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e d i t i o n 4 , 2 0 1 8 | c g w 1 9 he year is 1926. Newt Sca- mander, a self-proclaimed magizoologist, has returned to London aer helping stop the dark wizard Grindelwald's violent attack in New York City. But, the wizard is not so easily stopped, and Newt is about to face a new challenge. Grindelwald has escaped his confinement and is gathering followers. His goal is to have wizards and witches rule over all non-magical beings. Professor Dumbledore, headmaster of the wizarding school Hogwarts, asks Newt to thwart Grindelwald's plans. Warner Bros.' Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is the 10 th film in the wizarding series that began in 2001 with Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (aka The Sorcerer's Stone in the US). It is the second film in the subsequent Fan- tastic Beasts series, which in the wizarding world, takes place before that first Harry Potter book and film. Eddie Redmayne stars as Newt Sca- mander. Katherine Waterston is Tina Goldstein, a law-enforcement auror who hunts dark wizards. Ezra Miller is Cre- dence Barebone, a disturbed child who apparently now has complete control over his Obscurus, a dark parasite that, when unleashed, can wreak havoc. Zoë Kravitz is Leta Lestrange, a confused young woman who Newt once loved. Claudia Kim is Nag- ini, who can transform into a snake and is well known in the Potter series as the companion of Lord Voldemort. Jude Law is Albus Dumbledore, the influential and powerful British wizard. And, Johnny Depp is the villain Grindelwald, as he was in the previous film, the 2016 Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Many of the filmmakers have worked on the previous Fantastic Beasts and Harry Potter films. David Yates, who directed the final four Harry Potter films and the previous Fantastic Beasts film, directed The Crimes of Grindelwald. J.K. Rowling, who wrote the Harry Potter series, wrote the screenplay. Tim Burke, who has been a visual effects supervisor on all Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts features except the first Harry Potter, and overall supervisor on all but the second, was visual effects supervisor for this movie along with Chris- tian Manz, creative director at Framestore. Manz had also supervised effects on Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and supervised effects at Framestore on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1. Stuart Craig, who has been production designer on all the films, returned for The Crimes of Grindelwald. "One of the interesting things about this film compared to the previous films has less to do with technology and more to do with our creative involvement in the process," Burke says. "We've had some [early partic- ipation] on each film, but on this one, the visual effects department had even more so. There are between 40 and 50 designed creatures in this film. We'd work with simple descriptions in the script for creatures we had to design. And, we had action sequenc- es that were briefly, minimally described. We were involved in the creative storytelling and the development of the story. It was very collaborative between David [Yates], J.K. [Rowling], Christian, and me. They were open to suggestions on how to develop a sequence." Five studios did the bulk of the visual effects work: Framestore, Double Negative, Method, Rodeo FX, and Image Engine. Burke and Manz split the action, with Manz largely handling the action sequences and Burke supervising those with CG characters. Art- ists from Nvizage, Proof, and The Third Floor previs'd and postvis'd the film, which had 2,500 visual effects shots. "We had a 40- to 50-person team work- ing on previs and postvis in the studio with me and Tim," Manz says. "It was a creative process. Like the first film, we wanted to let vendors do real work, not temps. We wanted to make the shots work [in previs and postvis] before they spent time and money doing it all properly in postproduction. By the time the vendors got going, they had a solid base to start from." Unlike the Harry Potter films, the Fantastic Beast stories take place in the real world for the most part – New York City in the last film; New York, London, and Paris, plus Hog- warts, in this film. The feature opens with Grindelwald's escape in New York. Escape from New York Grindelwald escapes his confinement one rainy night with help from Abernathy (Kevin Guthrie), a former MACUSA supervisor. They shoot out from a building in a black aerial carriage pulled by thestrals, huge, black, winged horses with faces like dragons and skeletal bodies visible only to people who have witnessed death. Broom riders traveling alongside escort the carriage out of New York airspace. Everything except the actors in the carriage is CG; the broom riders are digital doubles. To build the New York City beneath, the crew used assets from the previous film, referencing images of New York at night in the rain. The Third Floor previs'd the sequence. "We didn't do any motion-control moves or anything that looked too controlled," Manz says. "We shot free-form. We wanted it to feel real. So, we had a camera on a gim- bal motion base and a rig based on a float- ing chair used on the first film that's driven by the weight of the actor. We did a lot of work with effects rain – [we] hosed Johnny [Depp] and Kevin [Guthrie] down and blew them with wind. We had a physical carriage on set but we replaced it with CG." During the escape sequence, we realize that Abernathy and Grindelwald have T Images ©2018 Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc.