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www.postmagazine.com 27 POST DECEMBER 2016 FANTASTIC BEASTS I t has been five years since the final Harry Potter feature film, The Deathly Hallows Part 2, stormed into theaters. Based on the last book in the wildly popular series, the film earned $1.3 billion at the box office and received three Oscar nominations, including one for best visual effects. But, author JK Rowling had published another book about magical worlds, one that takes place 70 years before Harry Potter learned he was a wizard. Suppos- edly compiled by Magizoologist Newt Scamander, the compendium of information about magical characters published in 2001 was, Rowling led us to believe, Harry Potter's textbook. That book had no story. For the current Warner Bros. release, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Rowling provided a screenplay inspired by the textbook, her first screenplay. David Yates, who had directed four Harry Potter films, took on this year's Fantastic Beasts. Stuart Craig, who was production designer on all eight Harry Potter films, also joined the Fantastic Beasts team, as did Tim Burke, overall visual effects supervisor for six of the eight Potter films and VFX supervisor at Mill Film for a seventh. For Fantastic Beasts, Burke shared the overall su- pervisory role with Christian Manz, also a Harry Potter alum, having led Framestore's work on three films in the series. It's no exaggeration to say that the eight Harry Potter films helped build the visual effects industry in London, and that you can trace the evolution of visual effects in the decade from 2001 to 2011 through the series. That evolution has taken a giant leap since, as work on this film shows. With a story centered on mag- ical creatures, it's no surprise that the film has more creature work than the Potter films. "The Harry Potter films were driven by the school," Burke says. "This story is driven by Newt and his fantas- tic beasts. So, we have a lot more creature animation." There are also more digital sets. "And, while Harry Potter was generally based at Hogwarts," Burke continues, "we are in New York in 1926, with half the film set outside." But the changes in the production process are most dramatic. "Visual effects is seen more as an intrinsic part of the storytelling process than it was five years ago," Manz says. "We were collaborating from the beginning on this film, all the way through. It's a more efficient way to work and much more creative for the visual effects art- ists, as well. Everyone looks to us now more for answers than for fixing something later." ORGANIZING THE WORK Preproduction, which included previs, extended for approximately eight months, followed by five months of production and eight months of post production. Eleven studios contributed visual ef- fects to the show. "The main vendors were Double Negative and Framestore," Burke says. "Framestore was involved early on with character development. Senior animation supervisor Pablo Grillo came on during preproduction to do creature animation develop- ment, previs and, later, some postvis, with a view of his taking on some hero creatures. We used Double Negative for environment work, for the major city builds and construction; also some creature work that was set-driven, and effects type of work." Beyond that, the work was split primarily by sequence. "Generally, the creatures and environments didn't cross-sequence very much," Manz says. "We tended to have one action sequence with one creature in a particular location in New York. But, even though a lot of locations, creatures and effects might appear in only one or two shots, they had to look as good as everything else. The breadth was stunning." Along with Framestore and DNeg, Rodeo in Montreal did a sizable chunk of environment work and a large number of creatures. MPC created the hero creatures Occamy and Demiguise, and handled the environments for an arrival in New York sequence. Image Engine in Vancouver created additional creatures as well as effects. Milk in the UK added background magic, such as moving statues and origami, to scenes set in the Ministry of Magic. Cinesite in the UK sent silverware, napkins and dinnerware flying for a magical scene and extended sets digitally. Passion Pictures created 2D animation for a book. The Secret Labs also contributed to the film, as did Lola. In addition, an in-house facility with 50 art- ists, some from The Third Floor, Proof, DNeg and Framestore, and some freelance did previs, charac- ter design, postvis, compositing and more. "That's the main difference between the Potter films and this film," Burke says. "On the Potter films, there would be previs, the editor would cut, the director would turn over shots to the visual effects facility, they would block out animation and give it back to us, and so forth. We were always involved, but it was a very linear process. On this film, we started early in preproduction. We hired a premises in Soho [London], brought in crews with their own kits, put in hardware and servers, and we basically built a facility in a week. We could generate shots with fast turnaround. It shows what can happen in five years." PREPRODUCTION CREATURES With a brief from director Yates, the concept artists from Framestore and freelance artists on the Soho- based team began designing magical creatures based on descriptions in the book, and invented other background characters. "The creature design was within our department, not the art department," Manz says. "We ended up with a couple hundred creature designs, with many iterations of each. Pickett alone had 200 concepts." Pickett is Newt Scamander's personal Bowtruckle, a magical creature that Manz describes as a little green stickman made of shoots. "As we were designing Pickett, we had Pablo [Grillo] and his animation team, modelers, riggers and texture artists build simple versions of this char- acter and others," Manz says. "We built a menagerie and tested the creatures with animation. The ani- mators would get a creature moving to see whether it would work as a character and to show to David [Yates]. If the design wasn't right, we'd move it back. Our aim was to hand facilities something that was somewhat worked out already for them to flesh out and bring to life." At the same time, artists were working out the action sequences with a similar goal — that their work could move on to postvis and become fin- ished shots. "Software has gotten more powerful, so artists can work quicker," Manz says. "But the key was having a talented group of artists. They were really creative." Adds Burke, "Previs has developed so much with companies like The Third Floor and Proof. They have Eddie Redmayne as Newt Scamander encounters a fantastic beast, this one being a Thunderbird.