Dragons et princesses
Encyclopedia
Dragons et princesses is a 2010
French
computer animation
television program
written
, storyboarded
and directed
by Michel Ocelot
and produced at Studio O for Canal+
. It a fairy tale
anthology series of ten further 13-minute episodes in the format established in Ciné si. Five of the episodes are edited, with a feature-exclusive sixth, into the 2011 stereoscopic
compilation movie
Tales of the Night
.
in, co-produced
, art directed
and designed
, returns to the format of short silhouette animation
fairy tale
s established by 1989's Ciné si and continued in 1992's Tales of the Night
to produce further stories originally conceived for the then-unsuccessful Ciné si, episodes of which have since enjoyed popularity in the form of the compilation movie Princes and Princesses.
At least as early as September 2006, when Azur & Asmar: The Princes' Quest was previewing in France, Ocelot was mentioning in interviews that he was planning to return to silhouettes and the anthology format with a project then planned to be titled Bergères et Dragons (Shepherdesses and Dragons) and released in 2008 but wavered on whether it would it take the format of a feature film or television series and if it would consist of a combination of existing and new or all-new footage (the title suggests the inclusion of the "Bergère qui danse" segment of the earlier Tales of the Night). Instead, 2008 saw the inclusion of these earlier silhouette films in the Les Trésors cachés de Michel Ocelot short film collection and the new project, set back by production of several others, was announced in June 2010 as taking its eventual form of both a television series of ten new silhouette films and a new Tales of the Night for movie theaters drawn from it.
Dragons also notably sees him return to working with once-regular composer Christian Maire, whom had last scored Ciné si for him two decades ago, and is the first production animated by his own Studio O in Paris
, which previously had covered only pre-production
for projects animated at larger animation studio
s. A total of over 300 characters and 800 sets were designed for the project, which was animated by a team of five in Autodesk Maya.
s, with "L'Élue de la Ville d'or" ("The Electress of the City of Gold
") screening at the Festival international de cinéma d'animation de Meknès
in May 2010 and "Le Garçon qui ne mentait jamais" ("The Boy Who Never Lied") in competition for the Cristal for best TV production at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in June, for which it lost out to Studio Soi's "Der Kleine und das Biest" ("The Little Boy and the Beast") but was instead given a special award for a television series. The series then began its run on the satellite
and cable
channel Canal+
Family with the first episode, "La Maîtresse des monstres" ("The Mistress of Monsters"), on October 25 at 20:25, being broadcast in the same time slot each weekday until all ten episodes had been aired, the last on November 5.
Two picture books drawn from two other episodes, "Le Loup-garou" ("The Werewolf
") and "Ti Jean et la belle-sans-connaître" ("Ti Jean
and the Beauty-That-Didn't-Know-It"), have been published and a DVD-Video
of the series was released in France on November 30, 2010. It is region 2
-locked and the only subtitles are French-language caption
s.
2010 in television
2010 in television may refer to:*2010 in American television*2010 in Australian television*2010 in British television*2010 in Canadian television*2010 in Japanese television...
French
Television in France
Television in France was introduced in 1931, making the country one of the first countries in the world to broadcast television programmes.- Terrestrial :...
computer animation
Computer animation
Computer animation is the process used for generating animated images by using computer graphics. The more general term computer generated imagery encompasses both static scenes and dynamic images, while computer animation only refers to moving images....
television program
Television program
A television program , also called television show, is a segment of content which is intended to be broadcast on television. It may be a one-time production or part of a periodically recurring series...
written
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
, storyboarded
Storyboard
Storyboards are graphic organizers in the form of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion picture, animation, motion graphic or interactive media sequence....
and directed
Television director
A television director directs the activities involved in making a television program and is part of a television crew.-Duties:The duties of a television director vary depending on whether the production is live or recorded to video tape or video server .In both types of productions, the...
by Michel Ocelot
Michel Ocelot
Michel Ocelot is a French writer, character designer, storyboard artist and director of animated films and television programs and a former president of the International Animated Film Association...
and produced at Studio O for Canal+
Canal+
Canal+ is a French premium pay television channel launched in 1984. It is 80% owned by the Canal+ Group, which in turn is owned by Vivendi SA. The channel broadcasts several kinds of programming, mostly encrypted...
. It a fairy tale
Fairy tale
A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...
anthology series of ten further 13-minute episodes in the format established in Ciné si. Five of the episodes are edited, with a feature-exclusive sixth, into the 2011 stereoscopic
Stereoscopy
Stereoscopy refers to a technique for creating or enhancing the illusion of depth in an image by presenting two offset images separately to the left and right eye of the viewer. Both of these 2-D offset images are then combined in the brain to give the perception of 3-D depth...
compilation movie
Compilation movie
Film historian Jay Leyda discussed the origins of the compilation film in his work Films Beget Films.-Anime:A compilation movie, or compilation film, a term used by reviewers of Japanese anime, is a feature film that is mostly composed of footage from a television serial...
Tales of the Night
Tales of the Night (2011 film)
Tales of the Night is a compilation movie for movie theaters of five of the episodes of Dragons et princesses in stereoscopic 3D and one additional, until then unseen story, "The Girl-Doe and the Architect's Son" Tales of the Night is a compilation movie for movie theaters of five of the episodes...
.
Production
The series, which Ocelot also voice actedVoice acting
Voice acting is the art of providing voices for animated characters and radio and audio dramas and comedy, as well as doing voice-overs in radio and television commercials, audio dramas, dubbed foreign language films, video games, puppet shows, and amusement rides.Performers are called...
in, co-produced
Television producer
The primary role of a television Producer is to allow all aspects of video production, ranging from show idea development and cast hiring to shoot supervision and fact-checking...
, art directed
Art director
The art director is a person who supervise the creative process of a design.The term 'art director' is a blanket title for a variety of similar job functions in advertising, publishing, film and television, the Internet, and video games....
and designed
Graphic design
Graphic design is a creative process – most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form – undertaken in order to convey a specific message to a targeted audience...
, returns to the format of short silhouette animation
Silhouette animation
Silhouette animation is animation in which the characters are only visible as black silhouettes. This is usually accomplished by backlighting articulated cardboard cut-outs, though other methods exist...
fairy tale
Fairy tale
A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...
s established by 1989's Ciné si and continued in 1992's Tales of the Night
Tales of the Night
Tales of the Night is a 1992 French silhouette animation television special written and directed by Michel Ocelot. It aired on Canal+ in France, ZDF in Germany and Channel 4 in the United Kingdom...
to produce further stories originally conceived for the then-unsuccessful Ciné si, episodes of which have since enjoyed popularity in the form of the compilation movie Princes and Princesses.
At least as early as September 2006, when Azur & Asmar: The Princes' Quest was previewing in France, Ocelot was mentioning in interviews that he was planning to return to silhouettes and the anthology format with a project then planned to be titled Bergères et Dragons (Shepherdesses and Dragons) and released in 2008 but wavered on whether it would it take the format of a feature film or television series and if it would consist of a combination of existing and new or all-new footage (the title suggests the inclusion of the "Bergère qui danse" segment of the earlier Tales of the Night). Instead, 2008 saw the inclusion of these earlier silhouette films in the Les Trésors cachés de Michel Ocelot short film collection and the new project, set back by production of several others, was announced in June 2010 as taking its eventual form of both a television series of ten new silhouette films and a new Tales of the Night for movie theaters drawn from it.
Dragons also notably sees him return to working with once-regular composer Christian Maire, whom had last scored Ciné si for him two decades ago, and is the first production animated by his own Studio O in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, which previously had covered only pre-production
Pre-production
Pre-production or In Production is the process of preparing all the elements involved in a film, play, or other performance.- In film :...
for projects animated at larger animation studio
Animation studio
An animation studio is a company producing animated media. The broadest such companies conceive of products to produce, own the physical equipment for production, employ operators for that equipment, and hold a major stake in the sales or rentals of the media produced...
s. A total of over 300 characters and 800 sets were designed for the project, which was animated by a team of five in Autodesk Maya.
Release
At least two of the episodes had pre-television premierePremiere
A premiere is generally "a first performance". This can refer to plays, films, television programs, operas, symphonies, ballets and so on. Premieres for theatrical, musical and other cultural presentations can become extravagant affairs, attracting large numbers of socialites and much media...
s, with "L'Élue de la Ville d'or" ("The Electress of the City of Gold
City of Gold
-Myth and legend:*Quivira and Cíbola, two of the mythical seven Cities of Gold*El Dorado, Mythical city of gold**El Dorado *City of the Caesars, Mythical South American city of great wealth...
") screening at the Festival international de cinéma d'animation de Meknès
Meknes
Meknes is a city in northern Morocco, located from the capital Rabat and from Fes. It is served by the A2 expressway between those two cities and by the corresponding railway. Meknes was the capital of Morocco under the reign of Moulay Ismail , before it was relocated to Marrakech. The...
in May 2010 and "Le Garçon qui ne mentait jamais" ("The Boy Who Never Lied") in competition for the Cristal for best TV production at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in June, for which it lost out to Studio Soi's "Der Kleine und das Biest" ("The Little Boy and the Beast") but was instead given a special award for a television series. The series then began its run on the satellite
Satellite television
Satellite television is television programming delivered by the means of communications satellite and received by an outdoor antenna, usually a parabolic mirror generally referred to as a satellite dish, and as far as household usage is concerned, a satellite receiver either in the form of an...
and cable
Cable television
Cable television is a system of providing television programs to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted to televisions through coaxial cables or digital light pulses through fixed optical fibers located on the subscriber's property, much like the over-the-air method used in traditional...
channel Canal+
Canal+
Canal+ is a French premium pay television channel launched in 1984. It is 80% owned by the Canal+ Group, which in turn is owned by Vivendi SA. The channel broadcasts several kinds of programming, mostly encrypted...
Family with the first episode, "La Maîtresse des monstres" ("The Mistress of Monsters"), on October 25 at 20:25, being broadcast in the same time slot each weekday until all ten episodes had been aired, the last on November 5.
Two picture books drawn from two other episodes, "Le Loup-garou" ("The Werewolf
Werewolf
A werewolf, also known as a lycanthrope , is a mythological or folkloric human with the ability to shapeshift into a wolf or an anthropomorphic wolf-like creature, either purposely or after being placed under a curse...
") and "Ti Jean et la belle-sans-connaître" ("Ti Jean
Loa
The Loa are the spirits of the voodoo religion practiced in Louisiana, Haiti, Benin, and other parts of the world. They are also referred to as Mystères and the Invisibles, in which are intermediaries between Bondye —the Creator, who is distant from the world—and humanity...
and the Beauty-That-Didn't-Know-It"), have been published and a DVD-Video
DVD-Video
DVD-Video is a consumer video format used to store digital video on DVD discs, and is currently the dominant consumer video format in Asia, North America, Europe, and Australia. Discs using the DVD-Video specification require a DVD drive and a MPEG-2 decoder...
of the series was released in France on November 30, 2010. It is region 2
DVD region code
DVD region codes are a digital-rights management technique designed to allow film distributors to control aspects of a release, including content, release date, and price, according to the region...
-locked and the only subtitles are French-language caption
Closed captioning
Closed captioning is the process of displaying text on a television, video screen or other visual display to provide additional or interpretive information to individuals who wish to access it...
s.
External links
- Episode titles at Le Palais des dessins animés
- Stills at Studio O
- Series trailer at Canal+
- Press pack issued by Canal+
