SciFi and Fantasy Art: Can you still hear it...?

tonight, while zapping through the channels on my TV, i came across a really cute picture... i realized it was from the christmas movie "the polar express", and i was sooo amazed by its characters that i started watching it... what a cute, beautiful, wonderful, fairy tale movie:)!!! i really loved it, and it put me back into christmas mood. i was having this specific picture in my mind i wanted to do as a christmas card for this year, but i just never got to do it... now, after christmas, i created this other card, based on the movie...

for those who don't know the story - there's a very important part where this little boy just can't hear the bell from santa's slide because he doesn't believe in its magic. and then, at one point, he suddenly does hear it, and santa gives him the bell as a gift. he then tells how he grows up and how people around him stop hearing the beautiful sound of the bell, meaning they grow up and stop believing in the magic of fairy tales and christmas.

the idea came up since i remembered two huge beautiful bells i had gotten years ago at some second hand shop. i thought i could do a photograph of a still life like there was a shot in the movie. so i searched for a red ribbon like on the movie, drank a glass of milk, poured some cookies on a plate and shaked them so crumbles would be left. i arranged the whole scene on our living room table and did a couple of shots.

so here's my picture, based on the story (written in 1985 by Chris VAn Allsburg) and not the movie (because it's not a real reconstruction of the movie): the emptied glass of milk and the crumbles from the eaten cookies put out there for santa, and the bell from his slide, filled with christmas magic which only gives the sound to those who really believe in it...

arrangement and photograph done by me. modified with photoshop 5.0 (2007)