Harry Potter’s school years in book and film form were incredibly successful. As author J.K. Rowling put an end to the adventures of the sorcerer’s apprentice after volume 7, the reliably lucrative box office results of the franchise failed to materialise. So a new corner was reached for, and the fictional encyclopaedia of mythical creatures became the story basis for a new film series.
Rowling had already published the two small volumes “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” and “Quidditch Throughthe Ages” under a pseudonym in 2001; she wrote the animal encyclopaedia under the author’s name Newt Scamander. Both books are standard reading at Hogwarts School in the Harry Potter novels. Rowling wrote the story of the creation of the encyclopaedia about Newt Scamander and his magical creatures, which is set 70 years before Harry’s lifetime, in screenplay form. The first “Fantastic Beasts” part was released in cinemas in Germany on 16 November 2016; the film was released on DVD and Bluray in April 2017.
For the spin-off, numerous full CG creatures had to be created that deviated visually from the norm. Double Negative, Framestore, Rodeo FX, Milk VFX, Image Engine and Cinesite were the VFX studios involved in the project.
Creatures at MPC
MPC realised over 220 VFX shots for the film; the VFX supervisor for the team was Ferran Domenech (“Legend of Tarzan”, “Godzilla”). MPC is already experienced in creating magical effects, as the studio was part of the VFX crew for all 8 previous Harry Potter films. For “Fantastic Beasts”, MPC created the titles including the Warner Bros. logo, various crowd and environment extensions as well as the Manhattan environment when Newt arrives in NY by ferry. The most complex task, however, was to bring the three creatures Demiguise, Billiwig and Occamy to life – including all the destructions that his enormous ability to grow brings with it.
The film was mainly shot at Leavesden Studios in north-west London, where the other parts of the Harry Potter saga were also created. Some other original plates, such as the one in the shopping centre where Demiguise and Occamy are hiding, were filmed in Birmingham.
Monkey with silver curls
Demiguise – a small monkey-like creature that can turn invisible and read the future – was the first creature MPC worked on for the project. The team used the specially developed FurtilityGroom technology combined with simulated cloth geometry strands to create his long, silver-coloured hair. These allowed for natural hair movement and interaction with the creature’s limbs and the environment. To create the effect of Demiguise becoming invisible, the Furtility team developed a new texture projection tool that allowed the background images to be painted over the fur and moved realistically. Demiguise’s facial and body movements were animated with keyframes.
Feathered giant snake
The most complicated creature, however, was the feathered serpent Occamy, which has wings and a dragon-like face. Occamy is always as big as the space that surrounds it – in the case of the hall-like department stores’, the magical creature had to wrap itself around the roof beams and look incredibly long. To achieve this, the asset team created five different variations of the body. The enormous body was also divided into different parts so that the space could be completely filled and the carefully designed composition adjusted in each shot.
For the realisation of Occamy, the team refined the SnakeRigging technology previously developed for the Harry Potter films, with a snake body covered in feathers providing an additional challenge that was overcome using MPC’s Furtility tool. The creature’s complex transformation performance, ranging in size from a house to a mouse, was achieved by customising the Furtility tool to allow Occamy to scale interactively.
In the sequence, Newt scares Occamy, causing it to get caught in the roof structure of the department stores’ and destroy the building as it tries to free itself. For this scene, MPC built a detailed set extension of the attic including beams, screws and nails, wood panelling and an outer layer of shingles. The team realised the destruction effects of the CG set using the studio’s own destruction technology Kali.
Dinner at Cinesite
Cinesite realised around 100 VFX shots for “Fantastic Beasts” – including the scene in which Newt enters the magical world with the help of his suitcase, various New York CG environments and the entire dinner sequence in the Goldstein apartment. The project kicked off at the beginning of 2016, after which a small but permanent team worked continuously until the end of September 2016 to complete the shots. Like MPC, Cinesite was also on board as a VFX service provider for all previous Harry Potter films; the studio has already worked on a total of 2,000 shots for the series.
Cinesite supervisor on the project was Andrew (aka Andy) Morley, who has been working in the digital film industry since early 2000. He was involved in “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” as technical supervisor. His other projects include “Batman Begins”, “Transformers”, “Avatar” and “Gods of Egypt”.
DP: Post-production for the first “Harry Potter” instalments took place more than 15 years ago. How has working on the film series changed for you in the meantime?
Andy Morley: The technology and artist skill base that we were able to draw on for the fantastic beasts is much more mature and reliable compared to the earlier Potter days. Today it can deliver any effect imaginable, so the challenge is increasingly to create visually compelling VFX work that audiences around the world have never seen before. The expertise and skillset available in the UK guarantees that the films will look great across the entire franchise.
DP: How did you realise the scenes where Newt disappears into the magical world through the suitcase?
Andy Morley: One of the key sequences involving the suitcase took place inside the Goldstein flat. In it, Jacob hesitates to jump into the suitcase after Newt. Partly because it is much more difficult for him than for the slender Newt due to his girth. As was to be expected, he gets stuck and then tries to slide out by moving up and down. The original plate for this was shot using a real suitcase with Dan Fogler’s legs sticking into the floor. As the prop suitcase on set was a slightly different size to the one Newt jumps through, it had to be replaced with a full CG suitcase for this scene.
A lot of our work involved removing Dan’s legs via painting and cleaning, as well as rebuilding the floor when the suitcase bounces into the air on top of it. Additional cleaning was required to bend and manipulate Jacob’s arms to convincingly close the scaled-down edges of the CG suitcase. To enhance the realistic look, we added interactive shadows to the environment. The final result required a lot of back and forth between the colour grading, compositing and animation departments. The animations were ultimately driven by the actor’s movements on set, while the compositing artists placed the CG suitcase in the shots. By giving the suitcase more dynamic movements, we gave it the impression of having a will of its own. As there were relatively few suitcase shots, warping and deforming effects in the compositing, supported by some 2D adjustments, allowed us to achieve the final results. Some subtle dust effects with each bounce on the floor gave the weight and impact of the suitcase a convincing feel.
DP: How was the NY environment created?
Andy Morley: A key sequence of our work in this regard was the view from the window of the Goldstein flat over New York City. We created set extensions for this, which consisted of a mix of rendered 3D buildings, projected 3D building details and matte paintings. We created the background using references (texture photos, lidar scans and building photographs) from New York in the 1920s and 1930s. Another CG environment of this type was created for a later situation in the film, in which Newt and Tina stand on the edge of a New York rooftop. The realistic dark night lighting for this sequence, in which the action taking place is still legible, had to be finely balanced. As the scene was filmed entirely in green screen, it took many hours of work before the night-time full CG cityscape behind the actors looked believable.
DP: You were responsible for the entire dinner sequence in the Goldstein flat. How did you realise the self-drying clothes?
Andy Morley: In this sequence, the injured Jacob is brought into the Goldstein flat at the beginning. There, he is startled by clothes on a drying rack that rotate automatically. This was originally filmed as a live-action scene with real clothes on wires. However, the production later decided that the scenes did not look fluid enough and that they should be replaced with CG objects. The design of the clothes horse was also changed to vertical rods. The garments were realised in eight shots using a mix of animation and cloth simulation with Maya and nCloth.
DP: And Queenie’s magic dress that wraps itself around her?
Andy Morley: The full CG dress had to be seamlessly integrated into the environment shots, while the actress wears the real version of the dress in some shots. A believable implementation was complicated because cloth software is usually used to replicate the behaviour of a real-world cloth material. However, this world is a magical one, so Queenie’s dress had to behave unconventionally. Actress Alison Sudol played the scene with the full CG dress in her underwear – the digital dress was animated with a complex Maya rig that allowed for adjustments to the dress to match the movement and realistic deformations in the Cloth simulation. Shape problems could be solved using extensive geometry sculpting. As the real fabric material of the dress did not react particularly well to the real lighting, it was optimised for the final look with a more interesting finish in Nuke.
DP: Then dinner is served – all the ingredients fly through the air, prepare themselves and land on the table. How did you proceed for this sequence?
Andy Morley: An exact choreography was defined for the numerous flying CG objects such as bowls, plates, apples, napkins, cutlery and glass jars. All the objects on the laid table are also full CG. In one shot you can see a jug of cloudy lemonade, the contents of which were not animated with a fluid simulation, but with a deforming effect of the surface. Even the candles are CG, we have complemented them with a manipulated flame element. We also changed the real lighting a little. In particular the one on Jacob to reduce the harshness of the initial lighting on his face – this created an interactive lighting effect. The highlight of the dinner is the apple strudel: all the ingredients swirl around in front of Jacob’s face, the fruit wraps itself in layers of dough before everything is baked to a crispy brown and the cake sinks to the centre of the table, ready to be eaten. We created this shot with customised FX and used Houdini for stronger deformations. The animation was created with Maya, shading was done with Arnold. As we wanted to give the whirlpool a photorealistic look, the team wrote new shaders for it and developed various render-related sequences for the animation of the surface baking in the air. We turned all render settings to 11 for this.
DP: How did the compositing work with the numerous CG elements?
Andy Morley: We realised it with Nuke 9.0v5. Each shot in this sequence required individual 3D models and shaders as well as complex animated textures and displacements. Additional BlendShapes ensured that the overall shape of the pastry could shrink slightly during the baking process; heat distortion effects were added in Nuke. The different objects – some with transparent surfaces with a refraction effect – and the lighting situation on set with many different light sources that had to be recreated in the 3D scene made working on the sequence extremely complex.
DP: How was the collaboration with the other studios involved?
Andy Morley: We shared some shots of the sequence where Newt and Tina are talking on the roof of a New York building with Framestore. Tim Burke was the supervisor for this scene, which was filmed entirely in front of a green screen, and for us it was the last shots for the project in the pipeline. Framestore put Newt’s full CG pet Bowtruckle, called Pickett, on his shoulder, we in turn handed over the 3D layout and lighting setup to Framestore for about half of the shots. Lighting, look and grading were crucial in the edit. We compensated for the lighting in the original plate; the basis for the CG city was a single 3D scene, which was later also used as a digital matte painting and adjusted by the compositors for different camera angles. Double Negative provided us with building assets, which we further developed for the respective shots.
DP: Will you be part of the VFX team again for the next “Fantastic Beast” instalment?
Andy Morley: I really hope so, especially as Cinesite has been involved in all the films based on J.K. Rowling’s books so far. We have a good relationship with the creatives involved in the realisation of the franchise. We would love to help bring more magical effects to the big screen.
Links
“Fantastic Beasts” trailer
youtu.be/Vso5o11LuGU
MPC website
www.moving-picture.com
Cinesite website
www.cinesite.com
Behind the Scenes “Fantastic Beasts”
youtu.be/v00xz7oB3MY
