Breakthru Films

Peter and the Wolf airs Wednesday December 8th at 8pm (check local listings).

Sergei Prokofiev’s fanciful musical tale “Peter and the Wolf” is given new life in this innovative new animated interpretation, which won the 2008 Oscar® for Best Animated Short Film. “Oldies will remember the work from school music lessons,” wrote London’s OBSERVER, “while those coming to the story for the first time will be delighted with this darkly comic modernization.” Originally composed in 1936, the piece famously uses personified instruments in the orchestra to tell the story — also penned by the composer — of young Peter and his animal friends the Duck, the Bird, and even a mischievous Cat (represented by an oboe, flute, and clarinet respectively). Peter, himself represented by the string section, becomes an unsuspecting hero and outwits the Wolf (French horns), who’s intent on menacing his small Russian village — not to mention Peter’s beloved animal friends. Conceived and directed by award-winning animator Suzie Templeton, this modern-day “Peter & the Wolf” uses stop-frame model animation, puppets, and digital photography to retell the enduring classic story, and features the Philharmonia Orchestra under the direction of Mark Stephenson performing Prokofiev’s beloved score.

Mark Stephenson also helmed the Philharmonia Orchestra for the film’s live world premiere at London’s Royal Albert Hall in September 2006. The Philharmonia was founded in 1945, primarily as a recording orchestra. It is the world’s most recorded orchestra with more than 1,000 releases and is comprised of more than 80 musicians giving concerts in London and at its residencies and other venues around the U.K., in addition to touring all over the world.

Sergei Prokofiev completed “Peter and the Wolf” after resettling in Moscow from Paris in 1936. By the autumn of the previous year, he had composed a dozen pieces for children, which according to his diary, were “published in a volume entitled ‘Music for Children,’ Op. 65.” Although the official debut of “Peter and the Wolf” on May 2 at Moscow Children’s Musical Theater was not a resounding success, the piece has subsequently delighted audiences of all ages and become his best-known work, performed by almost every ensemble, and used as an instructional tool to help children learn about the different instruments of the orchestra. Discover more about how Prokofiev’s composition was created and its story in the essay by contributor Tim Smith. The winner of numerous international awards, including a Best Animation BAFTA Award for her 2001 short film DOG, director Suzie Templeton reveals more about adapting Prokofiev’s story and creating this animated version in Dialogue. Watch an excerpt from the film, which was made at Poland’s award-winning Se-ma-for animation studio and took five years to complete.

Special funding for “PETER & THE WOLF” is provided by the LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust.

Peter and the duck enjoy a frozen pond while the hapless cat stalks the raven in this scene from the film.

Producer: Anu Krishnan
Graphic Art: Gabriel Torres
Technical Director: Brian Lee
Production Assistant: Diana Cofresí-Terrero
Copy Editor: Leslie Kriesel
HTML Implementation Assistance: Brian Santalone

GREAT PERFORMANCES Web pages copyright © 2008 Educational Broadcasting Corporation.

Thirteen Online is a production of Thirteen/WNET New York’s Kravis Multimedia Education Center in New York City. Dan Goldman, Executive Director. Bob Adleman, Business Manager.

About the Contributor

Tim Smith is the classical music critic of THE BALTIMORE SUN. He has also written for THE NEW YORK TIMES, OPERA NEWS, and BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE, among other publications. His writing has won several regional and national journalism awards, including a first place in arts criticism from the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors. He is the author of THE NPR CURIOUS LISTENER’S GUIDE TO CLASSICAL MUSIC (Perigee Books).

Television Credits

“PETER & THE WOLF”

Adapted & Directed by
Suzie Templeton

Producers
Alan Dewhurst
Hugh Welchman

Co-Producer
Zbigniew Żmudzki

Executive Producers
Lars Hellebust
Simon Olswang

Executive Producer for Archangel SA
Luc Toutounghi

Executive Producers for Kreis Consulting
Richard Eliott Lockhart
Robert Whitehouse

Music Director
Mark Stephenson
Supervising Director of Photography
Hugh Gordon

Director of Photography
Mikołaj Jaroszewicz

Production Design
Marek Skrobecki & Jane Morton

Lead Animator
Adam Wyrwas

Editors
Suzie Templeton & Tony Fish

Visual Effects Supervisors
Kamil Polak & Morten Moen

Sound Design by
Chimney Pot

Co-Writer
Marianela Maldonado

Music performed by The Philharmonia Orchestra
Peter and the Wolf
Music & Libretto by Sergei Prokofiev
© Hawkes & Sons (London)

Senior Animators
Krzysztof Brzozowski
Tim Allen
Karoly Papp
Jan-Erik Maas

Animators
Anna Wojtania
Martin Clapp

Additional Animation
Magdalena Bryll
Martin Rhys-Davies
Wojciech Gierłowski
Jonny Templeton

CG Pre-visualisation
Martin Clapp
Ruth Ducker

Line Producer
Alan Dewhurst

Production Manager
Elzbieta Stankiewicz

2nd Unit Director
Marek Skrobecki

First Assistant Directors
Gareth Unwin
David Lawley-Wakelin

Production Coordinators
Carlota Zapata
Adam Ptak

Production Assistants
Agnieszka Kwiecien
Marta Żmudzka-Ptak
Andrzej Bronikowski
Kazimierz Królikowski
Marcin Łunkiewicz
Adam Partridge

BreakThru Films London Office
Director of Sales & Marketing
Neil Mundy

Assistants to Neil Mundy
Egle Jankauskaite
Virginia Acero

Assistant to the Producers
Tamsin Lyons

Education Consultant
Michael Spencer

Premiere Co-ordinator
Adam Partridge

Researcher
Katrin Ribbe

Original Character Design & Storyboarding
Suzie Templeton

Director’s Assistant
Agata Romanowicz

Script Editors
Geoff Lindsey
Tom Meeten
Steve Oram

Pilot Storyboard Artist
Dino Athanassiou

Development Artists
Salvador Maldonado
T.K. Noce
Tom Truscott

Art Directors
Katarzyna Wasiela
Wojciech Jaworski
Paulina Majda

Sculptors
Ewa Maliszewska
Małgorzata Makarewicz
Agnieszka Mikołajczyk
Agnieszka Smolarek
Marcin Zalewski

Silicone Supervisor/Modelmaker
Grant Mason

Puppetmakers
Dariusz Kalita
Olga Duraj
Bartosz Beda
Katarzyna Bajer

Puppet Finishing
Sylwia Nowak
Anna SzczeŚniak
Małgorzata Stepien
Beata Jarmuż
Małgorzata Mikołajczyk
Małgorzata Kaczmarek
Zofia Przybył
Grzegorz Puchacz

Carpenters
Mieczysław Bomba
Marek Bomba
Alfred Lüdert
Zbigniew Majchrzak

Set Artists
Filip Stepień
Piotr Knabe
Marcin Zalewski
Marcin Jasiński
Daniel Cybula
Piotr Dominiak
Sławomir Warmbier
Małgorzata Połacik
Agata Szczerbicka
Agata Augustine
Paulina Narolewska
Anna Lewicka
Barbara Koniecka
Michał Dąbrowski
Gizela Walusz
Jakub Kubiak
Maciej Ficyk
Izabela Nakoneczna
Bogusława Izdebska
Tomasz Kawełczyk
Paweł Rosiak
Katarzyna Rzeźniczak
Marta Szewczyk
Alina Wieczorek
Wiktor Duda
Przemysław Pacholczyk
Radosław Pacholczyk
Katarzyna Niewiadomska

Prop. Makers
Jacek Spychalski
Jerzy Knabe
Krzysztof Rynkiewicz
Kamil Miler
Kazimierz Wojczuk
Joanna Stankowska
Paweł Fabiszewski
Magdalena Janowska
Marcin Józefowicz
Krzysztof Styrcz
Maciej Mastalerz

Riggers
Janusz Grzelak
Jerzy Podgórski

Standby
Bogusław “Franek” Pawlak
Jarosław Kowalewski

Art Department Intern
Nuno Santos

Gaffer
Jaroslav Bedyk

Sparks
Maciej Bedyk
Andrzej Karasiński
Krzysztof Sochacki

Camera Operators
Jolanta Malicka
Bogdan Malicki

Camera Assistants
Małgorzata Bednarek
Magdalena Bryll
Andrzej Górski
Tytus Majerski
Tomasz Wochniak

Motion Control
Andy Bowman
Stuart Galloway

Camera Dept. Interns
Nuno Arezes
Ivan Oliviera

Animation Software
AnimatorDV

Stills Photographer
Paulina Majda

VFX Co-ordinators
Tom Joelson
Artur Zicz

VFX Editor
Otto Thorbjørnsen

Digital Data Management
Katarzyna Okoniewska
Anette Gjertsen
Olga Duraj

3D Artists
Dawid Bunio
Norbert Narożnik
Tim Zaccheo

Digital Compositors
Mateusz Jarmulski
Andrzej Kozłowski
Tytus Majerski
Jacek Rokosz
Piotr Szczepanowicz
Maria Zipunnikow
Anna Orłowska
Małgorzata Tabor
Kacper Czyczyło
Jakub Wroński
John-Paul Harney

Grader
Matt Willis Jones

Credits & Titles
Arkadiusz Augustyniak

IT
Jan Ledwoń
Paweł Januszkiewicz
Radosław Antoniuk
Patryk Han
Damian Kowalski
Marek Kubiak

Educational Development Grant
Kulturell Ryggsekk

Music Producer
Tim Oldham

Music Engineer
Mike Hatch

Music Breakdowns
Rod Howick

Promotional Artwork
Kennedy Monk

PR
Four Communications

Media Partner (Poland)
Kino Polska

Insurance
Torrible’s

Legal Affairs
Peter Coles

The producers thank Amanda Tabak and Ellen Walder, without whose loving support this film could not have been made.

A BreakThru Films & Se-ma-for Studios co-production in association with
Channel Four Television
Storm Studios
Kreis Consulting
Archangel
Arthaus Musik
Polish Film Institute
NESTA
Well Go
TV UNAM
Taewon Entertainment Co. Ltd.

© 2006 BreakThru Peter Ltd/Se-Ma-For Produkcja Filmowa Sp.z.o.o.

For GREAT PERFORMANCES
Director of Program Development
Bill O’Donnell

Production Assistant
Jessica Lacombe

Coordinating Producer
Cara Cosentino

Title and Graphic Design
B.T. Whitehill

Producer
John Walker

Executive Producer
David Horn

PROKOFIEV’S PETER & THE WOLF
THE MAKING OF PETER AND THE WOLF

Produced by
Alan Dewhurst
Hugh Welchman
Tamsin Lyons

Phil Stoole
and
Damien Wasylkiw

Thanks to
Suzie Templeton
Adam Wyrwas
Zbigniew Żmudzki
Hugh Gordon
Mikołaj Jaroszewicz
Sylwia Nowak
Kamil Polak
Paulina Majda
Artur Zicz
Gareth Unwin
and
Agnieszka Kwiecien

Special Thanks to
Inbound Records
and
Dave Dipre

Music conducted and directed by
Mark Stephenson

Music performed by
The Philharmonia Orchestra

Peter and the Wolf Music & Libretto by
Sergei Prokofiev

© Hawkes & Sons (London)

© 2006 BreakThru Peter Ltd & Se-Ma-For

The contents of these GREAT PERFORMANCES Web pages are copyrighted under United States and other copyright laws. You may not download, reproduce, transmit, display, distribute or make derivative works from the contents of the GREAT PERFORMANCES Web pages other than for personal use without the advance written permission of the copyright owner. Any unauthorized use of any of the contents of the GREAT PERFORMANCES Online Web pages may result in civil liability and criminal prosecution.

Breakthru Films

Sergei Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” has inspired an Oscar®-winning short film of extraordinary imagination written and directed by British animator Suzie Templeton. In a masterful use of stop-frame technique and lifelike models, the film offers a fresh take on the classic tale, set to Prokofiev’s colorful score from 1936. Templeton, 40, spoke to GREAT PERFORMANCES Online about the five-year effort to bring this updated “Peter & the Wolf” to the screen.

GREAT PERFORMANCES: How did the initial idea for making this film come about?

SUZIE TEMPLETON: The producer [Hugh Welchman] and Mark Stephenson, the conductor, had the idea between them to do a film of “Peter and the Wolf” and they asked me to make it. I hadn’t listened to the Prokofiev piece since I was a child, but I had very strong feelings about it then, and those very strong feelings came right back when they suggested it.

GP: Instead of a very folksy, once-upon-a-time approach, you have created a present-day and sometimes spooky Russian world for Peter. How did your interpretation of the story take shape?

ST: Most of it developed organically. Several options were kicking around about where to set the story. I didn’t want it to be insipid in any way. I wanted it to feel timeless, but also to feel contemporary and talk about things that are relevant to us today. I think we achieved that. I went to Russia twice to do some research for the film. I took thousands of photos. I talked to children and old people.

GP: People who know the story from hearing Prokofiev’s original text recited at concerts and on recordings will notice a few minor differences.

ST: I knew at the start that I wanted Peter to have an intensity and darkness about him. And I knew I wanted him to let the Wolf go free at the end.

GP: In addition to the Wolf’s fate, there’s the question of the Duck. In the original, the poor thing is swallowed whole by the Wolf and is still heard inside him at the end. That postingestion element isn’t in the film.

ST: I did consider it. But I couldn’t find a way to have the Duck in the Wolf’s stomach, which is something I still remember being affected by as a child when I first heard the piece. I couldn’t show that without completely changing the style of the film. It was a not a happy situation for me.

GP: In your film, Peter is pretty much confined to a gloomy, run-down compound with his grandfather, a place that conveys a lot of fears. The nearby town Peter goes to isn’t much better; it presents an unflattering view of Russian society, very much an economically deprived spot with what look like young paramilitary thugs. It’s a very striking image. Have you heard any complaints from Russians who have seen the film?

ST: I know of maybe 10 Russians who have seen it, and I was really happy with their response. Two or three said they couldn’t believe a non-Russian had made the film. That was a really great feeling for me. I wanted it to feel Russian, and they said that’s what it felt like. But one Ukrainian told me I had robbed him of his childhood vision of the piece. So many people have a vision of “Peter and the Wolf” in their heads, a vision of what it meant to them when they were a child, and they don’t want it changed.

GP: What is your vision for this story? The original text doesn’t necessarily seem full of symbols or lessons, but your film, even though there are no words at all, seems to convey lots of different layers of meaning. Are there specific messages you want viewers to think about?

ST: It is a primal story of a boy and a wolf. But [Prokofiev's] text is quite short, actually. To read it, what does it take, three minutes? I had to create all the rest. That gave me a tremendous scope to determine what the music meant to me and what I wanted it to mean. All sorts of interpretations are possible. I do have many subtexts in there, but I would prefer not to talk about them. I’d rather leave that to others to decide.

GP: How difficult was it to find backing for the film?

ST: It’s really hard to raise money for a short film, and this one had a very high budget. The producers worked incredibly hard to get the money. It was a very, very hard sell. It took three years to raise the money. I was mostly shielded from that trauma, and I was busy all of that time anyway working on the project. I didn’t have to go in person to make the pitch to investors, so I was very lucky in that respect. What I was required to come up with were nice pictures and storyboards that the producers could show to give people an idea of what the film would be like.

GP: Was the actual filming fun?

ST: I wouldn’t say it was fun. No, it wasn’t fun at all. But it was definitely interesting, definitely intense — brilliant and terrible at the same time. We were under incredible pressure, all of us, all of the time. It is a dreadful pressure in a form that is so meticulous. You can’t make mistakes. But there is a great joy in making good work and making work at this level with these people.

GP: In regular filmmaking, directors look at rushes, all the footage from each day’s work. In stop-frame animation filming, do you still get rushes?

ST: Yes, but they’re quite short (laughter). You only get two or three shots a day. I would put the rushes into my computer each day in a time line with the music, to make sure it worked.

GP: Could you change things as you went along, come up with different ideas about a shot?

ST: We were on so tight a schedule it was very difficult to change anything. I could tweak small things, ad lib a little bit. But the camera angles, the shot lengths, the sets — they were all set, so we were very much constrained.

GP: After working on this project for five years, can you stand to hear the music of “Peter and the Wolf” anymore?

ST: I listened to it literally thousands of times, repeating little phrases over and over and over again as I was writing and drawing scenes. But after all of that, I am still enjoying it. I think I never became deaf to it, you know, the way you can hear something so often that you don’t actually hear the notes. That didn’t happen. It’s amazing.

GP: How has the postfilming experience been for you?

ST: The reaction was better than we could have ever hoped for, so it will be easier from now on to make more films. But it has been very tough for the producers to get distribution, because it’s a short film and people don’t know what to do with a short film. Going to the Oscars was crazy. I have never been to anything like that, but it was great fun.

GP: Have you settled on your next project?

ST: I am considering several things. I’d like to make a feature story with stop-motion.

Interview by Tim Smith for GREAT PERFORMANCES Online conducted in March 2008.

Breakthru Films

If Sergei Prokofiev had composed nothing except “Peter and the Wolf,” he would have left a sizable mark. The work has helped introduce generations of children to the instruments of the orchestra and the concept of telling a story through music, fulfilling the goal Prokofiev set for himself in 1936. Although this particular narrative, also written by the composer, isn’t entirely cheery — the wolf’s swallowing of an unfortunate duck comes to mind — the sonic side of things is so inventive and engaging that the whole thing seems somehow thoroughly uplifting. Even in the sometimes darker, moodier version of “Peter & the Wolf” brilliantly directed by animator Suzie Templeton being shown on GREAT PERFORMANCES, there is an affecting turn toward the light (moonlight, in this case) at the end. Since the score’s ingenious match of character to instrument enables listeners of practically any age to envision the scenes easily, the brief, original text gets the job done neatly. But chances are, Prokofiev would have loved the way Templeton opens up the story, providing such a rich world of imagery and action that no words are spoken at all, while the music is treated with total respect.

In 1935, in addition to working on his stunning ballet score “Romeo and Juliet,” Prokofiev wrote several short pieces for children, a genre that suddenly seemed to be in demand. Fortuitously, during this same period, the composer attended a couple of events at the Moscow Children’s Musical Theater, taking his own kids along. The director invited him to write something for the theater, and Prokofiev quickly accepted. “In the spring of 1936,” he recorded in his diary, “I started a symphonic tale for children titled ‘Peter and the Wolf,’ Op. 67, to a text of my own. [Prokofiev had first rejected a text prepared by a poet recommended by the theater director, on the grounds that it was clichéd.] Every character in the story had its own motif played each time by the same instrument. … Before each performance, the instruments were shown to the children and the themes played for them; during the performance, the children heard the themes repeated several times and learned to recognize the timbres of the different instruments. The text was read during the pauses in the music, which was disproportionately longer than the text — for me, the story was important only as a means of inducing the children to listen to the music.”

Clearly inspired by the concept, Prokofiev finished composing in one week, taking just another week to do the orchestration. A measure of his devotion to the project can be seen in the fact that he agreed to accept whatever fee the theater could afford.

The scenario of “Peter and the Wolf” is straightforward. A boy (depicted by strings) wanders through nature, observing a duck (oboe), a bird (flute), and a cat (clarinet). The cat tries to catch the bird. Peter’s grandfather (bassoon) admonishes him for wandering in a place where a wolf might attack and makes him return home. From that safe place, sure enough, Peter soon sees a wolf (horns) arrive on the scene. The wolf wolfs down the duck and then threatens the bird and cat. Determined to thwart the aggressor, Peter sneaks back outside and manages to catch the animal, with the help of the bird and a rope. When hunters (lots of timpani and bass drum) arrive on the scene, anxious to kill the wolf, Peter urges them to let the animal be taken to a zoo instead. As they all head off in happy procession, the duck can be heard quacking inside the wolf’s stomach, “for, in his hurry, the wolf had swallowed her whole.”

As Harlow Robinson writes in his 1987 biography of Prokofiev, “If the story has a moral, it seems to be this: don’t be afraid to challenge established beliefs (Grandfather’s caution) or to take risks. It is Peter’s independence, shrewdness and courage that save the day; if he hadn’t disobeyed his grandfather by climbing over the wall, the wolf would never have been caught. Seen in this light, ‘Peter and the Wolf’ is a subtly subversive tract, encouraging children to rely on their wits and not on the greater experience (and inertia) of their elders.”

It’s entirely possible, of course, to view the piece as pure entertainment and music appreciation, devoid of any hidden message.

The first performance featured Prokofiev at the keyboard and was a hit with the young audience at the Children’s Theater. A formal, public performance a few days later “was rather poor and did not attract much attention,” the composer entered into his diary. But the fate of “Peter and the Wolf” quickly improved. Within a few weeks, yet another performance was given in Moscow, and this time, there was no mistaking the triumph. In short order, the work was charming audiences far beyond Soviet Russia. It clearly knew no geographic or demographic boundaries. And the educational element was grasped from the start; concerts for young people were not complete without it.

That Prokofiev should have created such a masterpiece isn’t at all surprising. Robinson explains it neatly: “Long after his own idyllic childhood, he continued to love children for their unfettered imagination, sense of play and inability to dissimulate. That he never forgot what it meant to be a child, and how children think, is evident in the playful but never condescending music he wrote for them, most of all the phenomenally successful ‘Peter and the Wolf,’ written when Prokofiev was a boy of forty-five.”

Over the decades, the work has been performed by virtually every orchestra and conductor and has also attracted an endless list of narrators, including an impressive number of A-listers from virtually every field, among them Sting, David Bowie, Patrick Stewart, John Gielgud, Sophia Loren, Sean Connery, Boris Karloff, Jack Lemmon, William F. Buckley, Captain Kangaroo, and the inimitable Dame Edna Everage (a.k.a. Barry Humphries). And, of course, there have been many comic takeoffs on the story as well, including those by the likes of Weird Al Yankovic, P.D.Q. Bach (a.k.a. Peter Schickele), and Allan Sherman.

Now comes Suzie Templeton’s provocative animated, wordless version, set in our own time and in a Russia that, on the surface, does not seem to have improved much from the bleakest Soviet days. But in that ominous world, the spirit of an inquisitive, sensitive, brave boy glows and grows as brightly as ever.

Referenced Source:
Prokofiev, Sergei. SOVIET DIARY 1927 AND OTHER WRITINGS. Trans. and ed. Oleg Prokofiev. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992.

Robinson, Harlow. SERGEI PROKOFIEV: A BIOGRAPHY. New York: Viking Penguin, 1987.

–Tim Smith

Tim Smith is the classical music critic of THE BALTIMORE SUN. He has also written for THE NEW YORK TIMES, OPERA NEWS, and BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE, among other publications. His writing has won several regional and national journalism awards, including a first place in arts criticism from the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors. He is the author of THE NPR CURIOUS LISTENER’S GUIDE TO CLASSICAL MUSIC (Perigee Books).