"PC" to include varied creatures
Caspian Mixes Up New Creatures
Howard Berger, who supervised the creatures for the upcoming fantasy sequel The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, told SCI FI Wire that he wanted to feature a more diverse variety among the Narnians in the new film than that seen in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
"There's all different looks," Berger said in an interview on the set in Prague in June. "We've got female dwarves, male dwarves, old and young. It's really fun to mix it up."
Under the supervision of director Andrew Adamson, Berger and his team designed creatures of varying ages and coloring in order to give the background crowds a more interesting look in some scenes. There will also be a range of physical types among the actors hired to play the creatures, he said.
"We wanted to have old-age fawns ... and heavyset characters and black centaurs," he said. "One of the guys designed an old-age fawn that I really liked, and it looked like David Niven. So right now we're trying to find an extra or an actor who has kind of a very slender, older body. But he looks just like David Niven, so I really like that. Then we hopefully have a big heavyset fawn who's kind of John Goodman-ish. So we kind of designed stuff around that. And then we have a really old, old centaur that we're going to do as well that's kind of like Little Big Man centaur. There are kid centaurs, too."
In the same interview, visual-effects supervisor Dean Wright said that Berger's concept was a "great idea, but it causes a bit of work for us." Wright's department is responsible for digitally duplicating the creatures in post-production to increase their numbers in certain scenes.
"He wanted to bring more variety to the characters that we had, in terms of ages and sexes," Wright said. "The whole point [was] to add more of a variety to work with the characters. Which, again, we will have to build into our digital characters."
Berger and Wright worked together closely to achieve Adamson's vision of blurring the lines between real and digital images. Another improvement on the technology used in the previous film will be adding a human reference for the character of Aslan the lion, who will be played on set by Shane Rangi.
"Andrew wanted to make the challenge of breaking the CG-real barrier here and make us intermingle more," Wright said. "We have much more contact between the real players and the CG characters. We've got Lucy, who not only reaches out and touches Aslan, they hug and fall to the ground and she rolls on top of him. We've got the kids being carried by griffins and riding on griffins, and we've got kids riding on centaurs sometimes. It's a big challenge for us to make all that work and look real."
Rangi said in a separate interview that his performance on the set will be captured to make Aslan much more lifelike when he interacts with the other characters.
"Aslan in the first one was a big sculpt, or they just had the head and shot it and did the rest in visual effects," Rangi said. "I pretty much have the front feet, the mane and the head. The main reason we're playing physical this time is that Lucy interacts with him. And from a digital point of view, it's hard for them to re-create hair around when she hugs him and stuff like that. So basically, I'm just there for visual effects."
In addition to Aslan, Rangi will play a number of creatures in the film, including a werewolf, a bulgy bear and a new minotaur character called Asterius, who didn't appear in the original book by C.S. Lewis.
"Andrew wrote in more minotaurs," Berger said. "They were really popular in the first film, and I was sad they were bad and might not come back. Then Andrew called and said were going to throw some minotaurs in, especially this one, Asterius, which is the lead minotaur. It was really cool, because I wanted to do an old-age minotaur, so Andrew was up for it and I designed it."
Berger added that throughout the filming, the primary concern among the filmmakers was reali
sm. "The movie doesn't stop and hit the viewer on the head and you go, 'Hey, look, there's an effect, there's a makeup effect, there's a digital effect,'" he said. "You didn't get that in the first film. ... And I'm sure this one will be the same thing." The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian opens May 16, 2008. —Cindy White
Howard Berger, who supervised the creatures for the upcoming fantasy sequel The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, told SCI FI Wire that he wanted to feature a more diverse variety among the Narnians in the new film than that seen in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
"There's all different looks," Berger said in an interview on the set in Prague in June. "We've got female dwarves, male dwarves, old and young. It's really fun to mix it up."
Under the supervision of director Andrew Adamson, Berger and his team designed creatures of varying ages and coloring in order to give the background crowds a more interesting look in some scenes. There will also be a range of physical types among the actors hired to play the creatures, he said.
"We wanted to have old-age fawns ... and heavyset characters and black centaurs," he said. "One of the guys designed an old-age fawn that I really liked, and it looked like David Niven. So right now we're trying to find an extra or an actor who has kind of a very slender, older body. But he looks just like David Niven, so I really like that. Then we hopefully have a big heavyset fawn who's kind of John Goodman-ish. So we kind of designed stuff around that. And then we have a really old, old centaur that we're going to do as well that's kind of like Little Big Man centaur. There are kid centaurs, too."
In the same interview, visual-effects supervisor Dean Wright said that Berger's concept was a "great idea, but it causes a bit of work for us." Wright's department is responsible for digitally duplicating the creatures in post-production to increase their numbers in certain scenes.
"He wanted to bring more variety to the characters that we had, in terms of ages and sexes," Wright said. "The whole point [was] to add more of a variety to work with the characters. Which, again, we will have to build into our digital characters."
Berger and Wright worked together closely to achieve Adamson's vision of blurring the lines between real and digital images. Another improvement on the technology used in the previous film will be adding a human reference for the character of Aslan the lion, who will be played on set by Shane Rangi.
"Andrew wanted to make the challenge of breaking the CG-real barrier here and make us intermingle more," Wright said. "We have much more contact between the real players and the CG characters. We've got Lucy, who not only reaches out and touches Aslan, they hug and fall to the ground and she rolls on top of him. We've got the kids being carried by griffins and riding on griffins, and we've got kids riding on centaurs sometimes. It's a big challenge for us to make all that work and look real."
Rangi said in a separate interview that his performance on the set will be captured to make Aslan much more lifelike when he interacts with the other characters.
"Aslan in the first one was a big sculpt, or they just had the head and shot it and did the rest in visual effects," Rangi said. "I pretty much have the front feet, the mane and the head. The main reason we're playing physical this time is that Lucy interacts with him. And from a digital point of view, it's hard for them to re-create hair around when she hugs him and stuff like that. So basically, I'm just there for visual effects."
In addition to Aslan, Rangi will play a number of creatures in the film, including a werewolf, a bulgy bear and a new minotaur character called Asterius, who didn't appear in the original book by C.S. Lewis.
"Andrew wrote in more minotaurs," Berger said. "They were really popular in the first film, and I was sad they were bad and might not come back. Then Andrew called and said were going to throw some minotaurs in, especially this one, Asterius, which is the lead minotaur. It was really cool, because I wanted to do an old-age minotaur, so Andrew was up for it and I designed it."
Berger added that throughout the filming, the primary concern among the filmmakers was reali
sm. "The movie doesn't stop and hit the viewer on the head and you go, 'Hey, look, there's an effect, there's a makeup effect, there's a digital effect,'" he said. "You didn't get that in the first film. ... And I'm sure this one will be the same thing." The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian opens May 16, 2008. —Cindy White
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