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Fons Schiedon Reimagines
Mozart’s ‘The Magic Flute’ As
A Motion Comic
By Scott Thill | 07/20/2015 2:46 pm | ! 2 Comments
“The Land of the Magic Flute.” (Click to enlarge.)
In his lifetime, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s legendary two-act opera The
Magic Flute was a pro-Enlightenment success, which brought its creator a
measure of happiness before he passed away mere months after its Vienna
premiere in 1791. Today, The Magic Flute fights for elbow room in a new
century abundant with competing fairy tales.
Can reimagining one of Mozart’s greatest works as a motion graphic novel help
increase the timeless allegory’s influence as time marches on?
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“Traditional comics are great at leaving things to the imagination; readers fill in
blanks, and that’s exciting,” Fons Schiedon, director and designer of The Land of
the Magic Flute, told Cartoon Brew via email. “But I think there is a tricky balance
when comics and animation come together, because you have to be careful about
the expectation you create. You can easily run into a disconnect when you give
voice and movement to still characters. It emphasizes stillness rather than
enhancing it, so I didn’t want to do that, which is why The Land of the Magic
Flute’s sound design and animation are mostly limited to backgrounds and
effects, which serve to create atmosphere and life, but leave it to the reader to do
the same for the characters.”
“The Land of the Magic Flute.” (Click to enlarge.)
The New York-based Schiedon and his small but dedicated team, which includes
his frequent collaborators — São Paulo, Brazil-based animation studio Birdo — as
well as writer Benjamin Schreuder and sound designer Philippe Lambert,
worked over the last two years on The Land of the Magic Flute. The motion comic
was released by Berlin’s Interactive Media Foundation with a younger target
audience in mind, the IMF’s Kerstin Anicker told Cartoon Brew.
“It combines various techniques and languages from different media, such as
classical illustration and animation with digital storytelling and the language of
comics, as well as film score with opera,” explained Anicker. “The hand-drawn
illustrations and animations are loosely inspired by the staging and set design of
our partners at the Bregenz performing arts festival in Austria, while live
recordings of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and singers from the Bregenz
production provide the foundation for the sound design, which plays with and
deconstructs Mozart’s original composition. Seven complete arias are accessible
as moments of interaction in the graphic novel, reinforcing the connection to the
classic.”
“The Land of the Magic Flute.” (Click to enlarge.)
That connection is paramount, given The Magic Flute’s centuries of influence and
adaptation, which broadly ranges from literature to plays to films and cartoons.
Staying faithful to Mozart’s opera while providing points of entry to a younger
demo was a must.
“The Magic Flute is arguably Mozart’s most universally loved and recognized
opera, with a tremendous amount of symbolism, so we decided to reduce and
expand on certain themes relevant to the contemporary narrative structure we
wanted to create,” Schiedon said. “The main theme of dark versus light, which
the opera doesn’t equate to good versus evil, is something we left at our
adaptation’s core. It’s far more ambiguous about morality, which is something we
hope to have respected.”
“The Land of the Magic Flute.” (Click to enlarge.)
Compressing Mozart’s ambitious vision into a Flash-based motion comic came
after considering, then abandoning, a few other platforms, added Schiedon.
While attractive, they would have led to a more complex and clogged pipeline, he
said, which The Land of the Magic Flute’s international team already possessed in
abundance.
“Flash is more or less a platform on its way out, but it’s perfectly capable of
delivering the rich 2D animated quality that I wanted, while offering designerand animator-friendly tools,” he said. “We could move relatively smoothly
between animation, programming, and design, drawn in Manga Studio, although
our challenge has always been the vast amount of assets, over 320 multi-layer
panels — many of which include some form of animation, and all of which
include several layers of sound and sound effect cues, as well as speech bubbles
in two languages. Each asset required a degree of manual positioning and timing
on the back end.”
“The Land of the Magic Flute.” (Click to enlarge.)
The accessibility of Flash is always a concern, so Schiedon and his team instead
offer mobile and other users potentially lacking Flash plugins a video playout of
The Land of the Magic Flute. But their shared goal of making something special
and relevant for a new generation of Mozart adopters seems to have been
achieved — even if it was achieved in a motion comic rather than an animated
feature.
“For this story, I envisioned a rich, detailed world,” concluded Schiedon. “I grew
up reading Moebius and Heavy Metal, so I wanted lovingly crafted hand-drawn
pictures with painterly effects. If I were to bring all that to life at a 45-minute
length, it would mean a production of an entirely different scope. The motion
comic is a great opportunity to work ambitiously, but with a tiny team and
limited means.”
A making-of film about the project:
To experience the motion comic, visit LandoftheMagicFlute.com.
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#Birdo #Flash #Fons Schiedon #Heavy Metal #Interactive Media Foundation
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Scott Thill More Articles
Scott Thill is the associate editor of Cartoon Brew. A freelance writer whose work has
appeared in Wired, Salon, The Nation, and Rolling Stone, you can find him at his site
Morphizm.com.
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Justin Howe
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4 months ago
Checking it out now. Thank you for continuing to share the innovative work in the Animation and
Comics world, despite not getting as many comments on posts like this as you do rage about
whatever Disney is doing. This is why I come here. Please keep it up!
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Justin Howe
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4 months ago
Checking it out now. Thank you for continuing to share the innovative work in the Animation and
Comics world, despite not getting as many comments on posts like this as you do rage about
whatever Disney is doing. This is why I come here. Please keep it up!
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