Just in time for Halloween! “The Snow Witch” is finished, finally. It’s adapted from a Japanese ghost story “Yuki-Onna” (KWAIDAN: Stories and Studies of Strange Things) by Lafcadio Hearn, an American born journalist and author, who spent the last fourteen years of his life in Japan. Most of the stories in this book originated from old Japanese books, but according to Hearn
“….One queer tale, “Yuki-Onna,” was told to me by a farmer of Chofu,
Nishitama-gori, in Musashi province, as a legend of his native village.
Whether it has ever been written in Japanese I do not know; but the
extraordinary belief which it records used certainly to exist in most parts
of Japan, and in many curious forms”.

This story has always fascinated me, I won’t say why as I don’t want to let slip any spoilers for anyone that hasn’t watched the film and suggest that you don’t visit the related links until after watching.

As a small child, I was lucky enough to be given a box of books once a year (mostly misprints but that didn’t matter) many folktales and legends amongst them, from a children’s publisher and his wife, who stayed for two weeks every summer at my grandmother’s pub/bed and breakfast house by the seaside. I’ve never grown tired of reading the various and diverse folktales and folklore that originate from around the world. I’m not sure why, but I never saw any Disney versions of fairytales at the cinema as a child, I watched them all as a adult with my own children. However, while they’re entertaining enough, I’m not drawn to them as I am to the darker, more traditional folklore tales and myths. I’d hoped to bring to life some of the more intriguing stories in a series of World Tales, at this point I’m not sure if my idea will develop into a full series or not.

Having spent more than five months dithering over whether to finish this film, I realise that part of the reason for this was my lack of know-how when it comes to the audio production. While I could envisage each scene in my head and create the sets, place the music…I just couldn’t get the audio right, so I handed that over to gToon. In my opinion it’s his wonderful audio design and Simon’s narration that really bring to life the story, not forgetting Overman’s additional sound for the witch, and it’s given me such a greater appreciation of that side of producing a short film. In future, I hope I won’t be so stubborn at giving up some control over “my” projects! (It’s a good thing Kheri is so easy going ;))

If anyone is reading this and downloads the film, I hope you enjoy it, it’s quite a big file but definitely worth watching in high res. Kheri and I built the sets based on some beautiful Japanese block prints and while the custom content probably isn’t anywhere near as authentic as it should be, I hope that it captures the essence of the story.

To watch and download from our site:

(edit: I apologise, the Snow Witch files are temporarily offline on our site, but the film is still on YouTube, not great quality but hopefully the files will be back up later today)

LINK
From YouTube (not recommended because of the mangled picture quality)

Full list of custom content used and production credits

Related links and articles of interest:
Text version of the story, “Yuki-Onna”
The Project Gutenberg Etext of Kwaidan
Culture-Conscious Nightmares (American v Japanese horror)
Yuki-onna: facts about the myth (Wikipedia)
About Lafacdio Hearn (Wikipedia)

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