The man returns to the clearing where he spared the stag. By the middle of the night, he has finally found the animal again.
“Excuse me,” he says, feeling a bit silly. “My wife–we think that maybe you can grant us a wish? I was supposed to provide a wonderful feast for my wife’s birthday this morning, and helping you–I wasn’t able to provide for her. If you’re able, can you help us have a happy day?”
The stag stares at him, and he’s sure that this whole idea was a foolish dead end, when he notices something that wasn’t there before: a lantern in his right hand.
“What is–did you do this? Does this mean you’ll help us? Have you already?”
The creature’s gaze never breaks, but somehow the man knows that the deed has already been done.
“Okay! Thank you? Thank you!”
With a new lantern to guide him, he rushes back home.
We’re getting closer now and it feels wonderful. This is a little diorama I put together with my friend Zander, who will serve (is already serving) as the technical lead on this production. This is the first time that any part of the Antlers story has been presented with depth. It’s simple for now, just a little prototype–crayon on cut-out paper with a simple painted plywood set–but it’s the tiniest taste of what’s to come. I drew and assembled the characters. Zander saw me doing this, disappeared for a little while, and returned with an utterly lovely painted forest backdrop. When we assembled the scene and arranged the lights just so and took a photo, this all finally felt real.
We have a long way to go, of course. These characters are about 11" tall and flat; the characters in the final version of this scene (I hope!) will stand a few feet tall in three dimensions, and they’ll move. The stag’s head will bob ever so slightly; the man’s arms will be at his sides, and when he feels the lantern appear in his hand, he’ll raise it, and it will light up just perfectly on cue.
We meet the wife. She’s excited to see what her husband has caught her for her birthday, but he returns sheepish and empty-handed. Maybe a little scared. He explains that he did find an excellent deer, but he just couldn’t take its life. He explains its sparkling silver antlers and is sure she’ll think he’s just making up an excuse. She gets even more upset, but even after all the ways he imagined this exchange happening, her response catches him by surprise.
Did it grant you a wish? A wish?
She explains that if a stag has silver antlers, then it must also have magical powers. (This makes sense.) She sends him back out into the woods to find this magical stag and to make it grant her a birthday wish more grand than anything he could have done before.
There are some leaps between this scene and the introduction, which I showed you last week. He’s a hunter now, and it’s his wife’s birthday, both of which changed on Thursday. This one’s in color, too–I’d like to increase the fidelity of each scene I share, little by little, as we continue into production. This time it’s crayon. Next time, maybe a little dimension.
Layout-wise, this scene happens quickly after the last. If our scale is as great as I imagine, the first two scenes will share one large space: the first right in front of you as you enter, and the second to your right, and a bit back. As scene one ends, you’ll hear the wife calling out to her husband behind you, you’ll turn and see a light on her, and as the man approaches, his model in that scene also lights up.
The scenes leaving the stag will always occur more quickly than the scenes approaching it–it’s the same distance for him to travel, but he’s always more excited to head home, and so the trip feels shorter to him (and is shorter to us).
Also, in every scene with his wife, his back is to us. This is bad in theater, but in a dark ride it’s not such a big deal–the audience will be able to walk around very close to the scene (but not in it; please don’t touch the models) and so our blocking can be a little more flexible.
Here’s an illustration of the first scene in Silver Antlers. We meet the stag in a place of…maybe not hardship, but frustration, definitely. We meet the man who stops on his way home at the end of the day to help the stag free his silver antlers from the snarled brush, sacrificing the day’s gatherings, leaving him and his wife without supper. Hopefully, one way or another, the man’s kindness will pay off. We’ll see.
I drew this scene and the rest of the show very quickly the night I picked this project back up. This was, perhaps, the first time I ever tried to draw a deer. Many details in the story had not been born yet—for example, those antlers? Not silver. At this point it was just a talking deer. (I don’t even think the stag is going to talk anymore!) I’d like to share these early sketches with you, along with new ones as I create them, but I’m torn.
I’ve been trying to decide how much of the story to share in this pre-production blog. If I show you everything I’m working on, I could spoil the show. But if I keep the last few scenes secret, we won’t get to share and discuss some of the most interesting and challenging aspects of the production. Neither option seems right.
I was thinking out loud about this dilemma the other day and a smart friend told me that (and I’m paraphrasing) if the most interesting parts of the conclusion are the fact that they’re secret, then there is likely a bigger problem with the story itself.
A confession: I saw Disney’s Sleeping Beauty for the first time just a few months ago. I had already pored over stills from the film, marveled at Eyvind Earle’s magnificent concept art, memorized every moment of the Once Upon a Dream scene, and even found myself inside Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland more than a few times, absorbing the recent reopening of its walkthrough adaptation (go figure). I knew the story.
But I didn’t see the film. The canonical reference point for all of these pieces of art was still mostly a mystery to me. So I took some art off my walls, fired up my projector, fixed a cocktail, and watched it. And I was as moved as I ever could have been. Seeing Maleficent become a dragon in Fantasmic didn’t make her original transformation any less scary or suspenseful. Knowing that kiss with my eyes closed didn’t mean I couldn’t appreciate it with my eyes open. If anything, knowing the subject matter so well enhanced my viewing: releasing some of the energy required to follow the story allowed me to focus on the details.
So yes, I’ll be showing you the scenes and I’ll be telling you the story, and if you still really want to wait for the real thing, I understand completely, and you can skip those parts of the process for now. But I promise you that knowing the forest will burn down at the end will not remove any of the impact of walking under the flaming timbers.
On Sunday we’re going to talk about the biggest reason why Silver Antlers and Pirates of the Caribbean are different, and no, it’s not because my show will have more Johnny Depp animatronics. See you then!
