Narnia Fans » Ben Wootten

Now that you’ve seen the wondrous creatures in The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, it’s time to meet Ben Wootten of New Zealand’s award-winning Weta Workshop.

Concentrating on creature, armor and weapon design, Ben has been working in the New Zealand film and television industry since 1996, and played a major part as art director for Weta in realizing the now immortalized dwellers of Narnia.

Disney Movie Rewards: How did you meet the challenge of bringing to life creatures steeped in mythology?

Ben Wootten: The first thing we did was look at creatures like centaurs, mermaids, and unicorns, and decide whether to take a new direction and try to create a centaur like no one has ever seen before, or stick with the tried-and-true image and make them different in another way. Instead of surprising the audience, we felt they should say, “That’s a beautiful centaur.” Our spin was in the way the creatures behaved and creating a culture that surrounds them.

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The panel featured Howard Berger (the B of KNB EFX), Dean Wright (visual effects designer), Richard Taylor and Ben Wootten (Weta peeps) live and in person and later featured director Andrew Adamson and all four of the kids from the movie via satellite. They were in London doing ADR (Addition Dialog Recording) for the film, but took the time to sit in on the panel discussion. The over-lapping discussion and odd flow of the panel thanks to the 10 second delay was classic.

-It was revealed that at one point the studio wanted to adapt THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE, but set it modern day… in LA… just after the Earthquake. They wanted to replace Turkish Delight with Hot Dogs. Thank God that didn’t happen.

-There are about 1300 VFX shots left to finish before the December 9th release date.

-The director thought having Tilda Swinton as the White Witch would bring a certain sophistication to her evil, a good counter to Aslan’s sophisticated good. They’re really pleased with her.

-Andrew Adamson was asked about the voice of Aslan… and he announced/confirmed what “some internet sites have already guessed.” Liam Neeson is the voice of Aslan. He has recorded and they were blown away by his performance.

-They were all asked about the religious aspect of CS Lewis’ story. Adamson commented… He’s making a film that tries to capture his memory of reading it as a kid, not necessarily his critique of it as an adult. He said that some people read it and come away with a good deal of spiritual values, yet others read it and see it as just a grand adventure.

He’s being very faithful to that original material, so if you walked away from the book with a sense of spiritual fulfillment, then you’ll walk away from the movie with that. If you walked away from the book having had a great adventure, then that’s what you’ll walk away with from the movie, he claimed. I like that stance, myself. I’m not Christian, but the parallels in the story doesn’t turn me off of the inherent classic quality of the drama.

CLIPS:

They showed a new “storypod,” a series of behind the scenes documentaries that show on the Narnia website as well as a montage from the flick.

The Storypod didn’t have much interesting in it, besides a look at Jim Broadbent as Professor Digory. He had a bit of a crazy white beard… a little Col. Sanders inspired, but more full.

The montage clip is where it’s at. My criticism of the trailer and poster is that the film didn’t seem to have it’s own identity, but the look and tone of other fantasy films. I want the movie to be as great is the material promises it could be, so I keep looking for something to grasp onto. Today I saw some footage that gave me more hope for a stand out flick.

In the clip we see the kids having tea with Mr. and Mrs. Beaver. The beavers were completely CG and not totally photorealistic, but a lot less cartoony than I was expecting them to be. The effects are done on them, either, so I don’t have any worries when it comes to these guys. They tell the kids of the prophecy of the 4 sons of Adam and daughters of Eve taking over Narnia and that the White Witch will stop them at all costs because if the prophecy is fulfilled then she will lose her power.

The sequence show that really got my juices cooking was a bit about 40 seconds long that had Aslan walking through the creatures of the black up to the stone table. Those who have read the book know where this is headed. A bat-like creature taunts him as he nears the steps leading up to the stone table. He doesn’t growl or roar at it, but his stare stops the taunt and sends the creature retreating.

The look on Aslan’s face is 90% sadness and 10% humiliation. It was heartbreaking.

I’m hoping for the best with this one. It looks like they’re really nailing Aslan and his role in the story. That’s half their battle right there. I gots my fingers crossed for this one.

The amazing array of movie presentations at Comic-Con International in San Diego wrapped-up with some very special surprises and announcements during the panel for Walt Disney Pictures’ The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, based on the series of books from C.S. Lewis. Those who decided to skip out on the convention after Saturday’s full day certainly missed out on a great preview of what to expect from the film.

After showing the recent trailer, the film’s executive producer Perry Moore came out to tell the rapt audience why he was so excited to finally be able to make a movie that was true to the books he loved as a child. He then introduced the panel’s very special surprise guest, live via satellite from London, director Andrew Adamson and producer Mark Johnson, who were working with the actors who play the children to do looping and ADR work on the film. “You know, this delay thing really sucks,” Adamson said after a bunch of bizarre crosstalk during the panel.

Moore was then joined on stage by make up effects supervisor Howard Berger from K.N.B. and Weta Workshop’s Richard Taylor and Ben Wootten, who designed and created all of the creatures from the film, as well as visual effects supervisor Dean Wright, who dealt with assembling all the computer-generated and practical effects for the film. Taylor, a two-time Oscar winner for his work on “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, was received warmly by his many fans in the audience, who he had made from his previous Comic-Con appearances for those films.

Richard and Ben talked about the design of the creatures, while showing slides of paintings, concept sketches and maquettes of some of the creatures, including the satyrs, a sprite, centaurs, a maugrim and a mermaid, as well as a few pictures of Aslan and Ron Perlman as a minotaur. They also showed some of the detail of the armor, shields and swords wielded by the four Pevensie children.

After each of the specialists talked a bit about their involvement with bringing Narnia to life, Adamson announced that he had his own surprise guests and the camera panned over to the four young actors that play the Pevensie kids, the heroes of “Narnia”: William Moseley (Peter), Anna Popplewell (Susan), Skandar Keynes (Edmund) and Georgie Henley (Lucy).

Adamson closed the panel by making it official that actor Liam Neeson will indeed be providing the voice for the lion king Aslan and that his parts have already been recorded.