Snail and the Whale - challenge of scale
“That must have been quite a daunting thing at the beginning. How you were going to screen a relationship between two such opposing characters? ”
Stills from The Snail and the Whale: © Magic Light Pictures Limited 2019
Katharine Nicholls I want to ask you to add some detail on that in relation to the Snail and the Whale, because you've got this huge contrast between those two characters haven't you in terms of scale. I mean, that must have been quite a daunting thing at the beginning. I would imagine to work out how you were going to.. how you were going to screen a relationship between two such opposing characters?
Daniel Snaddon That's that's very true. So I was very fortunate in that the Snail and the Whale came to me by Magic Light and Max Lang, who's my directing partner for both Snail on the Whale and Zog. So Max and I were finishing up Zog, and he had been developing Snail and the Whale with Magic Light I think or actually by himself. He and his wife had started sort of playing around with an adaptation, an idea to adapt it. And they started working on that. I think, directly after The Gruffalo, which was about 11 years ago now. It seemed to be percolating in his mind and exactly what you're saying.
“How do you even sell the idea that there could be a relationship between these two characters?”
Daniel Snaddon They thought about it a lot. And what they came up with was just a couple of little moments that aren't actually in the book where, for example, the snail falls off the tail of the whale. When...during a thunderstorm and the whale has to go in and scoop her up? And you know, there's just these little, these little, the couple of little touches that where they found opportunities for the two of them to interact. And I think that then they still weren't 100 percent convinced it was going to work until they got into storyboarding. And then what they found is, is that the audience will make a connexion between any two characters who are seen to be looking at each other. They don't have to actually be looking at each other. So there's a lot of shots where the snail's looking down off screen this way and then the whale, you just see this eye and the eye is looking back that way. And so the whale's looking this way and the snail's looking that way. But actually the snail's, you know, on the tail, there's no way that she can see her.
Stills from The Snail and the Whale: © Magic Light Pictures Limited 2019
Katharine Nicholls Really clever
Daniel Snaddon But it sort of, yeah. Well, just I think it goes to show how much we actually suspend our disbelief without realising we're even doing it. You know.
Katharine Nicholls It just works so beautifully, such a tender relationship. It's a relationship that is really, really, I suppose, just extraordinarily gentle and beautifully beautifully done. I mean, the challenges that you talk about, it just shows as a wonderful example. I think of how you can do that, how you can just with screen direction, you can just create this relationship out of an impossible situation. Brilliant.
Stills from The Snail and the Whale: © Magic Light Pictures Limited 2019
