Whilst giving a presentation about his work on Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them at London VFX Fest, Christian Manz, creative director at Framestore, called the filming process ‘a 21 month journey’. This project has become a perfect example of how visual effects artists can develop into a fully integral part of the creative team, and even contribute to the storytelling. The film’s director (David Yates) gave Christian Manz and Tim Berk (VFX supervisor) a quick briefing before leaving them free to do what they liked: they split the work in half by sequences and only used the script as a guide. RENDERU.COM visited the London VFX Festival and watched Christian Manz’s presentation. This is what he had to say about his work on key moments in the movie.
Jacob Kowalski climbs into the magic suitcase
‘From the beginning, this was the most challenging thing to come up with: how a man would climb into a case, and how this case would contain a whole menagerie of creatures’, said Christian Manz. Concept artists imagined that the case could be alive; maybe it could fly? It could be some sort of an old fashioned lift, or it could project moving pictures. Another idea was that Jacob Kowalski could become stuck in the suitcase.
Images: Framestore
‘We built a case into a rostrum, and then we thought that he could actually walk into it. We then got a carbon box and some crash mats, and we tested the idea on Dan Fogler. He is a natural comedian, and he immediately made it funny, so we knew that there was a possibility of it working. The night before we shot the scene, we cut a hole in the set floor, and one of us was standing to test the idea. The CG case was done with Cinesite in the end, but this comedy came from visual effects. It came from us and it was in the movie’, Christian Manz explained.
The case’s interior
The world inside the magic case was initially written so as to resemble a zoo, with creatures in cages. ‘We came up with an idea to shoot on actual locations, and then enhance and link them with magical portals, but J.K. Rowling said that it would take a better wizard than Newt [Scamander] to create this – even more powerful than Voldemort!’ Christian Manz recalled.
The team proceeded to another idea of creating a sort of a gallery with moving paintings, which Jakob would walk past. However, it was too similar to what audiences had already seen in the Harry Potter series. Finally, Stuart Craig (the film’s production designer) came up with a variant: each creature in a cage would have its own environment, like in a zoo, or a museum diorama. Christian Manz said, ‘That took about 3 months. It was really a collaborative process. We designed a story, Stuart [Craig] designed a set, and we put that into previs, and vice versa. It’s something that showed that visual effects specialists are moviemakers; we are storytellers. We are not just people who do cool stuff in the background in post-production.’
The director (David Yates) wanted the sequence to be a 10 minute long unbroken shot, but in the end it was made up of several long shots. Six companies and freelancers worked on the scene: ‘It required a lot of collaboration between companies. Sometimes up to five companies worked on a single shot. It was pretty emotional. We had a huge excel spreadsheet, and terabytes of data material circulating between London, Montreal, and Vancouver.’
Fantastic beasts
Overall, Christian Manz designed with his team around 200 creatures for this scene. Each of the beasts has a little story that needed to be easily comprehensible, as the viewers only have the opportunity to glimpse some creatures once throughout the film. The team made simple models first to see how this would work.
‘Our ideas included a tree-forming lizard: Jakob leans on a tree and realises that it is actually made up of small reptiles forming, and reforming a tree-like structure; or a fish that looked like a beautiful fish, and then it leapt out of the water and you realise it’s a bit of a crap-looking fish, but surrounded by beautiful fish that are making it look like a big one; or an ice turtle. However, J. K. Rowling thought that that was too much. We had a room all covered with artwork, which we accompanied with animation studies. It was awesome; you don’t often have that much freedom. Then we came down to the final selection’, Christian Manz described.
Niffler
Videos: FramestoreWhen creating Niffler, the team used real animals (like echidnas, and duck moles) as reference points. Their goal was to create something instantly adorable, and – again – quickly self-explanatory. ‘There are honey badgers in Africa, and they steal stuff and eat everything: that became a real thing for this character. We started doing anatomy design and modelling. We previsioned all the key things before shooting. We then carried on designing the anatomy before we came up with “That’s what the Niffler is!” When we were shooting, we employed puppeteers to help the actor. It’s amazing what these guys can do with simple puppets; to give a performance that Eddie [Redmayne] could react to, so that he didn’t have to look at a ball on a stick’, Christian Manz said.
Pickett the Bowtruckle
The team had around 200 versions of concept artwork for Pickett. They decided on one design, which was the same version of Pickett that now appears in the film, only in brown. During the animation studies, the director noted that the character looked too old. Christian Manz and his team went through all their variations again, and eventually chose the same design, changing the colour of Pickett to green. Now Pickett appeared much younger. Christian Manz added, ‘We again employed puppeteers with a simple little puppet. One actress was having troubles with acting. We placed the puppet on her shoulder, and she was afraid it was a spider. It certainly helped her to perform and it helped us to frame. It [Pickett] was a very successful character.’
Gnarlack
Ron Perlman was the influence for the character Gnarlack. Perlman was shot on set in a series of motion-capture sessions. He sat before 98 cameras for a facial coding shape session. This allowed the team to sculpt the face directly in 3D. This all took 5-6 months.
New-York
‘And now – about the last fantastic beast in the movie – New York’, Christian Manz moved to the final slides. The crew had decided from the beginning not to shoot in New York – the city had changed since 1926. Thus, Fantastic Beasts’ New York was (almost fully) created in chromakey with computer graphics. The team went to New York for several months, and photographed all the streets and buildings that they needed, visiting more than 60 locations a week. The production team could not afford to take trams, so they travelled in a green car. In total, they needed 40 vehicles, around 400 people, and a huge amount of green screen.
‘On the first day of shooting this set, the director called me and said: “I think we have a problem.” David Radcliffe's face was looking at us in a reflection from the window.’ The team had to hide it in order to prevent Harry Potter’s ghost from appearing in the movie.
‘It the production took a lot of collaboration between all of the departments and different companies, but we have done something, which hopefully you don't notice much in the film’, added Christian Manz at the end of his presentation.