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e d i t i o n 4 , 2 0 1 8 | c g w 2 1 "She's a big Harry Potter character, so we knew we had a lot of responsibility in bringing her back to life and making her look better than before," Manz says. "We did two things. We didn't want to use cuts – we wanted to show what would actually happen. And, we wanted the idea of Nagini being consumed by the snake." The idea was that she would wrap her arms around herself and coil herself into a python. As they considered what that might look like and how they would create the ef- fect, their thoughts turned to contortionists. "The costume department designed a snakeskin dress that would work nicely," Manz says. "We did motion-control passes of a contortionist and of Claudia Kim, the actor." To help animators and lighting artists who would create the effect in postproduction, the filmmakers brought in a reticulated python that was on set for lighting reference, scanning, and video reference. "I'm terrified of snakes," Manz says. "When they brought in the python, I locked myself in the car. Fortunately, I had a really good team of people there." Artists at Framestore created a digital double for Kim, a digital snake, and the tran- sitions between in postproduction. "It was only one shot, but it was a massive amount of work," Manz says. The sequence inside the circus tent ends with a fire and a chaotic escape scene. The camera travels inside and we see circus stuff inside folding up into itself. The circus ringmaster says, "Paris is done for us," waves his wand, and everything in the tent ends up as a smoking rag on the floor that he pops into his pocket. "We previs'd the scene, then created it using footage from steadicam moves on set," Manz says. "We joined that with dig- ital creatures blending through elements of people running. We had a full-digital version of the circus set and its contents. As we go inside the tent, it feels like every- thing is reducing in scale. We lose depth of field and things get smaller. We discovered a lot of that with Proof in postvis, and then Framestore made it look fantastic." Zouwu One of the creatures escaping the circus fire is the biggest hero creature in the film, Zouwu. To create Zouwu, the team refer- enced a fast-moving Chinese mytholog- ical creature, catlike with a long tail, the size of an elephant. "David [Yates] asked that we try to push the creatures, to create extraordinary beasts," Burke says. "We had crazy, out- there designs for Zouwu. He was lizard-like but with the body of a large tiger. His tail is as long as his body. Our animators gave him an almost serpentine lizard-like movement that took it away from the cat. But, he still has the facial features of a cat. We gave it bulging, expressive eyes and based the facial performance on Chinese dragons. David loved it." In Paris, Zouwu runs amok, crashing into buildings and cars as Newt chases him. He catches him on a bridge over the river Seine using a little toy on the end of a stick that mesmerizes the creature, much like a house cat becoming fascinated by a toy on a string. On set, puppeteers performed a full-sized, lightweight mock-up to give Redmayne something to interact with. Once Newt captures Zouwu, he puts the creature into his suitcase, unlocks Zouwu's shackles, restores the creature's power, and the two beings bond. On the Move As is typical in Harry Potter and now the Fantastic Beasts films, the action moves from one spectacular setting to another. In addition to new locations in this film, the characters visit several locations familiar to Harry Potter fans. "Framestore re-created the great hall at Hogwarts with all the candles," Manz points out. "It was a huge digital build. With only one shot there, there was no appetite to rebuild the set, so we scanned the set on the Warner Bros. tour and used that to re-create the hall digitally, referencing the DIGITAL DOUBLES OCCUPY CG BUBBLES OUTSIDE A CIRCUS TENT. SCANNING HELPED ARTISTS CREATE A DIGITAL PARIS.