In its spectacular setting and storytelling, Prince Caspian proposes a unique blending of live-action and CG animation. So, Animated Views was anxious to talk with the movie’s VFX supervisors Dean Wright and Wendy Rogers about how they made the magical world of Narnia really take life right before our eyes. Both VFX wizards are no strangers to the company of Andrew Adamson, one having worked on the visual development of Shrek and the other having been part of the first chapter of the Chronicles.
But that’s not all about their respective credits!
Dean Wright’s been involved with motion picture VFX for over a decade, on such prestigious projects as Titanic, What Dreams May Come, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, all Oscar winners for their innovative effects work. In fact, the Michigan native enrolled in the University of Arizona film school to pursue a career as a filmmaker. After completing his studies in 1986, he secured his first job on a western movie-of-the-week entitled Desperado. Relocating to Los Angeles in 1989, he soon landed work with one of the industry’s most prominent directors, James Cameron, on Terminator 2: Judgment Day, which went on to win the Oscar for Best Visual Effects. The rest is history…
And, as for Wendy Rogers, she has a background in both live-action and animation since she was involved in animated features like Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas and Flushed Away for DreamWorks and in Batman & Robin, her second Batman movie since she made her debut working at Pacific Data Images – now PDI/DreamWorks – (Batman Forever, Waterworld). A native of Melbourne, Australia, she majored in business studies as a student in Brisbane. She began her career in computer programming before segueing into graphic design and visual effects. She moved to the US in 1991 and first worked as a senior animator at PDI , where she first met another rising visual effects talent, Andrew Adamson (first working with him on Barry Levinson’s Toys). Her early animation and CG work includes such live-action credits as Oliver Stoneʼs Natural Born Killers and Brian de Palma’s Carlito’s Way, as CG supervisor on the epic Waterworld and as digital artist on Peter Jackson’s 1996 horror film, The Frighteners, before joining DreamWorks in 1997 on Shrek.
So, let’s move forward in time, 1300 years after the first chapter of the Narnia Chronicles, and discover a whole new world…of Visual Effects!
