Me and couple of my friends from Storytime Friends decided to produce our own original Christmas story. What should it be about? Should we have Father Christmas in it? Or Mother Christmas? Or both? What about reindeers? Can we make it at least little bit magical? Should our story send a positive message to our readers? Yes, definitely!
My friend Suleika @suleikamalcolm sent me a quick message one afternoon. "I got it! I have an idea!" . I was over the moon! In about a week's time Suleika sent me an email with finished story and also offered to make puppets. I read the story and I loved it! This is going to be fun! But at the same time I felt a bit under pressure as this was really Suleika's story and I didn't want to mess it up.
Main character in our story, Father Christmas, has some bad eating habits. He doesn't like eating vegetables, berries and other healthy food. As a result of his poor diet, he gets ill a lot. Unfortunately, he gets very bad cold on Christmas Eve! His nose turns red and he sneezes everywhere! If only he would eat more broccoli and kale!:-)
We talk about food a lot in our story....as you can imagine :-)
Can we use real food in our film? How is it going to look like? Should we try some drawings too? What about some magazine cut outs? It was early December and I picked up one of the free supermarket magazines. I was very lucky !I found some mince pies, Christmas cake and more Christmas food...yes!! I did some drawings too as I couldn't get all the real food mentioned in the story.
Here is Father Christmas eating his mince pies ( spitting some dried bits of fruit out, of course :-) )
As you can see, he already has a bad cold (red nose :-) )
Here we have Father Christmas and Mother Christmas , just before the end scene...I used real broccoli here as our main character loves veggies now and everybody can see it. What a transformation? How did this happen? (you need to watch our story to find out... :-) )
Next tricky part was the sneezing part.
Father Christmas is on the roof, he sneezes and his glasses fall off. How am I going to do this scene? The only way to do this - short stop animation clip. It took me quite a long time to get this right, I found working with a felt puppet a bit more trickier than with paper. Also, how do we do it? How do we actually sneeze? I tried to pretend I am sneezing myself to see and notice which part of my body was moving :-)
Father Christmas leans forward with his arms bend trying to hold his nose and then he goes : "Atishooo!"
Glasses fall of his nose and then slowly, slowly, wind just blows them away.. :-) Each frame taken separately... they are up in the cloud and Father Christmas can't see much... can he still deliver all the presents? Will people get what they wished for? :-)
Father Christmas gets a lot of letters and notes from children all around the world. I asked my son Jack (8) to help us out and copy the note from the text in his own handwriting and also to do voiceover. There is something special about using child's voice and a drawing in videos. I believe it makes it more authentic, it gives it more heart. I was very happy that he wanted to participate- he is getting older and sometimes I feel like he would rather play football than getting involved in my projects. :-( I was very proud of him that he finished it, I also appreciated that little drawing at the bottom of the note...sometimes our children surprise us :-). Does it happen to you too? :-)
There is a part in our story when Father Christmas flies over London with his sleigh- we thought it would be great to have the Queen and Prime Minister Boris Johnson in it. :-)
I drew Buckingham Palace, made guards from old fashioned dolly pegs (did you know they used to make dolls out of them in olden days?) and a Royal flag .
I had to google this as I wanted to get it right ..did you know that the Royal Standard flag is flown at royal residences only when the sovereign is present? If the Union Flag flies above Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle or Sandringham House, it signals that the Queen is not in residence. For some strange reason, I always thought it was the other way around!! :-)
You always learn something new! :-)It's definitely good to know!
My friend Maggie @maggiesotiriou drew the Queen and Boris Johnson with famous door - 10 Downing Street. Maggie also did narration and voices of the Queen and Boris Johnson wishing us all Merry Christmas :-). I used old fabric with snowflakes as a background to make it a bit more Christmassy...such a shame we didn't have any real snow!!! I also recorded the sound of jingle bells for 20seconds and I added it to the scene...first I wanted to mix it with ukulele but somehow it didn't sound right so I just left the jingle bells :-)
I really enjoyed working on this project, it kept me very busy and it took me away from current news about Coronavirus.
I also like the positive message in our story - it's about being grateful (and eating healthy food) . Hopefully my children take notice and follow Father Christmas's example!:-)
Hope you had a lovely Christmas...many of us couldn't see our families and it's been very hard...but it will get better, I believe it! :-)I know Christmas is over but if you are curious how we put our Christmas story together please watch it here:
Hope you will like it :-) If you do, please subscribe, like and share! Thank you! Have a nice January and good luck with home schooling! Love M xxx
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