For our concept, we were first inspired by the film The Nutcracker and the Four Realms which came out in 2018. Even though this film has a different plot to the original Nutcracker, we still thought it was useful as it is an appropriate reference for what the children within our family target audience may see The Nutcracker as.
After watching the film, we were particularly inspired by the four realms in Clara’s dreams and what design potential they had: The Land of Sweets, The Land of Snowflakes, The Land of Flowers, and The Land of Amusements. We researched the inspiration behind of each realm and discovered that The Land of Flowers and Snowflakes were both inspired by waltzes in the ballet. The Land of Sweets is a real realm in the ballet and as for The Land of Amusements, we did struggle to find a link there. In conclusion, we decided to do 3 boxes, each one inspired by either flowers, snowflakes, or sweets and then the fourth box would be inspired by the mice that invade Clara’s dream (as the mice inhabit The Land of Amusements in the film and are a relevant part of the plot in the ballet).
To contribute to the Victorian aspects of the brief, we wanted our wrapping paper to be inspired by Victorian wallpaper which we then intend to edit to make it look more seasonal by adding aspects of each realm. Each box would have the same wrapping paper design outline, but the colour scheme of the wrapping paper would depend upon the land as well as the symbols used throughout the wallpaper design. For example, for The Land of Sweets the colour scheme of the wallpaper would have the symbol of candy canes repeated throughout and use purples and pinks as that is the home of the Sugar Plum Fairy.
When deciding where we wanted our Christmas box installation to be, we thought the Clock Gallery would be an interesting place to set them. In the narrative of Newstead this is the room where Christmas morning was to be. As we wanted our boxes to be reminiscent of Clara’s dream, we thought that this room would be most appropriate as it is the end of her journey. For the interiors of the boxes, we were inspired by the structure of Victorian Puppet theatre sets as well as toy theatres and their use of layers to portray a scene. This led us to discover layered paper box art which produced a very similar effect with a modern twist. We wanted to replicate this effect in our boxes inspired by each motif (the mouse king, flowers, snowflakes, and sweets) and also incorporate fairy lights through the layers to illuminate the design and add a magical aspect. As the clock gallery also has a puppet stage in it, we hope that our design can further the theme in the room.
Lastly, we wanted melted clocks to be dripping down the external edges of some boxes. Having just been reminded of surrealism and Dali’s The Persistence of Memory in contextual studies, we thought the clock could remind the audience of Dali’s surreal intention: to immerge into the subconscious. Clocks are also a crucial part of The Nutcracker story as it is a grandfather clock’s chime which starts the adventure in Clara’s dream. Through combining both the surrealist effect with the prop of a clock, it allows the audience to reminisce in the fact that all the motifs displayed in our boxes (the mouse king, flowers, snowflakes and sweets) were all a part of the dream (the subconscious).
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