Cinderella

Hello, hello, hello. Any tea, intro, Cinderella? VTR February 26, 1971, telecast March 28, 1971, program number 6, 1-214-O-O-A-49C. In ten seconds, very quiet in the studio, please. Three. Tonight, a special repeat performance of the Emmy Award winner, Cinderella, starring Veronica Tenant, Louis Smith, Jeremy Blanton, and the National Ballet of Canada. Good evening, I'm Tom Benson, Director of Entertainment Programs for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. We're particularly proud of this Emmy because it spotlights the growing relationship between us and any tea, which has been a satisfying and productive one for more than a decade.

Cinderella, by the way, is just one of the many programs that has been exchanged between us. Now, after the ballet concludes this evening, the choreographer, the producer director, and the production designer. We'll talk briefly about the production and how it was conceived and executed. And now, to Cinderella. That is beautiful. In five. In 1972, the National Ballet of Canada will be celebrating its 20th anniversary. We're naturally proud of this company and honored to be collaborating with them on a continuing basis. Thank you for being with us. Tom Benson, saying good night for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Five, four.

We hope you've enjoyed our production of Cinderella. And now, for a brief behind-the-scenes look at how the production was executed. With Celia Franca, the choreographer, Robert Lawson, the production designer, and Norman Campbell, the producer director. Well, here we are in Cinderella's ballroom. It doesn't exactly look the same. Did you ever think we'd ever get all of your sets and all your dancers into this little enclosure? Well, it looks large now, but in fact, it has only 55 feet by 80 feet workable area. So to get anything in here, any size, like the sets where 25 feet high, and the numbers of people that are involved, certainly in the ballroom, is very difficult. I think that's why the television is such a wonderful medium. It gives a tremendous illusion of space. Actually, we had about 70 dancers in that area to manipulate.

And I don't think it looked crowded. No, the lens can help enormously in that respect. But I feel so sorry for the dancers. I'm in a happy position in the control room, all very relaxed and comfortable, while they are pounding concrete, literally pounding concrete with their feet. That's a very major problem, Norman, with the dancers, because you know that if we want to polish on the floor, we have to put a wax or something on. And the dancers slip on this. And if they use the rosin as they're used to, they spin little holes. I recall many a discussion, rather than a fight, between you and this Frank over the subject of the sheen on the floor versus the dancers not breaking their legs. We've reached a happy compromise. In this program, this particular one, we put a plastic material on the floor that we tried out, and it worked rather well. The trouble was we couldn't remove it from the floor once we were through. Yes, it's been there for quite a long time now. Well, I always have to take the downs aside, really,

because they're expected to repeat, and repeat, and repeat perhaps 36 bars of music over and over again, so that everything comes out right, and you get the right shot in the right angle. And when they're dancing on concrete, on concrete floor, which a television studio obviously has to have, then there's no resilience, and they have swollen ankles, and I'm really terribly sorry for them. My sympathies believe me are truly with them. But we do have the problem now. I think one of the major problems with this production was that it was choreographed for the stage, and it had to be then converted with all its magic, which I feel can do and take liberties with, far more than the stage version, but it had to be converted from the stage to television. Well, that's where Chromoke came in. We were able to take the budget of this show, which was modest, really, by spectacular standards, and shove a good deal of the funds into building a magnificent ballroom, a magnificent house. Put that into the real sets,

and then use this device of Chromoke to create the other aspects of fantasy at a relatively cheap price. You see, here they print is leaping across a chasm, looking for his Cinderella, clutching his slipper, and his friend is apprehensive of a 2,000-foot gorge. It must be something like that. And we're able to, in this scene, with a drawing, really, a graphic design, which may cost in the nature of $2.50. Create a background with a sky projection behind it. And really, the dancers suffer no danger at all. They are in an empty studio, as you can see, just leaping across floor through the Chromoke device, which rejects everything but the performers that we see. And inserts them into this graphic. We're able to create an illusion of great danger. And as you can see, there's not very much danger,

except for him embedding his foot in the concrete. It broadens our whole scope. We can then get out of the studio feeling entirely. We can have them running through forests, over deserts, whatever we wish. Well, it's been a happy time collaborating with you, Celia. If I may call you Celia. You actually are. Many, many years since actually 1956, when we first did our very first of four swan lakes and working together with you has been such a pleasure, because you've had such an understanding of television. Well, it was a fascinating medium. For me, I did some work in television when I was in England before I came to Canada 20 years ago. So this was a continuation, and I've learned a great deal from it. And I like working in new designs for television, so that it gives me another challenge to direct my choreography into. Yes, it's quite intriguing to see how the choreography that goes this way is converted into this for television. Yes, and also the fact that you have audiences all around you.

And the toughest audience, believe me, the stage hands, the camera men, the lighting men, and whatnot are the toughest audience in the world. I think they're divine.