Film & Video has a new interview with visual effects supervisor Tim Burke (Tim is nominated for an Academy Award for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part I). Tim talks about creating the destroyed Hogwarts for Deathly Hallows - Part II, bringing Dobby to life and much more.
What were the hardest shots to accomplish on Deathly Hallows, Part 1?
Tim Burke: I think the hardest things were the characters. The creatures and Dobby. People had to relate to Dobby, to empathize with Dobby to believe he would die. People are used to seeing good and bad CG characters. If Dobby didn’t look like he had a soul, we would have lost the emotional moment at the end of the film. I thought Dobby would be the hardest character, but with the skills of our brilliant animators at Framestore, he wasn’t that difficult to execute. And we had brilliant reference performances, which helped us nail the characters.
How did the role of visual effects change in this film compared to earlier films?
We’re definitely doing more. The set design has become more expansive. The production scheduling and knowledge of how we could film on green screen using exterior partial sets on the backlot has changed. Especially on the last film. Because of the complications of scheduling two films, we had a lot of location work and couldn’t go on location. [Production designer] Stuart Craig has become familiar with us, so he created partial sets and we created digital sets. So, that’s something production has taken on board. And, because we’re able to do more rigid body dynamics and destruction work, we have no miniatures at all now.
For Part 2, we’ve done away with Hogwarts. It was such a major job to stage the battle of Hogwarts, and we had to do it in different stages of production. We had shots with complex linking camera moves from wide overviews, to flying into windows and interior spaces. So we took the plunge at the end of 2008 and started rebuilding the school digitally with Double Negative.
It’s taken two years – getting renders out, texturing every facet of the building, constructing interiors to see through windows, building a destruction version of the school. We can design shots with the knowledge that we have this brilliant digital miniature that we can do anything with. With a practical Hogwarts, we would have shot it last summer and been so tied down. Instead, as David Yates finds the flow and structure, we are able to handle new concepts and ideas.
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