Matilda's Clock

The Story of Matilda's Clock

The story Matilda’s Clock is about a good witch in a small village who uses her spells for good to help her neighbours for things like making it rain, to help a farmer with his crop or making wind for drying laundry on the clothes line. Matilda is easily distracted and forgetful, which sometimes causes issues in the village when these spells are delayed. One day she is asked by Mr. Grubb, the clock shop owner, to help him cheat. It makes her angry that she has been asked to use her spells so that Mr. Grubb can hold the winning ticket at the up coming flower festival, so that he can win the grand prize - a ride on lawn mower. To teach him a lesson she intentionally arrives late, and he ends up winning an alarm clock. He is angry because he didn’t get what he wanted and ended up with a clock that he doesn’t need. He gives the clock to Matilda in hopes that she won’t be late anymore.

Over the years I have come across many stories about witches. I can best relate to that character because I am most familiar with them. Some of these stories include Matilda’s Clock, The Wizard of Oz, Hocus Pocus, Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, the Addams family and more. In most cases the witches are being taught a lesson or teaching others a lesson.

Ever since I was small, I have been exposed to lots of stories and myths about witches as both good and bad characters. All the witches are powerful female characters that I grew up learning about. This story for me is about not letting people take advantage of you, which has happened to me in the past.

I selected this myth because I often dressed up for Halloween as a witch and I know a lot of stories/myths that have witches in them. I feel like I know that type of character the best out of all the different types out there. Matilda’s Clock is a story out of a fairy-tale book I had as a child and it brings fond memories

In my interpretation of the story I started by re-creating the one drawn image that goes with the story. It is an image of Matilda with her feet up reading in her home. This gave me a starting point to branch out from. I posed the subject doing things around the house that distract her. I also posed the character with key props from the story like the clock, a book of spells, in front of a fireplace with potion bottles and ingredients. She is a good witch, so I wanted to portray her as more of a wise old woman, not as a typical bad wicked witch that you see for Halloween. I needed to find a balance between the 2 sides, so that you would get that she was a witch, but not a scary, dark, evil one. I used a pointy hat, striped tights, and a broom, but no warts, green make up, or scary faces.

Also, in post-production I intentionally added texture and clarity in photoshop to enhance the rough appearance of the textures in the space, but also to enhance the wrinkles and skin texture on my model to add to the clues that the character is a wise old woman. Witches in most cases are not portrayed as beautiful young attractive beings.

The images that worked best for me were ones that were entirely different poses from the others as well as different camera angles. Some images were closer and some farther away to really mix it up and show variety. For me, the best image is the bottom one, where she is standing up in the house with the whole outfit on – the pointy hat and boots while holding the clock and broom. It would be the image I would have chosen to include in the story book to go along with the story. The image uses many key symbols to visually give you an idea of what the story is about. Below is a small sample of images from the photo session.