Narnia Fans Spy Andrew got the chance to visit the Dawn Treader at WB Movie World, and sent us, not only a group of 42 photos, but also a video slide show on youtube! The amount of detail in the ship is incredible. (We all know, but I can verify that.) Take a look at the pictures, and if you want to see gigantic versions of them, we have a link to the flickr account where he’s hosting them at the end of this post.
It was as though I pushed past the overcoats at the back of the wardrobe and wandered into another strange, wonderful world.
Yesterday, I was given a tour of the set of the latest Narnia film, “Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader.”
I wasn’t allowed to take photos of the set (you’ll have to wait for the movie to come to cinemas at the end of 2010) but I can describe some of what I saw. It was very impressive. Read the rest of this entry »
Australia’s Channel 9 visited the set of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and someone posted the video of the news report. They write:
A report from Channel 9’s Gold Coast News on the filming of the latest “Narnia” film underway at Warner’s Studios in Australia.
Of course.. it took a politician, in this case, Queensland Premier Anna Bligh to bring the TV News Crews in but they should’ve come anyway as this is a major production with some amazing and expensive sets.
Animated Views’ Jeremie Noyer e-mailed us to tell us that his newest Caspian article is online: a second interview with art director Frank Walsh, on the Final Battle, with exclusive pictures and blueprints. Here’s the summary from the top of the article, followed by a link to the rest!
You may remember that, in our first interview with Prince Caspian Art Director Frank Walsh, there were some memories of his experience on set that he wanted to save for another time.
Now, that time has come to share with you all these amazing behind-the-scenes stories that make us realize today’s animation is not only about making animated features and shorts, but also that the present and the future of this art is in its co-operation with all the exciting disciplines at work in filmmaking. Frank Walsh’s position in the process, at its core, made him the perfect expert to tell us about that, and he has several stories to share with us!
So, let’s begin with some aspects that may be taken for granted on screen, but that prove to be highly characteristic of state-of-the-art visual effects filmmaking: the Telmarines’ weapons in Prince Caspian’s final battle. As you shall see, there’s more than meets the eye!
Mark Johnson wasn’t what I expected. And neither was Narnia.
When I was first asked by Disney if I wanted to visit the Prague locations for PRINCE CASPIAN, the second film in their Narnia franchise, I wasn’t sure. This was August of last year. I was in the middle of a number of things. But what made my mind up was a conversation I’d had with Howard Berger on the night we wrapped PRO-LIFE. He was talking about what he wanted to do in the second NARNIA, and what he’d discussed with Andrew Adamson. And listening to him talk about it, it was obvious that Howard wanted to do something different on the second movie. That he was excited about it. I liked his work on the first one. It’s good stuff, and I don’t think anyone was surprised when they won best Make-Up at the Academy Awards. The mix of the practical and the digital is very canny, and just the chance to watch them shoot some of that… remembering how cool it sounded when Howard described it… I told Disney I’d do it.
Make Your Fantasy a Reality when you Win this Set Visit to “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader“! Winner will get dressed in full Make-up and Costume from the Movie for Photos with the Cast! 4-Nights Hotel Accommodation Included!
Parents – You can literally make your kid’s dreams come true with this “Chronicles of Narnia” Package!
The Winner will receive the following:
*Set visit during the production of “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” (Date and Place TBD – Although it will likely be filmed in Australia or New Zealand) (Up to 4 People will have access to Set)
*The opportunity for the Winner to be dressed in full make-up and costume from the movie for photos with the cast!
*Lunch with the cast and crew!
*Four nights hotel accommodation, ground transportation to/from the set (For up to 4 People)
Please see terms of auction
All incremental costs (airfare to location, etc.) are incurred by the winner.
Make Your Fantasy a Reality when you Win this Set Visit to “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader“! Winner will get dressed in full Make-up and Costume from the Movie for Photos with the Cast! 4-Nights Hotel Accommodation Included!
Parents – You can literally make your kid’s dreams come true with this “Chronicles of Narnia” Package!
The Winner will receive the following:
*Set visit during the production of “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” (Date and Place TBD – Although it will likely be filmed in Australia or New Zealand) (Up to 4 People will have access to Set)
*The opportunity for the Winner to be dressed in full make-up and costume from the movie for photos with the cast!
*Lunch with the cast and crew!
*Four nights hotel accommodation, ground transportation to/from the set (For up to 4 People)
Please see terms of auction
All incremental costs (airfare to location, etc.) are incurred by the winner.
A whole slew of Narnia and other film site journalists got the chance of a lifetime: to visit the set of Prince Caspian in Prague. If there was one set that I would have loved to see, it’s clearly The Dancing Lawn, the inspiration for the name of our forums.
Anyway, here we’ll start with our sister site NarniaWeb, where glumPuddle talks a bit about locations and sets.
Locations
I stepped out of the van and shook Ernie Malik’s hand. Ernie is the film’s publicist and is in the process of writing a behind-the-scenes book on the Prince Caspian film. He was our guide through Narnia, and also did a fantastic job arranging interviews with the cast and crew. We got our badges and then he started leading us to the first set. The other writers were talking, but I was looking around, hoping to see some sign of Narnia. For awhile, there was little to be seen but the outside of the soundstages, where I knew the sets must be. Then I caught a glimpse of a full-size lion sculpture. It’s funny looking back on that now, because it felt like a really big moment — but that was just the tip of the iceberg, of course.
We turned left, and I saw that Ernie was leading us to the soundstage where I had seen the artificial trees when we drove in. The moment had come at last. One of the Disney guys smiled and asked me, “Are you ready?” It was a valid question, to be honest. Was I really ready for this? I smiled back and said, “No, I’m not sure I am.” I took a deep breath. Ready or not, I stepped through the door (leaving it open behind me, of course)… and into Narnia…
THE DANCING LAWN (Stage 
My first thought (after getting over the initial shock, of course) was that the brown cliff on our right was the exterior of Aslan’s How. But I soon found I was mistaken. There were trees (real and fake) around it with a small clearing in the middle. Everything had a rather damp look. The space was surprisingly small for a forest, but a detailed painting of the background circled the set. I reached over and grabbed a small handful of dirt just to see if it was real (it was, as far as I could tell). The set was clearly under construction. Many of the trees needed work, and the concrete floor was still visible. The crew was in the process of converting the set from a different location in the story…
“This is called the Dancing Lawn,” Ernie said, and I quickly scratched out my first note that it was Aslan’s How. “This is where Caspian, Nikabrik, and some of the other Narnians are talking about how to mount an offensive against Miraz. This is a set that is being re-designed. We already shot a scene here where the four kids have saved Trumpkin, and then they gather around a campfire — probably the beginning of Chapter 4 of the book. And then, Trumpkin proceeds over the next four chapters to narrate what has happened to Narnia over the past 1300 years. The kids disappear, I mean when you read the book, the kids are basically just sitting there listening to the story. If we had adapted the book faithfully the way it is, it wouldn’t be that cinematic. It’s not a very cinematic story.
“They go into the woods and they have a campfire, and then Lucy wakes up and she thinks she hears a voice. And it’s Aslan calling from somewhere. And then she gets up. And we shoot part of that here, and then we cut to the location in New Zealand, and then cut to the location in Poland. So it’s basically three woods — one soundstage, two real areas — that will portray one area in the story.” When I heard that this memorable scene from the book would be in the film, I wanted to shout my joy to the world! It’s a good thing I brought a tape recorder because it was hard to concentrate on the rest of what Ernie said. That’s when I realized that I would have to just focus on getting the story now, and get emotional later.
“The woods that they found just a kilometer over the Czech border are unbelievable,” Ernie continued. “These rock formations are basically photographs and renditions of what really exists in eastern Czech Republic and western Poland. They’re surreal. It’s amazing how mother-nature sculpted these things. This location is pretty high up, easily one thousand feet above sea level where we shot in Poland, but at one point you have to ask yourself ‘was this underwater?’”
The advantage of an interior set is that the crew doesn’t have to worry about weather, and it is a much more controlled environment. “If you build something and make it work in an interior, you certainly try to do that,” Ernie said. “This whole area right here was all grass. And we water it, it’s living. It’s a living breathing forest. And when you create a forest, along with that come insects.”
STABLES (Stage 7)
Our next stop wasn’t far away. When I walked in, I was not able to guess where we were, because there was more construction going on here than in the Dancing Lawn. It was all wood that was still waiting to be painted, and I couldn’t guess what shape it would eventually be. Ernie told us that weeks before, a set called “The Great Hall” had been here.
“[The Great Hall] is where Miraz has his coronation and they put the crown on his head,” Ernie said. “There are 20 lords in the scene plus Miraz. Four of them have dialogue, the rest are just extras. The thrones that they manufactured for the scene are fabulous. It was all done by Kerrie Brown, our set decorator who was worked for Roger Ford for 15 years. They’ve done 11 movies together.”
Ernie then gave us a little summary of the rest of the shooting schedule: “We go back and forth. We’re out in northwest Czech Republic right now, we’re there all this week. We’re supposed to be back here shooting next Monday for the next three weeks. Then we go to Slovenia, that’s going to be the river-god sequence, which is a big climactic scene in the book. That bridge is being built. They’ve had to re-route the flow of a river to do that, with the approval of the Slovenian government. Then we go back to Usti and do the battle, and then we come back here and finish up. We finish sometime in August.”
“When we did the first movie,” Ernie continued, “We had eight soundstages in Auckland, New Zealand. Basically they were warehouses, sheds. So when it rains… that’s always good for sound (laughter). That could very well be why Tony Johnson got nominated for Sound Mixing on the first movie, because he managed to mix all of that stuff out. We shot that in winter, and winter in Auckland is rain.” On the first film, they didn’t do much exterior shooting. They had a few shots in real snow, the White Witch’s Camp, Aslan’s Camp, and the battle, but the rest of the film was mostly done on sound stages. “This is the opposite,” Ernie said. “We have one-third interior soundstages, two-thirds exteriors. And shooting exteriors, no matter where you are on the planet, means you have to deal with weather.”
Read the rest of this amazing report at NarniaWeb
And stay tuned to NarniaFans.com as we bring you coverage from all corners of the Narnia world.
NarniaFans Member QueenHelen, the winner of the Ultimate Narnia Fan Contest, has finally had her blog posted on Narnia.com!
She informed us on the forum: Disney has finally posted my written account of my trip on narnia.com (I’m still waiting on the video blog – think that will be closer to the release of the movie), so I can finally talk about my trip and answer questions.
KingFrank and I had a wonderful time in Prague and on the set of Prince Caspian. The call sheet for the day said “Visit from Ultimate Narnia Fan….and husband”. KingFrank got to follow me around and carry my stuff – I really did feel like royalty!
Talk with her about her experiences in this thread on the forum!
A whole slew of Narnia and other film site journalists got the chance of a lifetime: to visit the set of Prince Caspian in Prague. It’s cool, I’ve got my passport ready for the next one.
Anyway, here we’ll start with our sister site NarniaWeb, where glumPuddle talks a bit about creatures and visual effects, and has an interview with our good friend Shane Rangi.
Creatures on Set
Our first stop on the second day was the Aslan’s How exterior in Ústí, where we spent most of the day watching the crew film a shot where Peter and Edmund emerge from Aslan’s How. The dirt road leading to the location was lined with several trailers that had their doors wide open. Each trailer seemed to have a different purpose. One of them was full of weapons, and I saw someone putting the finishing touches on a sword. Another trailer was full of costumes, and a few more had actors getting their creature makeup on. I even saw a large group of stuntmen rehearsing a sequence from the battle. Like everything else, Adamson wants the battle to be even bigger and more complex than in the first film. Dean Wright later told us, “The goal [of the Narnians] is to sort of keep [the Telmarines] at bay, kind of hold them off till Aslan can come and help.”
It was here that I got my first glimpse of one of the biggest improvements from the first film that I saw: the dwarfs. It was just like Berger said when we interviewed him: they look like real dwarfs instead of just little people. They look quite believable and I could imagine them being able to fight well in a battle. One difference I noticed is that the ones I saw had mustaches. In the first film, Ginarrbrik had a beard but no mustache.
As William Moseley (Peter) and Skandar Keynes (Edmund) emerged from Aslan’s How, the creatures on either side began cheering. The crowd contained fauns, dwarfs, centaurs, satyrs, and yes… minotaurs (there are no minotaurs in the book). I was told that the minotaur actors are a big concern on set because they can’t keep their heads on for long in the heat. Many of the actors had to wear green pants with red dots taped on. The dots are used to track the motion of the actor’s legs so that the animators can match it to the movement of the computer-generated legs. I noticed that the creatures were wearing very little armor. Kimberly Adams (Associate Costume Designer) explained that Adamson didn’t want creatures wearing clothing in this film.
“Suck your paws!”
Of course, I smiled from ear to ear when Shane Rangi walked onto set in a bear suit, because the Bulgy Bear is a funny and memorable character in the book. In the film, he will be 100% computer-generated. Shane’s main purpose is to give the animators physical on-set reference. But I think having a real actor on set instead of having to imagine the Bulgy Bear also helps the other actors. Shane spent most of the day waiting behind the camera with his bear head off. After they finished the shot, they put Shane’s head on (which took about 15 minutes). They began shouting random directions at Shane, such as “move your arms!” and (best of all)… “suck your paws!” I hope that means the Bulgy Bear will suck his paws in the film, just as he does in the book. After he had waited in costume for hours, they only filmed Shane for about 20 seconds (just for reference). He laughed and took a little bow. That’s filmmaking.
After they finished the shot, they had to shoot a “clean plate.” All the actors had to leave the shot so they could film just the background for a few seconds. This helps them remove parts of the shot they don’t want, such as the actors’ legs. A long way off around the clearing, I noticed several pink markers set up. I believe these were being used to track the camera, so that the digital effects can be added later.
Read the rest of this amazing report at NarniaWeb
A bit with Shane Rangi
IESB.net visits a bit more with Shane Rangi:
He is playing six different creatures this time around. These include Bulgy Bear, Asterius, the wild bear, Aslan (for visual effects reference), the werewolf, and another minotaur.
It’s no doubt that when this film is released he will end up in scenes playing against himself!
His credited role will be as Asterius, a well worn but tough leader of the minotaurs. This battle scarred minotaur has beat up horns and a well worn coat, but that doesn’t stop him from being one of the toughest minotaurs in Narnia.
Berger says about the Asterius costume, “Asterius is really nice, it’s a full fabricated suit. It has flexible muscles and water bags in the chest. The suit is all hand tied which means all the hair you saw on the suit is tied one hair at a time into the spandex unitard and then sewn over the muscle suit and then the same with the head. The head is all punched one hair at a time. Rob Gary, our key mechanic on the show did a whole radio control mechanism for it so it does all this really cool stuff. It can do dialogue, although it doesn’t have dialogue, it says ‘shhhh’ in one scene. But we did it just in case. Well in the last one we had to throw a line, so I think he tweaked it a bit so that worked out even better.”
Rangi, the man in the Asterius suit, says about the mechanical head, “I haven’t seen any of that stuff yet. All I get to do is hear it going ‘zzz zzz zzz.’”
We thanked the guys for taking the time out of their incredibly busy schedule to talk with us. They really give great insight into the underworking of a film and how it all comes together.
Read the rest of this incredible coverage here at IESB.net
Caspian Mixes Up New Creatures
SciFi Wire rounds out this first set report with an interview with Howard Berger and Dean Wright.
“There’s all different looks,” Berger said in an interview on the set in Prague in June. “We’ve got female dwarves, male dwarves, old and young. It’s really fun to mix it up.”
“We wanted to have old-age fawns … and heavy-set characters and black centaurs,” he said. “One of the guys designed an old-age fawn that I really liked, and it looked like David Niven. So right now we’re trying to find an extra or an actor who has kind of a very slender, older body. But he looks just like David Niven, so I really like that. Then, we hopefully have a big heavyset fawn who’s kind of John Goodman-ish. So we kind of designed stuff around that. And then we have a really old, old centaur that were going to do as well that’s kind of like Little Big Man centaur. There are kid centaurs, too.”
In the same interview, visual-effects supervisor Dean Wright said that Berger’s concept was a “great idea, but it causes a bit of work for us.” Wright’s department is responsible for digitally duplicating the creatures in post-production to increase their numbers in certain scenes.
“He wanted to bring more variety to the characters that we had, in terms of ages and sexes,” Wright said. “The whole point [was] to add more of a variety to work with the characters. Which, again, we will have to build into our digital characters.”
Rangi said in a separate interview that his performance on the set will be captured to make Aslan much more lifelike when he interacts with the other characters.
“Aslan in the first one was a big sculpt, or they just had the head and shot it and did the rest in visual effects,” Rangi said. “I pretty much have the front feet, the mane and the head. The main reason we’re playing physical this time is that Lucy interacts with him. And from a digital point of view, it’s hard for them to recreate hair around when she hugs him and stuff like that. So basically, I’m just there for visual effects.”
In addition to Aslan, Rangi will play a number of creatures in the film, including a werewolf, a bulgy bear and a new minotaur character called Asterius, who didn’t appear in the original book by C.S. Lewis.
“Andrew wrote in more minotaurs,” Berger said. “They were really popular in the first film, and I was sad they were bad and might not come back. Then Andrew called and said were going to throw some minotaurs in, especially this one, Asterius, which is the lead minotaur. It was really cool, because I wanted to do an old-age minotaur, so Andrew was up for it and I designed it.”
Berger added that throughout the filming, the primary concern among the filmmakers was realism. “The movie doesn’t stop and hit the viewer on the head and you go, ‘Hey, look there’s an effect, there’s a makeup effect, there’s a digital effect,’” he said. “You didn’t get that in the first film. … And I’m sure this one will be the same thing.”
Visit SciFi Wire for the rest. And stay tuned to NarniaFans.com as we bring you coverage from all corners of the Narnia world.
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