After choosing an image, that of a young man dressed in a red hooded top (commonly associated with ‘street thugs.’) We (Craig, Andrew and Joseph) set about working on an idea for a rewrite of the fairy tale ‘Little Red Riding Hood.’
We started off by taking the original plot points (as best we can remember from the story of ‘Little Red Riding Hood.’
- Grandmother is ill and lives deep in the woods
- Red Riding Hood has got a basket of food to take to her Grandmother
- Red Riding Hood begins her journey through the woods
- Harassed initially by the wolf, the wolf is trying to obtain the food
- Red Riding Hood continues on her journey through the woods
- Wolf continues stalking Red Riding Hood
- Red Riding Hood is overtaken by the wolf that beats her to her Grandmother’s house.
- The Wolf conceals/kills Grandmother and masquerades as her in the bed
- Red Riding Hood arrives at the house and is originally fooled by the Wolf’s disguise
- The Wolf springs his trap and attacks Red Riding Hood
After this point our interpretation of how the story ended differed from one another, so the final plot point we have is…
· The escape or death of one or more characters.
Now we had the basic breakdown of the story we began a discourse on the connotations of the picture we had selected.
The most important being…
· The stereotypical view of the picture would be that of a street thug as apposed to that of a sweet young girl trying to aid her ailing Grandmother.
· No other characters from the original story appear in the image.
· The idea of a ‘Wolf’ or ‘Beast’ character seems illogical in context to the picture. What will act as our antagonist?
· The picture has an urban setting as apposed to being in the woods.
· Does the picture lend itself to the idea of 360 degree content?
After noting these points we began to construct the characters for the piece.
The Wolf
The character of the Wolf is fulfilled by the streets themselves; this includes all the different characters such as drug dealers and thugs the protagonist encounters on his journey through the streets.
Grandmother/ Grandmother’s House
The Grandmother or Grandmother’s house can be simply the character’s home he is trying to return to late at night after visiting a relative, such as a Grandmother.
Red Riding Hood
The character from the picture, a young man who is dressed in street attire.
Red Riding Hood in this case is a young man who in the past was a stereotypical street thug but has since reformed (breaking away from the stereotype we originally labelled him with).
He has already been visiting an elderly relative and as the night has drawn in the streets have become unsafe.
The streets prey on him as he walks through tempting him to revert to his old ways.
The New List of Events.
- Red Riding Hood leaves the home of his Grandmother (she is worried about leaving her home due to the current state of the streets) after dropping off some food he makes his way.
- Night has drawn in and the streets are becoming rougher and rougher.
- Red Riding Hood begins his journey back to his home, using his streets smarts he is able to safely get half the way back.
- He is accosted by a gang or ruffians with whom he used to socialise.
- Red Riding Hood continues his journey by he is being followed by the ruffians.
- The gang are able to arrive at Red Riding Hood’s house first by taking the dangerous shortcuts through town.
- After Red Riding Hood arrives the gang are able to masquerade as his friends and gain access to his home.
- Once in the home the gang show their true face (much like the Wolf) and attack Red Riding Hood and attempted to rob him.
- A neighbour disturbs the gang and they flee, leaving Red Riding Hood to contemplate the world he has left behind. (The neighbour here is fulfilling the role of the ‘Woodsman’ that appears in some versions of the Red Riding Hood story.)
Now the new story has been created we set about making this piece have 360 degree content. This was the hardest past as the story doesn’t specifically lend itself to the idea of 360 degree content as the story doesn’t contain anything that could be considered mysterious or that an audience could interact with and solve.
An idea we came up with for the 360-degree content was that the entire piece should be presented as if it was shot by building security cameras and CCTV cameras around the streets in which it is set. Although a television piece it can also be presented on the internet…
Presented on a website with a box on the page for each camera used, the whole piece is then played out on every single camera from beginning to end, for example after Red Riding Hood leaves his Grandmother’s house we are able to view everything else that happens in front of that camera for the entire duration of the story even though it would not involve Red Riding Hood.
This idea of the perpetually running cameras could be developed so that other stories, maybe something more mysterious could be playing out at the same time as the Red Riding Hood story, thus adding exclusive content and extra hooks for the internet audience to get involved in.
To Finish
Working as a group of three to retell this classic fairy tale was initially difficult as we were unable to decided the exact story of Red Riding Hood!
After that hurdle was overcome after much thought and discussion we were able to work as an affective group to organise the ideas we had and structure them around the Red Riding Hood story.
Another issue with group work seems to be time, the availability of each member of the group seemed to be different and thus we originally struggled but by the end we were able to work together as a creative force and produce the idea presented here.
We tried to steer away from stereotyping the character of Red Riding Hood, as the picture we used presented us with a stereotypical looking character. Making this character a reformed person helped to add to the originality of the piece.
We feel that the piece that we created could have been more original, but the 360-degree content that we added makes it more creative and unique and would give us more room to create and add further ideas if we so wished.
