Karel Zeman on Visualizing Famous Children Literaries
Karel Zeman, a Czech director and a pioneer of animation in film, is well-known as a creator of 20th century’s visual masterpieces that mostly were being adapted from any famous literaries. Beside of his great famous works of The Fabulous World of Julius Verne, Baron Prasil or a character series of Mr. Prokouk, not many people know that his first motivation on making film was to be children, was being dedicated to them. Zeman’s deep admiration of puppets ever since childhood had moved him to direct puppetry sequences of his first short movie “A Christmas Dream” in 1945 which went on to be successful and awarded in Cannes Film Festival. Zeman understood how puppet put him into childhood excitement of imaginary world and he wanted to share it to any other children.
Zeman’s first adaptation on famous children literary text was to be in 1950 when he made “King Lavra”. It is a show form, a puppet version of the satirical poem of Karel Havlíček Borovský telling the story of the king who hides his donkey ears under his crown. Again, he made simple style animation combining live people and puppetry actions.
Giving educational message targeted at children and the young had always been Zeman’s aim on making films. In 1955 he made one of the best educational children’s adventure films in cinema world, Journey of The Beginning of Time, telling the story of four boys who set out on a wooden boat back up the river of time into the prehistory of the planet earth. Zeman conceptually understood what message he wanted to give and how to distribute it to his audiences by using certain tools and ideas. For the content itself, to make sure it would be scientifically accurate, he collaborated with paleontologist Joseph Augusta. For film packaging, he believed that what exciting and intriguing for children is something more alive and creative, thus he used the artistry of his trick photography or special effects, animated models, and other animation methods to create a sense of the real world.
To make sure literaries that will be adapted are perfect enough, Zeman was using some techniques on making special effects in that era that made him to be called as an animation pioneer. Some of the techniques are Cutout Animation with photos replacing live actors, In-Camera Matte Shots that combines live footage with stop-motion animation and Matte Paintings Process which creates illusion of an environment that doesn’t really exist. Zeman could also replace the live actors with puppets without the audience even noticing for particularly demanding special effects. When shooting in the real time, he animated the puppets with rods or mechanical mechanisms. He was also perfectionist on making studio set or choosing shooting location.
Cutout Animation added with 3-D elements were obviously showed in 1974 work of an adaptation of “Thousand and One Nights”. Zeman recreated that world famous oriental fairy tales, returned to pure animation, and made it more humorous, thrilling and episodic stories. This film, The Adventure of Sinbad the Sailor, then became one of his world well-known film adaptations on famous children literary that inspired another directors to make another adaptations as well.
