Giants Are Small
 |
|
| Private company | |
| Industry | Entertainment |
| Founded | 2007 |
| Founder |
Doug Fitch Edouard Getaz Fredric Gumy |
| Headquarters | New York City, US |
|
Area served
|
Worldwide |
| Website | http://GiantsAreSmall.com |
Giants Are Small is an entertainment company based in Brooklyn, New York. Founded in 2007 by visual artist/director Doug Fitch, producer/filmmaker Edouard Getaz and multimedia entrepreneur Frederic Gumy, the company produces live and digital entertainment ranging from opera and ballet to family entertainment.
Doug Fitch and Edouard Getaz met in 2005, shortly before the production of The Soldier's Tale, which Fitch was invited to direct for the New York Philharmonic. Getaz stepped in at the last minute and became the de facto producer of the show. The production brought Fitch’s drawings to life by filming them live on stage, animated by puppeteers; while the orchestra performed the music and actors narrated the story. The miniature world created by the puppeteers was simultaneously projected on a giant screen above the orchestra. The result, dubbed “live-animation”, became a signature technique used by Giants Are Small in many of its shows.
Edouard Getaz, a longtime concert and multimedia producer and filmmaker, and Frederic Gumy, a multimedia entrepreneur, who had known each other from their days in Switzerland, had plans to develop a production company in the US and went on to partner with Fitch, who was already an established visual artist and opera director in the US. Shortly after forming Giants Are Small in 2007, the trio entered into an agreement with the Los Angeles Philharmonic to present an adaptation of Peter and the Wolf at the Walt Disney Concert Hall.
Fitch's and Getaz' first collaboration, Igor Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale, was presented in 2005 at the Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, New York City. It was presented by the New York Philharmonic, directed by Doug Fitch and produced by Edouard Getaz. Working with filmmaker Kitao Sakurai, Fitch developed a toy theater employing hundreds of puppets, drawings and miniature landscapes – a low-tech, hand-made little world enhanced with digital imagery created by Kasumi. Valeria Madonia danced the part of the Princess. Her performance was pre-recorded and mixed into the miniature world of drawn characters. F. Murray Abraham was the narrator. Marian Seldes was the devil and actor Tim Blake Nelson was the Soldier. This was the first time live animation — a technique featuring the animation of miniature elements in front of a camera to create moving images that are projected on a large screen in real time in synch with the orchestra’s performance — was brought to an audience of close to 3,000 people per night.
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Wikipedia