd be like, let's have

them instead of there's a pond there there there's a bowl of water and that's

the water is the pond and it's just all one thing and that wasn't in the script

but uh anthony really embraced it in fact he put then put it into the you

know brought it and put it into the script and i just i do i suppose i was

doing things in the wrong order but not knowing not deliberately not really

knowing you know what what uh in tv what uh what you're supposed to do or how

it's supposed to work

Ah, it's a treat.

Will you join me? No, thanks.

I must retire and get his bed for the night. You must sleep after a good

fright.

Good luck.

Thank you.

Now this green pond is not all welcome cool and water lilies.

Deep in its green, deep is a terrible thing.

And it peers up through the green and sees a pair of feet.

It's a man.

Oh dear, oh dear.

By that point, I was obsessed with the snorkel camera, which was a mirror at

the end of a tube that takes the film plane away from the actual lens.

And we did certain shots with that.

And I can't remember specifically, but there was snorkel along the ground, some

beautiful shots.

And then there was a probe lens, which was a single, again, you're taking the

film plane and lens and separating it. So you have a different depth of field.

You have a depth of field as if it isn't where it is, as if it isn't an inch away

from the subject, which makes it really cool.

And I knew that was the only way we'd be able to come out of John Hurt's mouth.

would be with the probe. So it was a different lens.

They're still around, those lenses. They've been updated and upgraded, and

you don't need quite as much aperture because sometimes you have to bring in a

lot of light to make those work.

I just remember the snorkel shot.

Yeah, the spider where the dog is, and we had the snorkel come in as if it was

the spider's point of view, and that was...

That was fun. This is no laughing better.

I'm talking about a thing beginning with S and with several revolting black. What

are you going on about? You don't mean this little side.

Hey, come back.

Have you killed it?

Yes.

Promise?

Promise. I popped it between my fingers.

Come and see.

It's quite a mess.

John Fenner, I think, contributed a real lot to it. He had

a good storytelling light.

That's right, I met John Fenner on a bridge too far. I was the clapper loader

and he was the gaffer.

And we lived in Holland for like nine months and I'd see bits of him and he

was like... got to know him a bit and then at the end of that he went out as a

DP and it wasn't always the best route or the easiest route to go from that

into DP and I just loved how he thought and how he felt about

images and how he used filters like coral filters and

things he understood.

and did a great job and he'd often use, he'd love smoke in there and the haze.

I worked with Brendan McCarthy, he did a lot of the storyboards and

he's from the comic book world so he had some really cool

images that came through even beyond design from Brendan's storyboards.

We had a really good production designer as well, Roger Hall.

who would twist things.

I mean, I loved when, in Fear Not, the Irishman that he meets on the path.

I loved that scene.

And he built that set. We came in and it wasn't like a horizontal set, it was a

vertical set.

And it was like, whoa, what is it? And photographed beautifully because it was

kind of brought everything up to you and gave that wonderful perspective.

My mum did continuity on it.

And she was, because she used to be continuity, and then just before that,

she had made a movie as a director, and then she came back and did a bit of

continuity for us, which was lovely. She was great. She loved all the creatures,

loved the scripts.

And while the tailor's cut cloth spun with pure gold, Sapsoro stayed shut up

in her room.

She never appeared.

Only her creatures, flying in, slithering out.

busy busy scurrying about and then it was about casting and uh yeah you're

always involved in the casting and uh duncan kenworthy was is the producer and

duncan kenworthy yeah was was really good with cast as well it was a good

pretty which most good producers are they have uh you know another it's a

very much a collaborative thing he says like i work with this guy he'd worked on

lots of

television in particular and performances and so Yeah, you'd get

Get a lot of input from Duncan with casting and things beginning as I do at

the beginning and starting as I must at the start Let me show you fate through

the round of this ring

The girl whose finger fits this ring, she'll become queen.

The law decrees it. What a lucky girl, you might think.

Hmm?

Oh, no.

Amazing voice.

Incredible narrator.

Brilliant actor.

Pixie-like physical look.

Like, who else? There wasn't anyone else that could really, you know, he was just

perfect for it. So we came to him and it was just about seeing whether he'd do

it. He didn't want to change his face completely.

And had he come from an elephant man at that time? I think that had something to

do with it as well. I don't want to go back there.

Yeah, it was a little bit of a debate.

It was never a battle.

He loved Jim as well.

You know, they talked a lot.

You're frightened of rats.

Everyone's frightened of rats.

They're rattish.

It's normal.

What? You seen a rat?

You're shuddering.

So are you?

Now it's getting dark.

Don't like the dark either.

Come here and bark a bit.

That relationship was on the page, beautifully done.

So you just then had to get the performance of those, and John just knew

how to perform it.

And what was great was Brian Henson, who I think was really young at the time, I

think he was like 23 or something.

He was a real youngster, but he just knew, and he knew the world of his

father's world of puppeteering. He'd grown up with these...

puppeteers that were able to surrounded him and and he watched them and he was

able to understand the craft really well so as the dog he was a timing

was perfect and brilliant so it didn't take a lot of directing you know you had

it on the page and between two brilliant performers you you know we got

what we wanted

Do you know who I am?

I don't think so.

You're not a wordle, some sort of terrible thing.

Exactly.

These are my pretties.

They tempt a man like you, and I drown them. Why?

Because. I went and spent time at the creature shop to understand what they

would need as puppeteers and what would work and what wouldn't work.

They were saying, look, as we work on this, we're going to get some technology

in there.

And it was, you know, the frowns and the eyebrows and the eyes and, you know,

obviously the mouth was a bit more traditional, but the lip curl as well,

you know, that was all going to be a lot of puppeteers or a machine that could

make one or two control it.

It wasn't a big challenge because you saw it before your eyes. It wasn't like

putting up tennis balls now all over the place. The challenge is how do

you live this moment for real?

In this case, we were living the moment for real.

It was the gravel hog who came in and it was brilliantly done.

The work that went into it, I didn't get to see a lot of...

The days and days and days that quills would have been added to this amazing

suit and their sculptures and the model makers were, I mean, I remember

Ron Mueck, who then became a massive artist.

Brilliant. Dead Dad, he did the Tate, I think. You know, these were young guys

that were just in...

that they've been found as either sculptors or just brilliant

illustrators. They would inspire the creature shop to figure ways of doing,

getting to this, you know, getting onto the screen so that we could, you know, I

was playing with the final thing.

It was like, it was there. Obviously there were restrictions, there were

meetings about restrictions. If we do this, then...

it's not going to look very good if that character does this or that.

So there was obviously learning kind of collaboratively with the creature shop

and with the model makers and everything in what will work and what will

be tricky to get the story across.

In fact, when we did the pilot...

And it did well, we just felt the nose was a bit too big on John Hurt. That was

the main thing I seem to remember.

The change from the pilot to the series was like, wait a minute, when you have a

profile of this nose, it's like the creature shot had gone a bit too far

with that part of it. It was great, and I'd never worked with... I'd worked with

tiny bits and pieces, but to work with...

these incredible latex models and creatures and some inside suits and

things. That was an amazing learning experience.

Loved it.

Hans!

Come home!

Hans heard them, but he wouldn't answer.

He lay there all night, his rooster for company, and thawed and thawed until he

thawed a hole in the ground.

We'd done the pilot, and six months later it had gone out on NBC, and NBC

went, everyone loves it, do eight more.

So then he called me up, and I said at the time I could probably do three, but

maybe we'd get some other. He said, well, I'd love to direct a couple, and

we'll get some other directors to do.

to fill in to eight.

And he said, but you've got to steer the look of it and pass on the knowledge.

And I said, obviously, if you use John Fenner and use David Yardley as the

editor, you're going to get a large piece of communication

put in the right place.

I remember sitting in a boardroom with everyone who was directing a piece and

trying to explain the logic behind the silhouettes

the rules, as it were, because they weren't in the script often.

He then put them a little bit more in the script than they were in the first,

but they often weren't. And I said, well, it's about, you know,

storyboarding and working out. It was about meeting everybody, getting

everybody on the same page and using the same teams.

Thus commissioned, the two companions set off, and it isn't until late the

following afternoon, head still muddled by cider, that Fear Not remembers the...

Tap the tinker's ears, retrieve his 40 shillings and ask him where they're

heading next.

Well, I have the route to a fine terror, but I must have reward.

I have promised you my shillings when I shudder. But give me only your fist,

which I like not.

One little misunderstanding and I'm plush for me pains.

Yeah, so episode one, we couldn't afford a title sequence and was putting it all

on the screen.

And then when it came to doing two episodes, I think I...

had another day of shooting on Fear Not or something and brought John in and we

did the shot of him, of it coming out of his mouth.

I think we got an extra day on the pilot, but then it was, I think we did,

we might not have, you know.

And then Jim, God bless him, would occasionally add an extra day.

I remember, I remember he was like, because he could.

And it would be for the right reasons. It would be to get it stronger, to make

it better.

But yeah, it was done in no time, really fast, very tricky to shoot something.

But again, that was kind of good training for who knew.

But for Turtles, you know, later on, that was shot in seven weeks, that

movie, and that is almost impossible.

If you went to schedule it now...

with what needed to be done you just it would not fit but we all know

about promises don't we and secrets what use are they when no one knows about

them when they twist and turn and tickle in our stomachs when they're tickly

little fish wriggling into our conversations

Nobody knew, nobody had heard of it, that we were going into the digital

world and editing on digital tape, you know, when it was not a digital, when it

wasn't a video shot program.

I don't think anyone else had done it until then.

Post was expensive, and because you were talking rates of, I remember, same rates

they are today, probably, actually, $250, $300 an hour for an online suite.

And David, we were inventing the wheel. I remember sleeping on the couch most

nights because we were going around the clock and had to get it finished within

these certain weeks because we got given week deals in the visions, I think it

was at the time.

And we were given these deals to finish within two weeks, say, an episode. I

don't remember exactly.

So we were using every hour of moonlight as well.

to get it done.

For a TV series that shot really quickly, it's hugely cinematic, I think.