Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/763341
www.postmagazine.com 28 POST DECEMBER 2016 FANTASTIC BEASTS fast techniques for knocking shots out with pretty good animation that tells stories. And, we could put creatures into previs shots." Because creature design and animation studies had begun early in preproduction, when it came time for the shoot, people on the crew knew what the creatures looked like and how they moved. It also meant that actor Eddie Redmayne, who plays Newt, had something more than a ball on a stick to look at when he needed to act with a creature. The crew created maquettes and pup- pets based on the preproduction designs for each creature that would have significant interaction with the actors. "We created a series of a half-dozen or so creatures, from small maquettes and puppets to one 17-by-20-foot puppet operated by four pup- peteers led by Robin [Guiver, supervising crea- ture puppeteer]," Burke explains. "We brought in people who had worked on the 'War Horse' stage play. The characters we had already created drove their performances. We gave [the puppeteers] our previs and animation studies, and they learned how the creatures would move. And, we'd all come up with ideas. Robin worked closely with Pablo [Grillo], David [Yates] and Eddie [Redmayne]. Pablo would be on set talking to Eddie. We would do a rehearsal with the puppets and get the eye- lines working. Then, we'd shoot, see what worked, choose a take, and then shoot clean plates after. It was quite collaborative." That kind of sophisticated interactive work with the actors on set moved into other areas, as well. Rather than working with locked cuts, the visual effects artists took sequences from the editor and blocked out creatures using previs and the perfor- mances on-set. "We were almost giving the director dailies," Burke says. "Because we were involved early in the process, we could have cuts with characters in the plates. It really sped up the process and was some- thing we could not have done five years ago." ON SET Although the film takes place in various New York City neighborhoods, 99 percent of the filming happened at Warner Bros.' Leavesden Studios on a nine-acre backlot set. "We had Fifth Avenue-type of streets, Tribeca, a brownstone area, a tenement area and each of those was re-dressed to become different areas of different streets within the film," Manz says. "We had a map of where each scene would be in the story." Visual effects artists topped the on-set build- ings, created new buildings, extended the sets, and added traffic, pedestrians and atmospheric effects. During filming, the production crew would cover some of the buildings on-set with greenscreen so they could repeatedly re-use the sets. "It was a cunning collaboration between the art department and visual effects switching green- screens up and down the street," Burke says. "We must have done 20 variations of the streets to give them a wide scope. We re-created Times Square for a third-act sequence, using the buildings covered with greenscreen in one of the existing T-junctions. And, we had dozens of other sets to replace green- screens outside windows." During preproduction, the Soho crew built a digi- tal version of the stage set from the drawings. "As the set was being built, we could look at the orientation of the sun and the layout of the streets with the director of photography," Manz says. "We could work out which areas would be shadowed and where we'd need to have a building that wouldn't be in the set. It was very collaborative. That became the plan we handed to people who created the set extensions." To build and texture those set extensions later, a crew spent nearly three months surveying and photographing areas of New York selected by Craig. In addition to the main neighborhoods, visual effects artists in various studios also created Central Park, extended a small Central Park Zoo set and constructed a Macusa building to house the Magical Congress of the USA. "There was a massive set on the soundstage, with two stories of the 54-story building," Manz says. "Rodeo VFX did the full-CG shots, including a transition walk-in from the street outside." MPC artists created digital set extensions, water, boats, cars and pedestrians for an "arrival in New York" sequence, adding blinds to the windows, clothes hanging on the digital rooftops and plumes of CG smoke from the coal heating everywhere. "We wanted to have unexpected shots, so we used a lot of research," Manz says. "We found a Harold Lloyd film from 1928 that showed the hustle and bustle at the time. There were a lot of cars but no traffic lights and no rules." But, one of the most complicated environments was hidden inside Newt's magical case. Inside the case, micro-environments contained creatures in their habitats. Working with Craig, art director Toby Brittain, and director Yates, concept artists on the visual effects team helped work out which areas would be practical and which would be CG. All of the creatures have different characteristics — fur, hair and hide. About 99 percent of the film was done at Warner Bros. Leavesden Studios.