Most first-time directors take it a bit slow with their debut films. Before chronicling wild dinosaurs and killer sharks, Steven Spielberg did Duel, a simple movie about a man in a car terrified by a truck. Florian Sigl, however, isn’t afraid to dive to the bottom of the movie-making pool. The neophyte filmmaker has just made The magic Flutean adaptation of Mozart’s famous opera that is also a Harry Potter-style fantasy epic involving a lot of complicated CGI special effects.
In a conversation with Digital Trends, Sigl talks about why he wanted to adapt an opera as a big-budget fantasy film, how he felt lucky to cast Jack Wolfe ahead of his breakout role in season 2 of shadow and boneand the challenges of combining opera and a giant green snake on film.
Digital Trends: Typically when people think of The magic FluteThey think of a majestic and old-fashioned opera. What made you want to adapt Mozart’s masterpiece as a Harry Potter-style fantasy?
Florian Sigl (director): Well, it’s a great opportunity to bring culture and classical music to a wider audience, especially since The magic Flute it already uses popular fantasy tropes like an evil queen or big monsters like a giant snake. I thought with the popularity of all the other fantasy stories now, there’s a good chance here to adapt. The magic Flute.
Most people have a hard time really understanding The magic Flute‘s, especially after the first hour of the opera, so I added a bit more structure (such as the modern subplot set in the present) to appeal to an audience that has no relation to or familiarity with classical music or the play. from Mozart. Magic Flute.
It must be a challenge, not just for a first-time director, but for anyone, to make a solo musical or a special effects-driven fantasy. But you did both, which I don’t think I’ve seen before. How did you prepare for both the fantasy elements that involved a lot of special effects and the musical sequences in The magic Flute?
It took me a while to decide which parts of the opera I wanted to keep and how I should integrate the music with the fantasy sequences. I was going back and forth a lot to make sure both sides clicked.
Take the snake sequence, which appears at the beginning of the movie. I knew what Tim (Jack Wolfe) was singing and what the music would be, and that’s what I used as a base to start with. I then started writing a basic story, then added storyboards, then animations to visualize what the snake would look like, and then consulted with the artist who designed the snake to make sure it looked right. Then I would go back to the music and check if it was syncing with the action on the screen.
It was double the work for me because I had to balance everything evenly. Not everything worked out the way I expected from the start, and it was quite a challenge to combine those two disparate things. But I think that, at least in some moments, it really works well.
I wanted to talk about Jack Wolfe, who plays the main character in the movie, Tim/Prince Tamino. What was it about Jack that made him the ideal lead for this version of The magic Flute?
From a musical perspective, he was looking for a younger male voice that was not a classical tenor. If you go to any opera house and look The magic FluteTypically, Prince Tamino is played by a man in his 30s or 40s who is a bit heavier than usual. My Magic Flute, however, is a coming-of-age story. It is about this prince finding his position in society. In our case, it’s either Jack or Tim finding his place in the world, so he can’t be too old. He has to be younger.
I was also looking for an actor who had experience attending a professional music school. And in the second round of casting, I realized that Jack was a perfect fit for the role. He went to music boarding school, he knows how painful it is to leave your family behind, like Tim does in the movie, and he’s a huge music nerd. [Laughs] I am very happy that I found it when I did because it seems to be about to explode. he has been in The Wizard and it’s in the next season of shadow and bone.
What was your favorite part of doing The magic Flute?
Well, because it was twice the work, I enjoyed doing it twice as much. I loved working with our ensemble. It was an incredible experience as a director working with such a diverse cast. I have Academy Award winners like F. Murray Abraham, game of Thrones actors like Iwan Rheon and younger, lesser-known actors like Jack.
The other great advantage of working on this film was being able to record for three straight weeks with the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra. That was just a dream. I mean, have your own orchestra for three weeks and record a soundtrack for your first movie? That was great.
The magic Flute is currently playing in theaters.
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