Tag Archives: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Strange Paradoxical World: Alice in Wonderland Tea Party

When I got this brief, I still cannot let go of the concept of Alice in Wonderland. My favorite portion of the movie was the tea party when Alice and the White Rabbit joined the March Hare and the Mad Hatter for tea. The paradox of this situation is that it’s always tea time for the Hatter and the March Hare.  this incident arises from when the Hatter tried to sing for the Queen of Hearts at a celebration of hers, she sentenced him to death for “murdering the time.” The Hatter escaped decapitation, but, angry about the Hatter’s attempted “murder”, Time halts himself in respect to the Hatter, keeping him and the March Hare stuck at 6:00 forever.  Hence my paradoxical strange world revolves around the theme of a tea party at odd timings.

my inspiration 

I decided to explore with the various type of shots to aid in my composition.

This is a close-up shot of Alice amidst the tea party. while I like the interesting and unusual perspective this composition brings about, I would be restricted in my image selection as there aren’t many images available online that features an aerial view.

Screen Shot from “Alice in Wonderland” by Tim Burton

This is a medium shot of a tea party. I like how the character’s emotion and the background are captured with equal detail. I also love how the scene portrays the paradoxical time of the tea party through the evening sky.

However, I decided to use a long shot as my composition in the end. I as the paradox isn’t on the character, but the background. This allows me to insert more details of the paradoxical setting into my composition.

 

My Composition

Since it’s my Wonderland, I wanted to create a landscape that I would escape to as a kid. As there is a requirement to incorporate Singaporean elements inside my composition, I immediately thought of using childhood snacks and game that I often play. There has been many renditions of a landscape being made up of sweets and food. such include: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Hansel and Gretel.

Hansel and Gretel candy house
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Chocolate room

Using this imagery in mind I begin creating my world. I used many iconic snacks and sweets from the 90s. of such includes the: White Rabbit Candy, gold chocolate coin, animal biscuit, ice gem and the tri-coloured biscuit wafer. I also included some iconic games such as the styrofoam airplane and the five stones in the back ground. To make the scene more paradoxical, I decided to incorporate my Mad Hatter character from the previous assignment, by making him serve me tea through his head. I also manipulated with the scale to make my setting more paradoxical. The various food dwarf over me, thus questing the subconsciousness of the viewer. In addition, I swapped out the usual tables and chairs for a teapot. Thus further adding to the strangeness of this world. So as to establish an odd timing I decided to use a bright pink sky as the background. The strange and bizarre color of the sky questions a sense of reality and timing in the composition. The moon in the top right hand Conner further emphasizes the apparent lack of time in this composition.