Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/763341
www.postmagazine.com 29 POST DECEMBER 2016 FANTASTIC BEASTS "They designed areas that look like museum dioramas, but they are moving paintings like in Harry Potter's world," Burke says. "DNeg, Rodeo, Image Engine, Framestore and Method each worked on one scene inside the case. It was a massive undertaking." Even though many action sequences in the film took place in a particular location with one creature, as with the shots inside Newt's case, some were more complicated. "I had some shots with four or five companies," Manz says. "In one, for example, a flying creature that MPC created is eaten by a creature Rodeo made, that's eaten by a creature Image Engine made, in a digital environment from Method. It was one of the last things we shot. There were lots of creatures; we tried out lots of ideas. I stood on-set and it was like watching a play come together." CREATURES AND GOBLINS The main creatures in the film are Niffler and Erumpent animated at Framestore, Occamy and Demiguise animated at MPC, and Pickett the Bowtruckle. "All these creatures have different characteristics — hide, fur, hair," Burke says. "But, the problems we had weren't technical," Manz adds. "We had the right problems, the cre- ative problems. How do the creatures act? How do they behave?" Manz points to the goblin Gnarlack, the lead gangster goblin performed by Ron Perlman as an example. "In the Harry Potter films, the goblins were actors wearing makeup," Manz says. "For this film, they wanted a digital character. So we invested a lot of time in capturing Perlman's performance. We did a facial-capture session with him and really pushed the boundaries so Framestore could concentrate on making him real, not on making the performance." Gnarlack is not the only goblin in the film. Manz, who had supervised the work on Dobby while at Framestore for The Deathly Hallows, Part One, notes that one goblin even appears in only two shots. "Five years ago, we wouldn't have invested the time and money into creating a goblin for two shots," Manz says. "For this film, we wanted to elevate the goblins. The audience is so sophisticated now. They expect to see muscles moving under the skin, all those things we can do well now. We even have a five-minute scene with a CG goblin talking to an actor." CONSTRUCT, DECONSTRUCT, CONSTRUCT As is typical in action/adventure films, visual ef- fects artists build sets and creatures, and then the creatures destroy the sets. One such creature in Fantastic Beasts, the Obscurus — more energy than character — is a good example. "Double Negative did a lot of work to determine how it looks," Burke says. "It doesn't have one form. It takes different forms. It's an invisible force, so they created a membrane type of thing. It isn't a creature with a head, but sometimes you see the host within it." In the third act, this creature causes destruction throughout New York. "DNeg London worked above-ground, and DNeg Vancouver did subterranean work and destruction," Burke points out. "We used [Side Effects Software's] Houdini to animate shapes and drive simulations for all the destruction. We tore up New York." "And, we didn't just destroy it, we fixed it as well," Manz says. "We have pieces flying back into the right place. That was the sort of stuff for which we shot a lot of elements. But none of it was used. It was more flexible to do it with CG." Flexibility to use CG was, in a way, a theme for the making of this film, starting with the beginning. The flexibility to incorporate CG at the start helped the entire process. "Creature design always serves a purpose," Burke says. "Before, on Potter, we'd scan a ma- quette and try to fix the creature in post. But now, because we were creating it and animating it, we knew what it was. All the creatures had character. That helped everyone. It helped Eddie [Redmayne]. It helped the director." And as for the environment and sets, on Potter, the actors were originally always in a four-walled set. "But on the fourth, and certainly by the fifth, Stuart [Craig] started opening up the space. Digital set extensions let his imagination run free," Burke continues. "He knows we can create photographic set extensions. He embraces this process." It has been more than 20 years since Jurassic Park's digital dinosaurs made movie history by convincing filmmakers that CG characters could be real and practical. Now, finally, filmmakers are giving the creature creators an earlier voice in the process. Director Yates has reportedly signed on for four sequels. It will be fascinating to see how the process evolves as the Fantastic Beasts franchise unfolds. The result can only be fantastic. Barbara Robertson (barbararr@comcast.net) is an award-winning writer and a contributing editor for Computer Graphics World. Pickett is Newt Scamander's personal Bowtruckle. Framestore artists worked with freelancers to design magical creatures, based on book descriptions.