In the beginning, there was Gregory Peck.
Long before Liam Neeson was cast as the voice of Aslan, the noble lion in “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” the film’s visual effects team had to get to work.
“We needed to find a way to model the performance to create the essence of the noble, all-powerful lion,” explained Dean Wright, the film’s Oscar-nominated visual effects supervisor, “So we used Gregory Peck in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’ His Atticus Finch performance has some of the same regal qualities we wanted, so we used frames of Peck from that film to create movements for Aslan. That helped us build our library of movements, emotions and expressions so that when Liam gave his performance, it gelled perfectly with our Aslan.”
According to Wright, Aslan is “the single most remarkable achievement in CG character animation and technology.” Not only does Aslan deliver a wide range of emotions equal to any human actor but he also looks real, indistinguishable from a live lion in every scene, right down to his matted and always-moving fur.
And the one “Narnia” scene Wright is constantly asked about is the one in which Lucy Pevensie grabs Aslan’s fur as they’re walking through the woods.
“That was one of those surreptitious moments in filming when Lucy [Georgie Henley] reaches out and naturally grabbed ‘Stuffy’ [the stuffed Aslan head] just the right way and we were able to blend that with our CG counterpart,” Wright explains. “These kids did such an amazing job acting with ping pong balls and stuffed heads. The kids are always hugging Aslan in the film and it looks wonderful onscreen but from a technical viewpoint, it’s daunting. So to be able to make them interact that closely with a digital creation was just amazing.”
For Berger, his makeup and puppetry challenge was creating fantasy puppet critters that belonged in Narnia, not Middle Earth.
“We didn’t want to do orcs,” he explained. “When Lewis and Tolkien wrote their books at the same time in the mid-’50s, they carefully compared notes and made sure there were no crossovers. And as Tolkien’s grandson told me, ‘Goblins do not exist in Narnia and there are no elves.’ So I was very careful never to cross the borders between Narnia and Middle Earth.”
But there are 23 different species of Narnia-specific mythical critters including fauns, satyrs, minotaurs, ogres, giants, red dwarves, ankle-slicers, beavers, wolves, bears, leopards, centaurs, gorillas, etc.
And if you want to see Mr. Tumnus, one of Berger’s favorite Narnians, with his real human legs, you’ll have to get the DVD. “I gasped the first time I saw the film because it was the first time I’d seen Mr. Tumnus with his faun legs,” Berger recalled. “I’d lived with him [James McAvoy] with bright green legs with white marks on them.”
All the Narnia creative dudes are still Oscar-shocked. And their heads are still rooted in Narnia because they’ve been working on the upcoming DVD. Plus they’re flying to London this weekend for the Feb. 19 BAFTA Awards, where they’re also nominated for the same achievements.
“It’s been an amazing few weeks,” said Wright. “We were all so nervous the night of the bake-off when so much great work was presented to the academy from so many talented people. It was a heck of a year for visual effects.”
And their journey is far from over. “Narnia” director Andrew Adamson has just signed on to direct “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian” and while no contracts are signed, his creative team will probably regroup. Fast.
“They haven’t announced yet how many films they’ll do,” said Wright. “I think they’d love to do them all. At least six or seven is the goal. All the kids will come back for ‘Caspian’ and two of them, the two youngest, will return for ‘The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.’ Right now, Andrew is taking time off in New Zealand and then he’ll write treatments, we’ll get the script and dive right into it. I imagine we will start production based on the kids’ schedules, but it’s all going to happen relatively soon.”
Which is great news for “Narnia” fans.
By Elizabeth Snead