MundoNarnia has interviewed Storyboard Artist Mike Vosburg about his work on The Chronicles of Narnia. He did work on each of the films, including spending about a year working on The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. He has also spent some time working on Harry Potter as well as Walden Media’s Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D.
MundoNarnia.com: Tell us about your work in the storyboard of The Chronicles of Narnia
Mike Vosburg: Doing storyboard for Lion/Witch was my first experience working on a big budget project and was certainly of of the highlights of my career. Working with Andrew and everyone connected with the project was always a very gratifying experience. Our work was respected, we were well taken care of, and the final creative product was something we were all very proud of. That doesn’t happen in all your working experiences; unfortunately, it happens only rarely.
When I started working on the movie, I was assuming it would be about three months work. But we missed the deadline for shooting the winter scenes in the planned production sites, and I wound up working for a least a year and half, including a very pleasant stretch in New Zealand.
My favorite scene that I boarded was the death of Aslan in the first film, and the fight in the shrine to the Stone Tablet where the White Witch is resurrected in the second film. Since I had the time, I actually did some of the boards in full color. The big change for me on this project was that when I normally boarded sequences on other projects, there might be a few changes, and then that was the last you saw of it. On the Narnia material, we would do it over and over until Andrew felt it was right. And it shows in the final product.
MN: And what about the project for the new movie, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, any news or challenges?
I spent about a year working on Dawn Treader., including a sequence I did a couple months back just before they moved to Australia to start shooting. I was producing some drawings they could use when looking for locations.
MN: Has Walden Media already contacted you for the production of other movies of The Chronicles of Narnia series?
I’ve always had a great working relationship with Walden. I also storyboarded the Journey to the Center of the Earth film, so certainly hope they call me for any future Narnia work.
MN: On your website we can see on the portfolio works such as Hellboy and Harry Potter. What other productions have you worked?
Hellboy was created by an acquaintance of mine, Mike Mignola, and I’ve always been a big fan of the work. Tom Nelson and I both boarded sections of the animated material they did.
MN: What final message could you leave to Narnia and fantasy movies fans?
I hope that Narnia fans have enjoyed watching the movies as much as I enjoyed working on them. One of my more rewarding memories was watching the films with my friends Zahra and Jim Beihold (Jim was another board artist on the first film) and their daughter Emily and her two friends. The girls would recite the dialogue along with the characters…they had watched the film enough times that they knew it by heart!
-via MundoNarnia