Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • To celebrate Cinderella, let’s take a look at 25 things you probably didn’t know about

  • Disney’s live-action remake of their classic animated movie.

  • To prepare to play Cinderella, Lily James practised yoga every day to help get the right

  • posture and elegance for her character. She also took horseback riding lessons for

  • six weeks. And to understand how Cinderella maintained

  • her strength and goodness despite the cruelty she faced, James researched spirituality,

  • reading about leaders and pacifists such as Gandhi.

  • To help develop the natural rapport real-life sisters have, director Kenneth Branagh encouraged

  • actresses Holliday Grainger and Sophie McShera, who play Cinderella’s wicked stepsisters,

  • to improvise on set.

  • To make Cinderella’s world feel both believable and fitting for a fairy tale, production designer

  • Dante Ferretti mixed historical reality with fantasy, taking inspiration from Northern

  • European architecture of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries.

  • Director Kenneth Branagh wanted Cinderella’s world to have a 19th-century look.

  • Which meant the movie’s design team could include earlier styles of architecture into

  • their designs.

  • The set for the palace ballroom took around 9 months to build at Pinewood Studios on the

  • 007 soundstage. The ballroom’s design was inspired by French

  • architecture including the Louvre and the Hotel de Soubise, both of which have grand

  • staircases.

  • The ballroom measured 50 yards long, 35 yards wide and 30 feet high, and had marble floors

  • and walls, a huge staircase, golden statues, thousands of flowers, and curtains made from

  • more than 2,000 yards of material.

  • In the ballroom, there were 17 huge chandeliers that were custom-made in Venice, Italy.

  • The chandeliers had almost 5,000 oil candles, each of which was lit by hand.

  • The movie’s design team built the exterior of Cinderella’s family’s home on location

  • at Black Park, a country park in Buckinghamshire, England.

  • The interiors of Cindershome, including the bedrooms, her father’s study, and the

  • attic, were built on soundstages at Pinewood Studios.

  • Although the story takes place around the 1830s, costume designer Sandy Powell used

  • artistic license to do what was best for each character.

  • So, the costumes aren’t strictly 19th century, but rather a 1940s version of that era.

  • Powell approached the film like a storybook for children.

  • In other words, she made her designs bright and colourful with fairly-easy references

  • as to who was good and who was evil.

  • Costume designer Sandy Powell didn’t want Cinderella’s usual outfit to be rags or

  • a patchwork dress. Instead, Cinders wears a dress that gradually

  • deteriorates and fades, but looks like something she would have worn in happier days when her

  • father was still alive. The dress is made of aqua cotton voile and

  • is influenced by a 1920s floral print with big pale pink flowers almost hidden in the

  • material.

  • Cinderella’s ball gown took months to make with numerous prototypes, fittings and trials,

  • which included moving and dancing, along the way.

  • To give the dress a light, almost weightless, look, costume designer Sandy Powell used many

  • layers of very fine fabric in different shades of blue, which gave the gown its watery lilac

  • blue colour. Nine different versions of Cinderella’s

  • ball gown were made, featuring more than 270 yards of fabric, lots of petticoats, more

  • than 10,000 Swarovski crystals, and over 3 miles of hems.

  • It took 16 people 550 hours to make Cinderella’s silk organza wedding dress.

  • Unlike Cindersball gown, only one wedding dress was made.

  • For Cate Blanchett’s wicked stepmother costumes, designer Sandy Powell took inspiration from

  • 1940s photos of movie stars such as Marlene Dietrich and Joan Crawford.

  • Powell used a strong jewel-tone colour palette and a lot of black for the stepmother’s

  • clothes to give her a sharp edge, in spite of her beauty.

  • And she gave the stepmother and her daughters so many incredible outfits to emphasis the

  • fact that they were spending all the money left by Cinderella’s father on their own

  • clothes.

  • The stepsistersoutfits were deliberately designed with the cheapest fabrics to look

  • over the top and tasteless. As well as making the sisters look silly,

  • this also helped keep the focus on the stepmother.

  • Of all the characters in the live-action Cinderella, costume designer Sandy Powell says the Prince

  • is the one who looks most like his character in Disney’s animated Cinderella movie.

  • In this new film, the Prince’s costumes often feature shades of blue to accentuate

  • actor Richard Madden’s blue eyes. And even though it would have been more historically

  • accurate for the Prince’s uniform to have tight white breeches with baggy knees, Powell

  • thought fitted trousers looked more flattering.

  • Helena Bonham Carter’s Fairy Godmother gown was almost 4 feet wide, made up of over 130

  • yards of fabric, featured 10,000 Swarovski crystals, and had 400 LED lights sewn into

  • the material so it would light up when she cast a spell.

  • There were more than 200 extras in Cinderella’s ballroom scenes. These included 25 guards,

  • 20 servants, 54 professional dancers and 30 orchestra members.

  • The costumes worn by guests at the royal Ball were inspired by ballroom dance scenes in

  • classic films such as Italian director Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard and American director

  • Alexander Hall’s Once Upon A Time.

  • Over 3 months of planning and preparation, including casting, wardrobe fittings and rehearsals,

  • were needed for the whole ballroom sequence. And more than 35 assistant directors helped

  • oversee it.

  • The shape of Cinderella’s glass slipper is based on a shoe from the 1890s which costume

  • designer Sandy Powell found in a shoe museum in Northampton, England.

  • Powell looked at different ways of making a glass shoe, but because the shoe needed

  • to sparkle, she realised it had to be made of crystal.

  • So, over many months, she worked with the Austrian crystal company Swarovski and they

  • developed a special piece of machinery to make the shoe.

  • Eight copies of the slipper were made, however none of them were actually worn in the film.

  • Instead, they were used as props, for example in the scenes where maidens try on the slipper,

  • and where the slipper is smashed.

  • During the ballroom scenes, the filmmakers used five cameras to make sure they caught

  • every moment in the dance sequences from as many positions as possible.

  • And they also used two cranes to get a sweeping effect and show the scale of the set and the

  • dance routines.

  • To make Cinderella appear as natural as possible, the movie’s make-up designer kept Lily James

  • make-up minimal, and used blusher to highlight her emotions.

  • So, in scenes where Cinders is sad, they reduced the blusher, making her look a little pale.

  • While in scenes where she was excited or falling in love, they used more blusher.

  • To give Cinders more sparkle in the ballroom scene, the make-up team applied a light-reflecting

  • lotion mixed with white glitter to Lily James’s skin, and glitter to her eyelids. And crystals

  • were placed in her hair.

  • It took 5 hours to get each extra ready for the ballroom scenes, as each one needed to

  • be dressed, made up, photographed, and charted.

  • The design of Cinderella’s iconic carriage was inspired by jewellery and jewellery cases.

  • And because the pumpkin’s transformation takes place in the greenhouse in Cinderella’s

  • garden, the design team incorporated elements from the greenhouse into the carriage’s

  • design. For example, the seat Cinderella sits on is

  • from the greenhouse. The carriage was 10 feet high, 17 feet long,

  • and weighed nearly 2 tons. In fact, it was too heavy to be pulled by

  • real horses, so the design team had to remove some of the ironwork used in it and replace

  • it with light-weight sculptures.

  • Well there you have it, 25 things you probably didn't know about Cinderella!

  • If youre a fan of Disney movies, check out my videos on 15 Things You Didn’t Know

  • About Frozen Fever, and 15 Things You Didn’t Know About Big Hero 6!

  • And let me know in the comments below, what’s your favourite live-action Disney movie?

  • And who’s your favourite Disney character? If you enjoyed this video, hit the thumbs-up

  • button and subscribe for more things you didn't know and weekly movie reviews and interviews.

  • Thanks for watching! Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers!

To celebrate Cinderella, let’s take a look at 25 things you probably didn’t know about

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it