Note: To learn more about Shazak
Productions, read this article about our first production: Queen of Persia.
Bringing an Ancient Story into the 21st Century:
The Making of The Queen of Persia
By Yael
Resnick
It’s a classic tale of
good versus evil. It has all the elements of a captivating drama. A virtuous
heroine. A wicked villain. Suspense, intrigue, and surprise plot twists. 
To make things even
more interesting, it’s also a slightly wacky, cartoon-style comedy with an
affinity for novel turns of phrase, understated slapstick, and a sprinkling
of well-placed one-liners.
It’s the ancient, true
story of Queen Esther, brought vividly to life in a new feature-length,
animated video, The Queen of Persia. But if the word “animation”
makes you think of the silky-smooth, seamless style of Disney, or Pixar, or
Lights: The Miracle of Chanukah, think again, because The Queen of
Persia is unlike anything out there.
For one thing, its
“still-animation” style is created by electronically manipulating still
images to give the impression of movement. The result is an entertainment
experience that gives one the feeling that the scenes and characters have
sprung straight off the pages of a comic book.
For another thing,
this retelling of the timeless Biblical story is faithful to the facts given
in Megillat Esther (the “scroll of Esther”) and its traditional
commentaries. Watching The Queen of Persia, or reading its companion
100-page, full-color, illustrated book with the same title, is more than
just great entertainment—it’s a real education.
“We follow the
authentic Biblical narrative,” said Rabbi Moshe Moscowitz, president of
Shazak Productions and executive producer of The Queen of Persia.
“But we use modern language to reach a 21st-century audience. When somebody
reads our book or sees our video, they are able to look at the story in a
completely new way. The Queen of Persia reaches educated,
technology-savvy people on their level; it’s sophisticated and intelligent.
But most of all, it’s a whole lot of fun.”
The basic plot is well
known. A Jewish woman, Esther, becomes the Queen of Persia when King
Achashveirosh chooses her as the winner of a beauty pageant. Later, Esther
saves her people from destruction at the hands of the evil prime minister,
Haman. The wicked Haman is then hung on the gallows that he had built for
his nemesis—the one man who wouldn’t bow down to him—Esther’s uncle
Mordechai. The miracle of the Jewish people’s rescue and victory is
celebrated on the holiday of Purim.
Most Jewish
schoolchildren, and many non-Jews as well, are familiar with that much of
the story. Less well-known are the colorful details that flesh out the basic
storyline, many of which are not even found in the Megillah itself,
but only in the commentaries. The upshot is that Jews and non-Jews alike may
have no more than a passing acquaintance with the fascinating story of
Esther—and Rabbi Moscowitz wants to see that change.
“Our goal is to
capture the fancy of everyone,” according to Moscowitz. “Everybody,
regardless of background, could pick up what we’re doing and have a blast.”
Moscowitz feels that
teachers, in particular, could gain from using The Queen of Persia in
their classrooms.
“It’s going to open
the eyes of educators,” he said. “I’ve been teaching for two decades. Now I
want to give teachers new tools that really excite students. Whenever
learning material is presented in an entertaining way, people will learn
better.”
Virtual Teamwork
Making The Queen of
Persia (both the video and the book) was a complex process that took
more than a full year and tapped into the diverse talents of a small but
dedicated creative team. Many of the contributors are based in Chicago,
where Shazak is headquartered, but others—in a collaboration made possible
by the magic of the Internet—are scattered around the U.S. and the world.
Cartoonist David
Sokoloff worked shoulder-to-shoulder with Moscowitz to create the hundreds
of illustrations needed for the project.
“I could work with
other people via e-mail,” said Moscowitz, “but the artist has to be right
next to me. Creating the art isn’t something that could happen
long-distance. I have the ideas and I know exactly what I’m looking for, but
beyond stick people, I can’t draw to save my life. I know what I like when I
see it; it’s a very immediate process. David is a brilliant illustrator and
he stood by my side and translated my ideas into ink. He has an
extraordinary talent for bringing out the personality of a character through
pictures.”
“Rabbi Moscowitz is
what I would call a very dedicated diamond polisher,” said Sokoloff. “He’s a
hands-on executive producer who has a strong drive to get the absolute best
script, the best art. He cares about everything from the right adjective to
the right color of Achashveirosh’s moustache.”
It’s fortunate for
Sokoloff that he lives in the same city as Moscowitz and could collaborate
with the producer in person.
“I’m pretty
old-fashioned,” the artist noted. “I’m very happy to leave the technical
computer aspects to the members of the team who are more familiar and
comfortable with that part of it. My job is to think about who the
characters are, what they should look like, where are they located, what is
their emotional state—then try to capture that with a pen line.”
Given the task of
adding color to Sokoloff’s pen-and-ink line drawings, Jon Carter (“a man
with rainbow fingers,” according to Sokoloff) added the next level of mood
and depth to the art.
“David’s work is
beautiful and funny,” Carter said. “It was a lot of fun coloring and
embellishing his dynamic cast of characters. It was a challenge to go beyond
doing individual still pictures, which we’ve done together before—to get
into the complex art compositioning, layout, and lettering needed for the
comic book. Once I had a process worked out, the creative aspect was much
smoother.”
Carter gave computer technology the credit for enabling him to team up with
Shazak on such a large-scale job.
“Coloring so many
pictures by hand would have taken much longer without computer technology,
and if I messed up I might have had to redo a picture completely. The
Internet has also been a blessing. Moshe [Moscowitz] and I send files to
each other almost daily and he makes suggestions and changes. I can do them
and send them right back to him in minutes.”
Although Carter did
most of his work from afar, he did meet with the Chicago team members for
one week.
“It was a wonderful
experience,” Carter said. “I could really identify with David as an artist
and a creative person. Moshe is also a lot of fun to be around; he’s
constantly brainstorming new ideas. He’s truly the mastermind of this
project, and the results are due entirely to his ingenuity.”
 Asked
about the challenge of working on a virtual production team, Boston-based
screenplay author Yael Resnick said, “Even though I’ve never met David or
Rabbi Moscowitz in person, there’s really nothing ‘virtual’ about our work
together. We’re in constant communication, and of course we can send drafts
and revisions instantly back and forth by e-mail. Between cell phones and
e-mail, I talk to Rabbi Moscowitz almost as often as I talk to my own
family.”
Resnick was given the
task of creating the script from scratch, using only a few initial
illustrations by Sokoloff as inspiration. Her first step was to become an
expert on the fine points of the Biblical story itself. Then she refined her
conception of the various scenes by delving into the details provided by the
Rabbinical commentaries.
“My goal was to stay true to
the source,” Resnick said, “but I was also on the lookout for the humorous
potential lurking in every scene. Luckily, the story lends itself naturally
to humor and in many places it practically cries out for a good joke. Rabbi
Moscowitz encouraged me to go with my ideas, and to explore the creative
possibilities. His instincts—for language and especially for humor—are right
on target. As a producer he has a certain vision of what he wants to create,
and he inspires everyone with that vision.”
Moscowitz had previously worked with Sokoloff, Carter, and Resnick on some
publishing projects for the Web. But producing a video presented a whole new
dimension: the challenge of animation. Looking at the impressive finished
product, it’s hard to believe that animation wasn’t even part of Moscowitz’s
original vision for the project.
Home
“At first, all I really
wanted to do was make a good sound recording to go along with the
illustrations,” said Moscowitz. “I never in my wildest dreams imagined that
it would be animated. When we began recording, at TRN Studios in Chicago, I
thought that I would be the voice of Queen Esther! It was just a little
project, but it got to be so good, we said, ‘Hey, if we’re already at this
point, let’s get a real Queen Esther.’ We were very fortunate to find the
talented Dotty Chakiris. She’s very versatile. She has an impressive ability
to express the essence of a character through her voice.”
Chakiris did the voices for
all of the major female characters—Esther, Vashti (the king’s ill-fated
first queen), and Zeresh (Haman’s wife, his equal in evil).
It soon became clear that
this was to be no simple recording. In all, the 40 or so voice
characterizations were provided by about 20 actors, often playing multiple
roles. Like Chakiris, Sokoloff took on the voices of both good and evil: the
righteous hero, Mordechai, and the villain Haman.
The transition from the
original concept of a small-scale recording to a feature-length animation
project took on its own momentum as the undertaking grew. Still working with
a very limited budget, Moscowitz faithfully followed the winding road that
led him from one creative development to the next—even in the face of
logistical and financial setbacks.
Moscowitz said, “At the
recording studio, they called The Queen of Persia the ‘never-ending
story,’ because we went through so many revisions until it was just right.”
Moscowitz hooked up with
multimedia designer John Napiorkowski to create the animation for the video.
“The sheer scope of producing
a 106-minute animated video was a challenge for me,” said Napiorkowski.
“I’ve been involved with other commercial video promotional products before,
but nothing as intricate and on such as scale as this. It’s an honor to work
with such a great team. Rabbi Moscowitz was extremely professional and
provided invaluable creative suggestions throughout the whole project. And
the imaginative script ,
beautifully drawn artwork, and superb raw voice-over work that I was given
truly inspired me.”
Perhaps more than anyone else
on the Shazak team, Napiorkowski relied heavily on the use of technology to
facilitate his often painstaking creative work.
“I like the ‘clean,’ elegant
nature of the computer as a multimedia tool,” he said. “With a simple click
of the mouse, I can experiment visually and aurally in a direct and
immediate way, with precise control. And high-speed Internet allows me to
communicate instantly and have access to invaluable resources, such a
sound-effects databases, from any location in the world.”
To create The Queen of
Persia, Napiorkowski used a cutting-edge technique known as “still-image
animation.”
Napiorkowski said, “I was
given around 600 individual images, and about as many sound files containing
voice-overs and music. My job was to put all of these files together—along
with additional images, music, sound effects, and some voice-overs of my
own—into a cohesive, entertaining package.”
While a bigger-budget studio
often has an entire staff of animators, Shazak entrusted the animation of
The Queen of Persia to a single person (“John is a creative genius,”
says Moscowitz). It was an enormous task. It takes about ten hours of work
to produce just one minute of animation.
“A lot of the work was in
preparing the image and sound files for insertion into an animation
timeline. I cut, pasted, cloned, and composited the original images into
nearly 3000 edited images,” said Napiorkowski. “The creative process
involved sifting through the raw images and listening closely to the raw
audio files to develop a conceptual vision of what each segment should look
like. It often took meticulous work to match the tone or emotion of a
voice-over to a particular image of a character.”
Napiorkowski worked on the
animation in installments, which were then forwarded electronically to
Moscowitz for review.
“Whenever we’d get a new
chapter from John,” Moscowitz said, “the whole family would get together to
watch and critique it. My wife, Leah, is great with her comments. Even
though she grew up in Israel, without much exposure to TV, she has a natural
eye for editing and quickly caught on. She’s a vital member of the team.”
Home
The Right Place at the Right
Time
“I feel that Someone ‘up
there’ is really with me,” said Moscowitz, “because I was able to find just
the right people, and that was truly heaven-sent. That the most talented
team on earth could come together just at the right time, making use of the
very latest technology to communicate and create—I don’t see it as anything
less than a miracle. Today there are no boundaries; everything is possible.
Working with people who are half a continent or half a world away, sending
gigantic FTP files over high-speed cable modems—we could not have done all
this even two years ago.”
“I guess I was in the right
place at the right time,” said Resnick, “when Rabbi Moscowitz called me out
of the blue, on the advice of a mutual friend, looking for a writer. It was
definitely Divine Providence that we connected when we did. Rabbi Moscowitz
is extremely knowledgeable and has enriched my appreciation for Torah
[Bible] in so many ways. His enthusiasm and optimism are contagious and very
motivating. Working on the script for The Queen of Persia, I learned
something new every day. And it was really a thrill to see my words take
shape first as a recording complete with sound effects and music, and
finally as a fully animated masterpiece.”
“Purim happens to be my
favorite Jewish holiday,” said Sokoloff. “I love it for its inspiration, its
fun, and its spirituality. Rabbi Moscowitz asked me if I’d like to work on a
Purim project. Even before he said anything about an animated feature, or a
comic book, I said yes!”
Like Resnick, Sokoloff
believes that his connection with this project is no mere coincidence.
He noted, “I feel that all of
my past experiences, including all the hours I spent drawing in my notebook
in Hebrew school, were to lead me to Shazak. I’m very happy and grateful to
be here. As a creative team, we trust each other’s instincts. We allow each
other creative room and we really work together well.”
And in The Queen of Persia,
this seamless sense of true all-for-one-and-one-for-all teamwork in action
comes through loud and clear, in living color.
Home
What’s Next
Moscowitz hopes that when
people see his video or read its complementary comic book, “they’ll gain a
new outlook into Torah.” The Shazak website (www.shazak.com)
entices visitors to stay and learn a little with quirky, animated,
interactive quizzes based on The Queen of Persia.
And while producing the story
of Esther has consumed much of his creative energy for the past year,
Moscowitz is not planning to slow down now that his first project is
complete.
“We’ve already begun work on
our next project. It’s called Out of
Egypt,
and it’s the story of the exodus of the Jewish people, led by their great
leader, Moshe [Moses].”
If you tell Moscowitz that
there are a few popular versions of that famous Biblical story out there
already, including the recent animated feature Prince of Egypt, he is
ready to clarify what sets Shazak’s production apart.
“Our project costs a lot less
money, and doesn’t have all the bells and whistles the big guys have. But in
terms of entertainment value, we’re in the same league. And if you want to
talk about educational value, there’s no comparison. We won’t take a little
bit of the truth and make it into a whole different story. Instead, as we
did in The Queen of Persia, whatever we create will stay true to the
story itself, in a way that doesn’t take away from actually having fun while
you’re learning. That’s always our goal: to give people a chance to learn
while having a great time.”
One thing will be different
the next time around, however.
“It will be a lot easier,”
said Moscowitz. “The set-up is in place; we have the people and we’ve
learned the ropes. We’ve been through it before. We know now what we didn’t
know then. And we’re ready to roll.”
Copyright 2004. Reprinted with permission of the author.
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