Weta creates 'high art' with Caspian effects

The White Witch makes only a brief appearance in the new Narnia movie Prince Caspian which opens in New Zealand next week - but it is hard to forget.

Much of its power is in how it will surprise audiences, so it's best just to say that British actress Tilda Swinton returns immersed in ice.

The spectacular sequence is one of four created by Wellington-based Weta Digital, best known for The Lord of the Rings and King Kong. All up, it produced more than 300 visual effects shots for the fantasy.

Other overseas visual effects studios were also involved in the film, but this is the first time Weta Digital, which creates computer-generated visual effects, has worked on a Narnia film.

Weta Workshop - responsible for the physical effects on films, such as costumes, weapons and models - worked on the first Narnia film The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and also Prince Caspian.

This week the book The Crafting of Narnia was released, detailing Weta Workshop's involvement with Kiwi director Andrew Adamson's series, including the intricate models of the evil King Miraz's castle.

"It's a cool franchise and an interesting piece of film to work on," says visual effects supervisor Guy Williams, who first worked with Adamson on visual effects for Batman Forever in 1995.

"Not only is it an established story, it's also an established style and aesthetic. Then, on top of that, Andrew has come in really upped it - for lack of a better term. He's raised the bar on every single aspect of the film,"

"The visual effects are better, the art design is better. It's not to rob anything from the first one, it's just that this is his follow up release and everything shows."

Williams, who moved from the United States to Wellington to work on The Lord of the Rings, says the process for the Weta team began with getting an idea of Adamson's vision and what he wanted in the film.

The White Witch scene, which involved about 100 visual effects shots, was Weta's most significant contribution, says Williams.

Weta Digital also worked on the werewolf - or "Wer-Wolf" in Lewis' story, a night raid on the castle and the "magic door" sequence towards the end of the film.

Williams says the White Witch sequence was one of the biggest drawcards for Weta Digital. Part of the studio's work is to create what can be termed "invisible visual effects" in films where audiences don't pick up that in fact what they are seeing is an effect.

"But every now and then you get to do what is really true high art and to me that's what the White Witch was like. As real as we try to make it look, there's still something that's compellingly beautiful about it."

Williams says it's a fine balance, especially as audiences now not only take computer-generated visual effects for granted, they expect them to be of the highest standard.

In Prince Caspian they are depicting creatures of fantasy - and environments, as a real castle at night would be difficult to film and convey - but still, almost in a contradictory way, keep the fantasy grounded.

"It's so that suspension of disbelief is never challenged. It's to try and keep you in the movie the entire time so that you can enjoy it."

Williams says there's another aspect that influences what the visual effects need to do, which is part of the film-making craft.

"It doesn't matter if it's real or fantastical. If it's not pretty you are not going to be interested. You have to keep the art high up. With the castle at night you have to be able to see it, which is a break from reality. It has to look interesting and compelling. It can't look flat."

Animation supervisor Paul Story, who began his career on Peter Jackson's The Frighteners in 1996 and worked on Gollum and the scene-stealing cave troll in The Lord of the Rings, found Prince Caspian had new challenges. It included some work on the werewolf sequence, along with Narnia's bears.

To get it right, Story's team had to study real bears.

"A lot of what we do is to try to get as much references as we can. With reference photos we can get an idea what Andrew is exactly looking for in the bear, whether the eyes should be smaller, darker, rounder or whatever and put those all together to get our final creature."

One of the obvious aspects of a computer-generated bear is the fur. Weta Digital has been there before, most notably with Kong. "It is tough one to crack. We had a good base to start with after Kong, but with a bear it's a different sort of fur. Kong's fur tended to be a little bit longer along the arms, so you could [show] hints and [skin] dynamics. With the bear, it tends to have very thick skin underneath all that fur.

"It's a bit harder to [show] all those skin dynamics and then the fur dynamics on top of that. That's was another process we had to go through and work out."

Story's other projects have included helping bring to life Crusoe the young Loch Ness monster in The Water Horse. Just like Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, he says one of the satisfactions for him and other Weta animators is the audience's response to their creatures that only exist on screen.

"They automatically see it as another character in the movie. As soon as it doesn't look real it distracts from the movie and distracts from the story telling. It's just great that we can do enough so you can the story and enjoy the whole movie."

Prince Caspian opens on Thursday, June 19.

- © Fairfax NZ News