Behind The Wand - Episode 28, Tim Burke

This week Flick talk with Tim Burke, the Visual Effects Supervisor for Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts.

Episode Transcript

(00:08):
Hi, everyone, Welcome back toBehind the wand my name's Flick Miles.
I worked on the Harry Potter filmsand for this podcast I speak to other
people who did that too. Thisweek my guest is Tim Burke, a
visual effects legend. He's an OSCARwinner for his work on Gladiator, a
Bafter winner for his work on HarryPotter, and recently he worked as the

(00:28):
visual effects supervisor on my favorite liveaction Disney film, Little Mermaid. Back
to Harry Potter, though we talkedthrough the creation of some of our most
loved characters, we also spoke aboutthe logistics of creating some really memorable scenes
like the Seven Harris, and wealso spoke about the challenges that come when
creating a magical world in visual effects, but one that needs to be grounded

(00:51):
in realism. So yeah, thisis me speaking to Tim. So Tim,
could you explain to me what visualeffects is? Visual effects the simplistic
way people like to refer to itis anything that cannot be filmed in camera,

(01:12):
so something that has to be createdafterwards in post production. That's the
simplistic way. So therefore, we'reusing computer graphics to do a lot of
our work. However, we dowork with things that have been filmed,
so we film actors on blue screenand green screen that's obviously been shot,

(01:34):
but we're using a blue screen orgreen screen to put a background in that
couldn't be filmed at the same time. Or if there's a small effect neither,
or a big effect like a bigexplosion that we couldn't do practically on
set because it wouldn't be safe,but we could still film explosion separately and
then combine it together in the computerlater. So it's a combination of using

(01:57):
filmed elements and generated elements, butalways involving post production, so always involving
having to do something after the afterthe actual principal photography is finished. Right,
Okay, yeah, that makes sense. I kind of for some reason
didn't think about compiling that you'd filmtwo physical things and compile them as No.

(02:20):
No, no, it's it's it'sso much of it is done with
practical effects, right, And canyou explain your role on the Harry Potters
because you started on Chamber of Secrets? Is that right? So I started
so in the visual effects industry,the work is done at facilities, and
the facilities the VFX facilities are allaround the world. Now, I started

(02:44):
on Chamber of Secrets, and Iwas a supervisor at one of the facilities
working on the show, so Iwasn't working for production at that point.
I was actually working for a facility. So in this instance, you are
sort of moved from the production.You're working directly for the production visual effectsive

(03:04):
advisor and they are your main pointof contact basically. So on Chamber of
Secrets, we were working on certainsequences within the film, not the whole
film, because what production likes todo is divide the film up between several
facilities rather than give all the workto one facility, because otherwise it's just
overwhelming, and certainly twenty two yearsago, no one facility could handle that

(03:30):
amount of work. So on Chamberof Secrets, I was looking after the
spiders, a spider, sequencers,the giant spiders, things like moaning Myrtal,
all of the Hogwarts shots. Soat the very beginning, Hogwarts was
always filmed as a miniature model.It was a one twenty fourth scale miniature

(03:54):
model. So for every shot ofHogwarts in any film, to film that
and then composite that into an environmentor a background. So as I was
saying before, there's an example oftwo filmed elements. One is actually a
model and the other one is alive action plate shot in Scotland, and
then the two things have been compositedtogether and made it look like they were

(04:15):
all filmed in camera. So thoseare the kind of things I was doing
on the second film. And thendid your role change then from because you
worked then on the rest of them, Yes, so I seem to I
must have done a decent job andmade a good impression because on the third
film, Warner Brothers asked me wouldI work on production side and co supervise

(04:42):
that with an ILM supervisor called RogerGuyatt, who is somebody I knew from
the eighties where we worked together.He was English and we worked together in
a UK facility, so that wasgreat. That allowed me to move on
to the production side. And it'sa different experience working for production as opposed
to in the facility, because youare then working with the director. You're

(05:06):
basically interfacing with the director. You'reinvolved in the creative decision making of how
things are done. You're involved inthe design of the sequences, You're involved
in how things are shot. You'rethere on set with the actors all the
time. So for me that wasIt's something I've done before, not on
Harry Potter films but on other films. But to get involved with the Harry

(05:28):
Potter films and be able to workon the production side was fantastic. And
then I stayed on the production sideall the way through to the end of
Deathie Holler's Parts too. Wow.So when you get a script, so
I'm assuming before filming starts they giveyou a script and you start going through
and looking at it you're going todo When you get a script like Harry

(05:48):
Potter, is it scary because thereis a lot of things that you're going
to have to do? Or isit like an exciting challenge? Is there
anything you remember jumping out that youwere thinking, yes, I can't wait
to do that, or how amI going to do that? To be
honest, it's a great question becausethings were always difficult to do twenty to

(06:10):
thirty years ago. I mean,the computers were slow, rendering took forever,
and we didn't have the software andthe sort of programs that we do
these days. So it was everyone'sgoal and dream to work on something like
Carry Potter because it gave you thechallenges that you wanted and the creative challenges.
But at the same time, eachsort of challenge through up so many

(06:34):
problems and you literally would go intoa project thinking, I want to do
this, I'm not sure if wecan do this, because every time you
did something, you were actually writingsoftware to create that effect. You were
not just using something off the shelf. So my real first big challenge,

(06:54):
for instance, working on the productionside, was the Hippogriff. Now that
was the third film had some bigcharacters, the Hippogriff being probably the biggest
challenge of all because of things likethe nature of the feathers of a creature
of that size and how do youI mean things were just not off the
shelf. Then you have to makethings. The company that actually did Hippogriff

(07:17):
had to write all of the programsand software to do the feathers, so
when as well as the animation andhow do you animate a character which is
half bird, half force and personality. So there was such complications to just
the actual creation of something, letalone then giving something a character, and
everybody wanted to give things a realismand a believability, so that they worked

(07:42):
in the story. So we wouldhave sort of moments where, you know,
I'd be working with Alfonso and hewould say is this going to work
to him, and I'd have tolook him in the eye and go,
yes, it will work, Alfonso. But at the back of my mind,
I was going, I hope itwill work, because I can't honestly,
hand on heart, say it willwork until I've seen the finish thing

(08:03):
myself. So yes, every scriptthrew up challenges, as I say,
as computers got more powerful and technologybecame more sort of developed over the coming
ten years, we were able toachieve more. But then ironically the books
threw more challenges at us. Soeach book through greater challenges, you know,

(08:24):
and those were things that required newsolutions to bigger problems, you know,
culminating with Deathly Hallow's Parts two,which was just a world of technical
and creative challenges. So it waseverything grew so explanententially, the challenges got
bigger, the ability to do thework got better, but it all grew

(08:46):
at the same time. So andthe number of shots increased, you know,
as with many films. Now twothousand shots in the film is nothing,
whereas twenty years ago you couldn't dreamof doing two thousand shots in the
film. Well, and I guesswith Harry Potter, the thing is it's
a fantasy world but steeped in likerealism. So you've got to stay true

(09:09):
to how a hippogriff would actually lookand fly. You can't go to it's
not alien, is it. It'smental. It exists in this world,
so there's a pressure to keep itlooking real and how the feathers would be
on a bird horse. The thingabout the Harry Potter world, and this
was most important something David Hayman wasvery keen on from the beginning. Something

(09:31):
Stuart Craig introduced was everything had tobe grounded in realism. If you were
to believe this world and fall intothis world and totally be immersed in it,
you had to believe it existed.So the idea of this magical,
fantastical world, it couldn't be fantasy. That was the point. Like you
just said, a hippogriff had tolook like and behave like a real creature,

(09:52):
so that people believed the hippogriffs existed. If they were sort of fantastical
and the design was too extreme andthey looked like that or something looked like
it was science fiction. It takesyou out of the film. You don't
believe what you're looking at, andtherefore you no longer believe the world that
we're trying to create. It wasvery, very important, and something that

(10:15):
was very important with all of themagic effects as well. Something David Hayman
was very keen in all the timeis we could never do sort of laser
beams. We could never do somethingthat might look science fiction. Everything had
to be sort of light based,but in a way that was practical look
practical. Quite often we would usepractical effects and then add them to make

(10:35):
them realistic. And something David Yatesintroduced was very sort of sort of realistic
magic where we were using a lotof physical effects and magic that could be
used in the environment as opposed tojust flashes and pops and bangs and things.

(10:56):
So it was really important, reallyimportant always to keep everything great in
reality. So when you say that, am I totally off track? Where
I'd say, like if you hadsort of sparks coming out of a wand
that would be based on like aphysical thing like a firework, spark that
you would then we probably if weneeded something like that, we might have
shot a practical element fire, especiallyI mean back in sort of the early

(11:20):
two thousands, you know, thebig sequences with dragons and things like that.
You know, I was basically withJohn Richson filming flamethrowers when we've been
using practical fire whenever we could,because if you can put that into a
shot in a composite, it isreal, It looks real, and it
saves hours of complicated computing sort ofto get an effect that may not look

(11:43):
as good these days. Most firegenerated in CG looks pretty real, but
I can still spot a CG fireis supposed to a real fire. Does
that ruin films for you? Whenyou're now with your visual effect? Which
it depends you know, it dependson budgets and things you've got to You
know, we were lucky that,you know, you have a good budget,
you can spend the time making thingslook good. But sometimes people you

(12:09):
know, don't have the budget topay for that kind of sort of high
level effects. That makes sense.So when you look back at the the
you know, all of the films, what were you most pleased with is
there a character or a scene orsomething that you think, wow, that
looks really really I'm really pleased awell, just because we were talking about

(12:31):
it at the time and certainly forseveral years to come. I was most
pleased with the Hippogriff because it wassuch a huge challenge. It really really
was, I mean, and itwas recognized by our industry. We won
the Visual Effects Society Award for it, we were nominated for an Academy Award
for it, because that was reallyone of the standout things in the film.

(12:52):
That's what everybody was talking about.And for the very reason I said
before, I honestly didn't know ifwe were to be able to create and
achieve what we managed to achieve inthe end. So when we did and
we had this wonderful, majestic creaturethat had realism and just you know,
just complete sort of believability, itwas a great relief and great satisfaction.

(13:18):
And then moving through you know,as I say, the effects got greater
and greater. I mean, justflicking through some of the films recently,
I'd forgotten how many big sequences wedid in the fifth film and then the
sixth film, and then you knowwhen you get to DEATHI Haller's parts too.
Again, that was the biggest challengebut probably the most rewarding because there
was such big effects and big sequences, and everything was filmed in leaves them.

(13:43):
There was no location work by thattime. We did everything using computer
generated environments. We did all ofHogwarts in the computer. We stopped using
the miniature for that, so thatwas a huge investment to rebuild the whole
of the school, the destruction ofthe school, the big fight sequences,

(14:05):
they were probably the most rewarding andchallenging on such a big scale. Yeah,
And I guess there's also like anadded pressure with Harry when you're doing
the sort of creatures and things likethat, like just thinking about buck Beacon
kind of what you said there isalso audiences are really attached. They've obviously
read the book and like Buckbeek hasits own character, you think, like

(14:28):
his own storyline. And then youknow, if you think about characters like
Dobby, they're not just you know, backgrounds things character that the audience really
love. So I guess there's likean added pressure as well there that you
want to do characters justice. Theyare characters exactly that they are cast for

(14:48):
the film, as an actor wouldbe they have to have a performance.
They have to be grounded, aswe said, and you know, something
like Buck, it was about creatingthe movement of a horse, but then
putting in characteristics to the bird inthe way the head moved, you know,
and we had very specific references.Everything I try and do, I

(15:11):
reference nature again, goes back tothe grounding in reality. I don't start
with a blank sheet of paper andthen say let's just make this thing do
something crazy, you know. Ilook for real references. We look for
bird behavior, eagles, the waythey turn their heads, the little twitters,
the little cocks of the heads,all that kind of thing that makes

(15:31):
it real that you as a viewerjust intuitively think, ooh, that's a
bird because I know that I've seenthat in a bird, and it's it's
true. I mean, where wolveswere difficult to find reference for were wolves,
but that's driven by, you know, some of human performance. But
you know, there was characters.You know, obviously you can find reference

(15:54):
for spiders and the way spiders move, I mean, the things that someone
like them. That was fantastic becausedementors were a great challenge and Alphonso had
very clear vision of how he wantedthem to move, and he wanted them
to move like sort of cloth underwater. So we went and filmed some cloth

(16:15):
underwater. Literally, we went toa big water tank. We got puppets
made with cloth. We used differentfilm speed, so we shot them at
high speed, so we got lotsof lovely flowing movement. And then that
became the basis for how the movementof the cloth worked that we then copied
in the computer makes sense. Andthen I mean not to be negative,

(16:37):
but is there anything that you wereslightly disappointed with that just sort of never
you know, just because of timeand you know, obviously pressure. Yeah,
Harry Potter films were coming out.You know, was there anything that
you wish you had a little bitmore time with the the one the one
thing I suppose, well, there'salways little niggles in any film. There
maybe one little shot in a sequencethat you did quite make look as good

(17:00):
as he wanted, or you knowthat the one character that didn't quite hit
the right note for me was growup. That didn't quite work as well
as I'd hoped. And that wasmore from a technical side in terms of
just him looking like he was reallythere. I don't believe the lighting and

(17:22):
texturing of him quite worked as wellas early tests that we've done. We've
done some again, you see,that was a very big challenge to do
a talk we're not talking but becausehe doesn't talk, but a believable giant
human And that again was in twothousand and five, if we were looking
into the R and D of that, so that was that was a big
challenge. We developed some early facialsoftware for doing facial capture for him,

(17:51):
and we filmed again basing everything ona real performance or a real animal.
If an animal in this instance,we cast an actor to play grow up
and we filmed him and we actuallycaptured his facial performance to drive the face
and physical performance. And for whateverreason, as we started applying that to

(18:15):
the finished shots, the director didn'tlike the performance and decided to move away.
So that that pushed us into pureanimation. And because we'd gone down
this route of using facial capture,we then had to start animating facial performance.
And this was starting to get quitelate in the day. So it

(18:36):
was a combination of getting sort ofvery difficult thing to do at a very
late stage in the process and thennot really having a performance to base it
on meant that I never felt wequite captured him as a character. I
never you know, you try andavoid any sort of negativity about things,

(19:00):
and I don't know at the endof the day whether people I thought it
worked or not, but for me, I always just felt it didn't quite
didn't quite work. No, Imean, I'm not just saying this.
I thought I thought he was great. But this is the point, is
that I see things that you knowthat you know, bug bears, and

(19:22):
things that have been annoyal or thingsI've been struggling with maybe for weeks to
try and get right that you knowthat maybe maybe the director and the producer
didn't like and they didn't think itworked, so then you you know,
so I don't know, And Idid see some of it recently and thought,
oh, you know, it's notit's not too bad, and you

(19:45):
do need to stand away, youknow, I do. I need to
be at least five years away fromany film I've worked on to be able
to look at it objectively and getrid of all those little niggles. So
like the worst thing for me isgoing to a premiere because because all I
do is see something that we finishedfour weeks earlier that I was literally doing
sort of all all hours around theclock trying to get finished, and then

(20:06):
you can't sort of stand to lookat it. You just think, I
can tell you, I can imagine. It is hard. You get so
close to close to projects. It'swell, the funny thing is you asked
me a question earlier about getting thescript. I mean, I, in
my role, am one of thefew people that starts a few weeks after
the director starts and finishes the sametime as the director finishes. I'm literally

(20:32):
on the project the whole time.I get the script really early in pre
production so I can work out theeffects and how much it's going to cost,
because that's a major part of youknow, our world. You know,
as an average, the visual effectsbudget is usually around twenty five percent
of the overall budget on a film. Wow, it's big, and you're
responsible for millions and millions of dollarsbasically. So you start early, you

(20:56):
work through pre production, production,and post production. You're right there at
the very end, sometimes after sounderfinished, which had happened on my last
film. So we are the last, you know, the very last thing
is a digital grade, but wehave to supply the material for that grade
and then that happens. But Imean, actually, and obviously, as
I said to you, I spoketo Jesse who works on post production.

(21:18):
I was actually shocked at how howsoon the film's actually released in theaters or
in cinemas after you've finished. Obviously, thinking from when I worked on it,
it would be like, felt likesuch a long wait to see the
film. So you saying four weekssounds absolutely bonkers to me that you would
be working. Yeah, there wasfour weeks is probably a bit tight,
but usually there was a minimum ofeight weeks to get the back. In

(21:42):
those days it was print as well, to get the distribution done around the
world. They have to send theprints out. But that would be that
would be when we were right upagainst the wire, and then the film
would be out in the cinemas shortlyafterwards. So it's still very very fresh
when when you see h Fair Andso obviously he worked with several different directors,

(22:04):
did there or I mean, yourprocess working with them, Did that
mainly stay the same or was itdifferent director to director with how they work
with the visual effects team, veryvery different I never worked, as I
said before, because I was workingout the facilities on the second film,
I wasn't working directly with Chris Columbus, So the supervisors on that film,
Jim Mitchell and Nick Davis, theywere working and interfacing with him, and

(22:27):
then they would work with me.Working with ol Fonso was great. He
is a very visual creative director,so incredibly visual. You know, he's
got great ideas. You know.Mike Neil very very different type of director,
you know, working with actors andperformance but not really a visual director.

(22:48):
Didn't really have any sense of whatwe were doing or why we were
doing it, and kind of verymuch just said, you know, I'm
just going to leave that up toyou guys. And then David David Yates
was new to visual effects and he'dcome from television, so he'd never done
anything on this scale. But itwas interesting because I was able to sort
of work very closely with him,and I built up a very close relationship

(23:08):
with him because in some ways Ihad to help him work through the visual
effects process and work very closely withhim to creatively design the films and understand
how they would work. So that'swhy I presume we built up a relationship.
That meant I worked with him onthe fourth, the fifth, sixth,

(23:29):
and then Part seven, one andtwo, so four films basically,
And did you go on to FantasticBeasts as well? He did. I
then did the first two Fantastic Beasts, so he worked with him for real
with him, and we squeezed Tarsand in between there as well. Yeah,
my gosh, it's insane. Itmust have been nice to have a

(23:51):
little break of talking about Tars andBigs and then going back into the Wizarding
World. It was a bit abit weird because we were doing Tars and
then that had a very long releasedate, and then we went into Fantastic
Beasts and Tarzan was still getting workedon and then they both released in the
same well, within sort of threeor four months of each other, so

(24:11):
it was a little weird. Soyou do. I think I watched something
and I think it was one ofthe makings of one of the later Harry
Potters and you actually sort of beingon set working with actors especially. I
think I saw a sequence with youworking with creature, but it was an
actor being creature. Is that thefacial capture? Did you do that with

(24:33):
Creature, Well, we didn't dofacial capture for Creature and Dobby. What
we did is facial reference, sojust slightly different. So again needing to
base well, wanting to base aperformance in something real. Basically, David
has this way working where he likesthe design scenes with the actors and obviously
that's on the set. So wehad Creature and Dobby there as their real

(24:57):
actors to help develop scenes with thecast with the other casts. So,
like you said before, you know, these are CG characters, but they
are actually actors their characters in thefilm, So so they were there so
that you know, they could basicallysay well, you know, Dobby would

(25:17):
say well I'll do this, oryou know, David wants him to get
on the table, so Toby wouldget on the table and walk down the
table, and Creature wanted to givesome performance. So we'd basically develop a
whole scene and we'd block a sceneand sometimes even shoot some reference of the
actors, even though they were thewrong size and they didn't look anything like
them, we'd shoot them there asreference. But then what we do is,

(25:41):
as having rehearsed the scene, theactors playing those characters knew what they
know what their character needed to doin a scene, we'd move on to
another stage and using what we callas witness cameras, set up three or
four just HD cameras filming them closeup and wide capture basically what their face
is doing and their physical performance isdoing, and then we shot them again

(26:04):
so they were sort of fresh inthe mind of what they'd just done with
the principal cast, and then theycame and performed it for us so that
we could then capture their performance andthat becomes the inspiration for the animators.
So there was no motion capture orfacial capture used, and then sort of
put it into a computer. Itwas all referenced so that it then became

(26:27):
the animator's job to interpret what theexpression on the face was, how the
line was delivered. And that's theway I've worked mostly in my career.
Basically, I like the animators toreally interpret something real and then give it
the character and flavor of a houseself. In this instance, Yeah,

(26:52):
is that why I don't know this? Obviously, it might actually be the
facial capture you're talking about that sometimesanimated characters look like the actors that are
because when I watched The Thing ofCreature, I was like, obviously,
this actor is probably not gonna behappy. I'm saying it. He obviously
doesn't look like creature, but thereobviously is elements that is very similar,

(27:15):
and watching that, it's the subtletyof performance. It's it's the performance that
comes through and you believe that that'sa real person in there basically, and
sometimes you know, there are subtleI mean, we don't base characters on
their human counterparts or their human actors, I should say, but you know

(27:37):
we might. You know, it'sdown to the way the eyes move.
You know, it's the eyes thatreally give you the believability and you know,
looking at how a real person's eyesare and making you know, making
them absolutely matches because it's possible,and sometimes even not using the eyes but
using them as reference so that that'swhat really gives the you know, the

(28:00):
the human characteristic to something, whichis like we said, what Dobby needed,
you know, those house elves needthose human that and we did some
subtle things because I personally felt onthe second film he looked too caricature and
a little bit of a little toocartoony because his eyes was really big.
Yeah, so I reduced the sizeof his eyes slightly, not not so

(28:21):
we changed his personality, but toallow him just to be a little bit
more humanistic. So it's all aboutthe eyes. That's what we're learning.
I mean, you know, we'retalking and I'm looking at your right.
You know, we're staring at eachother's eyes, and that's if the eyes
are dead, you don't believe eventhinking of like Forks the Phoenix, like

(28:41):
his eyes, like definitely with thecreatures and you know with Buck Beacon doing
the bowing and the eye contact likeall those things. It is really really
important. So a scene that Ithink everybody loves, which I'm guessing you
probably had quite a lot to dowith, is the seven Is it seven
Harry's you know changes? And thenhow how was that process? Was it

(29:03):
challenging or was that actually something fairlystraightforward? And how does it actually how
do you actually achieve getting to sevenHarries? Yeah? It was, it
was. There was a fun sequenceto do because Dan is such a great
person to work with and he wasso game. What was really important for
David is that each of the peoplewho were supposed to be playing Harry their

(29:30):
personalities came out within him, ifthat makes sense. Yeh, he looked
like he was Flair or the Hermione. Harry behaved like Hermione, and you
know the is it Mandungus? Harrybehaved like Mandungus and I'm trying to remember
all the different names. So sothat was great fun because basically, so

(29:51):
the technical side of what we didis we use the system called motion control,
which is a computerized camera that allowsyou to do the same move time
and time again exactly the same.So when we wanted to get seven Harry's
in the same space, we filmedDan in the seven different positions on separate

(30:14):
layers and then combine them all together. But he would give the performance of
So the first thing we'd do iswe'd film Hermione, Ron, all the
different actors playing Harry Yes, deliveringthe lines, and then Dan would watch
these performances. Then we'd shoot himand he would deliver the performance that they

(30:37):
gave, but as in his ownbody obviously, right, so it would
be Ron's performance, but he wouldso he was he was a great mimic,
and he was doing these amazing performancesof capturing these the different his friends
a lot of them were his friends, so he knew how you know,
Hermione's little intricacies and different performances.So that was him doing all these things

(30:59):
basically, but then we filmed themseven times, put it all together in
the computer, and then it lookslike he's just the seven of him in
the room basically. So that's howwe did the physical practical side of it.
And then for transformations, we useda different facial capture system and on

(31:21):
a separate stage basically captured them doinga performance that you know, mimicked what
would it be like if you weregoing to transform from one person to another,
And we use that as sort ofglue to join the A side and
the B side together to get thetransformation basically. But that was all of

(31:42):
them in the computer. So howlong would that take to complete like a
sort of I'm guessing roughly like fromwhen you're actually on set filming that to
having that sequence completed. I knowfor a fact that it took a day
to film, because we'd normally filma lot more than that in a day,

(32:05):
but it was so complex that ittook a day to film changes and
stuff like that. I guess justtake time and yeah, well yes,
and you know, the process ofshooting computer control camera is quite slow sometimes
as well. The combining of allthe live action components didn't take very long

(32:27):
because it's all shot, so it'sjust a matter of matting them together.
So that's probably a few days workwith a bit of anessing to get everything
finished, but to do the transformationsand the CG side of things is weeks
and weeks and weeks of work.So I mean we you know, we
never get something immediate after it's beenfilmed. There's a process where we have

(32:51):
everything's being filmed, and we don'tnecessarily get things given to us to work
on. Sequentially, we sometimes prioritizethings that are more complicated, and you
know, the director and editor willcut a sequence and then give that to
us because we can't work on somethinguntil it's been edited, yea. And
once it's edited, we then takethe individual shots within that sequence and we

(33:12):
work on those and then we givethem back to the editor and he makes
sure it's working. And there's alot of back and forth, so the
process sometimes won't be that we've actuallybeen working it all the time. It's
just we've we've been pasted the sequenceover and then months later we'll give it
back to them. So I meanmost sequences, it's certainly big, complex
sequences you'll be working on for sixmonths at least. Wow. And so

(33:37):
how many people were in the VFXteam? So Harry Potter, Well,
it's interesting because when they started thefirst films, most of the work was
done in America. In fact,the very first film, probably eight to
seventy per cent of it was donein America. Transitioning through all seven or

(33:59):
eight films, we basically by theend of it, we weren't doing any
work in America. It was beingdone mostly in the UK and satellite companies
based in Australia and Canada sometimes whichwere subsidiaries of the companies in the UK.
But it became a global business withinthe ten years of making the films.

(34:20):
So any with anything, you know, the teams ramp up. So
we'll start with a small team doingwhat we call R and D. So
we'll have a small team of thevery sort of technical sort of people who
are creating the look of for something. So if it's a character or again
like Buckbeat, we've got to buildthat character before we can put them in
shots. So a small team offive or six people might be doing something.

(34:43):
They might be creating the skeleton andthen rigging it so it can be
animated, and then it has tobe textured. It's a bit like a
CG version of what Nick Dudnam does. You know. We have to put
a skin on it, and thenyou have to put the feathers on it,
and then the feathers all have tomove so they don't intersect with each
other, and then you apply dynamicsto make the feathers flutter when it's flying.

(35:05):
So all these stages are really complex. So you have very very clever
individuals doing these stages, and thenonce something's finished, it gets past to
the masses to work with. Soif it's an animated character, then may
be ten animators working on that character. Sometimes you don't want too many because
a character has to you can't havetwenty different people giving a different look.

(35:30):
To find exactly five or six peoplewho can give it the same look and
give it the same personality. Andthen it goes to various different departments who
light it and put it into lighting, just as the dop would light a
set, and then that gets rendered, and then it goes into compositing where
it gets put together with all theother live action elements. So the bottom

(35:52):
line is it ramps up during postproduction and when you're in full production with
the teams of animators and compositors working, you probably we probably got to six
hundred people working on the film atthe same time. That's huge, asn't
it. It is huge. It'sit's enormous. People don't realize that they

(36:15):
see the big credit lists at theend of the films, but it's a
huge process. Wow, that Idid not think you were going to say
six hundred and I'm thinking maybe likeone hundred and fifty. So that's that's
that's bad. I mean, Imean on the you know, I was
working with I don't remember, buteight different facilities around the world on most

(36:37):
of the Potter films. That's incredible, isn't it. And because of that
infrastructure, you know, some ofthem doing big sequences would have two hundred
people working on you know, theirsequences. My goodness, that's insane.
Yeah, it's a lot of people, a big responsibility for you. Well,

(36:59):
I don't get to talk to allsix hundred. That's the thing where
there is a sort of you know, mice, sort of sort of distribution
of information across many different departments.So what's something that you think people would
be surprised to find out is donethrough visual effects or partially done through visual
effects. I mean, the onething that everyone must know but we were

(37:21):
never allowed to talk about was Hagridbecause you know, he was fantastic and
consistent throughout all the films, butwe were never allowed to talk about the
fact that we had to make himbigger because the Coltrane was six foot one
and Hagrid was seven foot two,seven foot three. So that was always
something we did on every film,and it was a combination of we know

(37:44):
Martin Bayfield, who played Hagrid inthe in the Giant Suit, who could
be filmed from behind or at adistance, but anything that involved performance with
Robbie interacting with the kids, hehad to be shot as a separate element.
So he was always filmed on greenscreen or blue screen later on using
motion control. And the reason wedid that was because we scaled the camera

(38:07):
moves to make him. I can'tremember it was like fifteen percent bigger something
like that. I'm not sure ifit was quite fifteen percent, but I'm
going to say that for the sakeof argument. And that was so basically,
if you imagine we filmed a sceneand sometimes we'd have Martin stand in
so that we could get the compositionright and say he's talking to Harry and
he's outside Hagary's heart or something likethat, would film that, and then

(38:30):
we'd shoot the scene again and we'dhave basically an eyeline for you know,
Harry to talk to. And thenlater on after we basically what we have
to do is we have to trackwhat the camera's doing, So we have
to work out what the camera's doing, and then once we've got that camera,
we then import that into the CGcomputer so that we could actually then

(38:52):
have the same camera working the sameway in the computer. And then we
would scale all that camera by movingit slightly closer towards the subject, which
makes it makes him bigger. Soyou know, if you move closer to
a camera, you get bigger.Yeah, it's obvious, and obviously you

(39:15):
can't do that too much otherwise theydistorted and it become but the amount that
we were moving, you know,the camera close enough to Robbie would just
allow him to look fifteen to twentypercent bigger, and then we'd film him
him on like green screen with propsand Harry standing there talking to him so
he could have the conversation that hehad, and then composite him into the

(39:37):
background plates with Harry so it lookedlike he was there that was seven foot
three, And we had to dothat for every single shot you see Robbie
in basically Wow. So that wasa lot of work on every film.
Basically, Yeah, that is crazybecause you would have no idea. I
honestly thought he was just in likebig boots, just blatform. I mean,

(40:00):
there was all sorts of little tricks, you know. Sometimes he would
he would you know, sometimes youcould do something called false perspective where you
could put him on a slight deckto raise him up and shoot into him
and he would look bigger. Butif you see his feet on the ground,
then he has to be the correctbecause I remember doing a bit of
that sort of trickery, if youwant to call it that, in Hagrid's

(40:23):
Hut and the earlier films. That'sright, sort of when you look at
it, you're sitting really weirdly,but obviously if the camera's just straight onto
you, it looks that's right.Yeah. And then obviously, as you
know, they built two huts.They had one which was scaled to giant
Hagrid and on scale to the kids, so they could shoot them in a
correct size huts and him in acorrect size hut, which is great.

(40:45):
That's all sort of in camera techniquesand that that there was a lot of
that stuff. I mean, StuartCraig used to do fantastic things in the
early days where using false perspective,he would build sets with false perspective,
so you know, if there wasa corral or going off a room,
he would build what's called a falseperspective corridor, so it would actually be

(41:06):
a for shortened corridor that gave theillusion that it was a long corridor where
it was actually they cheated the linesof perspective so that actually it was it
was just a very small, littleset extension. But that was those old
school techniques that they used to uselong before computers came along with him.
Absolutely, and is there anything thatI mean, I actually think, I

(41:28):
know you're going to say no tothis, but was there anything that was
just impossible that came up that adirector requested or anything that just was like,
that's we're just there. Nothing atall we did that. It was
impossible. I mean, I wouldjust say there's a question of did we
do it well enough? In allhonesty. I mean, I'm not going
to keep going on about the thirdfilm, but the werewolf in the third
film was a tricky, tricky oneto do, and that that that came

(41:50):
very late in the day because originallythey were going to try and do a
man in a suit, a werewolf's suit really, and they'd rehearsed and
rehearsed and rehearsed, and the theactor was wearing stilts to make him tall,
and they had to delay the shoot, and then finally when they got
to film, the actor struggled tobe able to move properly on the set.

(42:10):
So again it was a nine oneone call. It was eleventh hour,
and there was like, oh,we're going to have to do him
in CG. And that was abit of a Okay, we haven't built
this character. He was supposed tobe practical, and now he's in CG.
So you know, it was alittle bit of a struggle to get
the werewolf done in time and workfrom scratch and create something that was believable,

(42:32):
But I don't there's nothing at all. There's nothing that we actually were
asked to do the way we said, we can't do that, so take
it out of the script. That'samazing that you just everything was everything in
that fantasy world or how many littlethings that Harry Potter has in it,
that there was nothing that was offthe table. Is there anything that you

(42:53):
worked on that just got cut becauseobviously the nature of films they get cut
down that you wish audience had seenthat that just never made it. Not
on the Harry Potter films, tobe honest. It happened a lot on
Fantastic Beasts, but not on HarryPotter. The Harry Potter films were so
well scripted and so tight that weshot everything that pretty much appeared on that

(43:21):
I can remember that appeared on onon on on the screen. I mean,
there may be the odd little shotthat I've forgotten about it, but
from what I can remember that prettymuch everything was was used. That's good.
I see a few people have saidthat there was that I was taken
to. There was a set shellCottage. I don't know if you remember
Shell Cottage that just didn't get shownyou see it, but it didn't get

(43:44):
shown as much, saying that wasa massive build. It took them most
disappointed. Yeah, just like butthey obviously everyone says that's that if you
work in the film industry, that'sthe nature of it, so you know,
that's always a possibility that things don'tAnd this is the thing is that
the art department was so fantastic.I mean the detail they put into everything.

(44:06):
You know, from the design ofthe sets to the props. You
wouldn't believe where you've been on set, so you would believe. But you
could go around. You could openany book on a shelf and it would
have writing in it, it wouldbe you know, it'd have a beautiful
cover, it would have an illustrationthat would have been done specifically for that
book that may never get seen oncamera, but it exists. Because that's

(44:29):
what makes the world believable. Andthat's the wonderful thing about the art department
is that they always have to anticipateeverything and because they're creating something that you're
then going to film on, theywere just fantastic being so well prepared.
And you know, with my world, you're doing it after the fact,
so you can be a little bitmore. We only need to do this

(44:51):
because you know, for instance,we're only looking in this direction, so
we only need to build that setextension. Whereas if I started building the
whole world and then filmed twenty fivepercent of it, I'd be very upset.
Yeah, no, I can imagine. I think this is my last
Harry Potter question. But do youhave a standout favorite memory from your time

(45:14):
working on it? But it musthave been about nine years. They're not
just the Harry Potter franchise, sothere's so many memories. I mean that
the overriding memory, which you haveheard everybody say, I'm sure, is
that it was a massive, bigfamily. I mean it really was.
You know, it was for me. I mean I'd worked in the I'd
worked in television for ten to fifteenyears before doing any Harry Potter work,

(45:36):
and it was my first freelance work, so working for production and then you
know, sort of being able towork half an hour from where I lived
in London on major Hollywood films wasjust the most amazing, you know,
opportunity that just wasn't around before.Because Harry Potter brought big Hollywood films to

(46:01):
the UK. On a regular basis, and from the visual effects industry point
of view, it built the UKvisual effects industry. As I say it,
myself and everybody, all my peershave been working in commercials and television.
Then all of a sudden we hadthis opportunity to work in film,
so we moved into film and overthe ten years of those you know sort
of films, the UK visual effectsindustries grew to what it is now,

(46:23):
which is, you know, it'sthe powerhouse of the world basically. And
during that time working on production side, you know, allowed me to meet
all these amazing people, be partof this fantastic family, seeing people grow
up, seeing Dan grow up,who's such a lovely guy. And you
know, I don't see him anymore, but you know, when i've occasionally

(46:44):
seen him, he still remembers me, say, oh, hey, are
you doing. You know, it'sit's lovely. But I suppose the overriding
memory is still it's a funny thing. But I still feel like the end
of Deathy Hallow's not the bid inthe train station, but actually when the
three kids are standing on the destroyedviaduct and Hogwarts is destroyed behind them,

(47:07):
and we shot that as We dideverything on Leavestone on the back lot and
they were just standing on a smallbit of viaduct with the green screen behind
them, and there was a beautifulsunny day where it was so lucky,
and you know, and when Iwatched those moments in the film, it's
just feels so poignant because it waslike, you've got this destroyed Hogwarts behind

(47:30):
and you've been to all this amazingaction, but it's the end of an
era, and that for me iswhen it just feels like that that is
the end of what for all ofus who worked on those films was just
this amazing experience. But it wasso beautifully and captured it the whole moment.
It just felt wonderful, and thequality of the light and the way

(47:51):
the effects came together on obviously thewhole thing was put in CG backgrounds,
you know, sort of Hogwarts andyeah, it's just it just it just
stays with me as a lasting memory, that sort of moment and just filming
that and knowing that's it, that'sthe end of what was an amazing experience.
Absolutely, I obviously have to askyou about Little Mermaid because it's absolutely

(48:15):
my favorite Disney Live action. Andactually, funnily enough, my sister in
law worked on a Little Mermaid andshe remembers you because she she worked as
a scenic artist, and she saidshe did a lot of painting the floor
blue for you, like every time, make sure it was stayed really blue.
Who is your sister in law.Name's Hannah Miles. Yeah. Yeah.
So when I said, I said, I was interviewing you, and

(48:37):
she's like Mermaid and I painted thefloor blue for him several times to keep
it nice and blue. I waslike, oh, okay, I have
to say I have to say saythat I'm really hi, so hi to
her from me, I will do, I will do. But yeah,
so with Little Mermaid, I meanthat I absolutely like that honestly, not

(48:58):
just because my sister in law workedon it, but it's just my favorite
live action. But how that musthave been a real challenge because that on
everything having to move underwater were noteverything, but a big majority of it.
Well, well, funny enough,you said, you know earlier on
us, is there anything that youcouldn't do? We couldn't have done that
twenty years ago. It's it reallyas simple as that, there's no way

(49:21):
we could have done that and thecomplexity of you know, creating that film.
We shot all of the actors onblue screen, as you're well aware,
and they were in rigs getting movedaround. But actually the only part
of them we used was their faceand the hands, so we literally kept

(49:42):
the face and the hands. Theneverything else is animated and digital, so
everything from the neck down, sothat their full bodies are always animated,
the hair is digital, and obviouslythey're in a complete digital environment as well.
So the reason we did that wasbecause the director is, you know,
it's a very is from a musicalbackground and he works with actors,

(50:05):
and he would normally be working withactors on a stage floor and it's all
about movement and you know, gettingthe rhythm of a scene rights, and
the idea of doing something where hewouldn't be able to sort of work freely
with the actors would be very difficultfor him. So we wanted to keep
you know, given that we can'tfilm underwater for real, because you can't

(50:29):
you can't talk underwater, and youcan't film a scene underwater, we had
to shoot it dry for wet,allowing him to move people around on these
rigs and the people who are actuallypuppeteered. We had a team of five
or six puppeteers, so they werealways moving them so he could direct the
movement, so he could feel likehe was directing the performance, and we

(50:51):
you know that that allowed him toreally sort of feel in control of their
performance, what they were doing,and then more importantly give us the performance
and then everything else we generated inthe computer afterwards. But the kind of
work involved in doing that film.You know, hopefully the end results look
beautiful and believable, but because ofthe fact that every single character had to

(51:15):
be body tracked so we could putthe hair on and the CG hair,
and we had to track all ofthe actual we were replacing the bodies,
but we had to sort of makethem look exactly like their real human bodies,
down to the way the muscles moved, down to the way their torso
has moved, and then obviously theirtails become CG because well the whole body

(51:38):
was CG, but the tails obviouslyanimated as fish. So it was it
was an incredibly technically challenging film forall the teams involved, but one that
hopefully you don't see that sort oftechnical sort of effect on the film we
just hopefully see it as a sortof graceful, sort of believable way that

(51:59):
they move underwater. Totally. No, I thought it's such a beautiful film,
but it must have been quite funto add in because there's quite a
lot of color in it and thereis a lot of fun. Even though
I know it does look like it'sunderwater, I'm not saying it doesn't,
but there's obviously like singing and dancingfish and stuff. So it's crazy.
It's like it's like, you know, when you get us to do some
crazy things, as we have onthe Harry Potter films, that this was

(52:22):
the craziest. It's like, doyou work on a film where half well
all the cast are half the castare half fish, half human, half
of it's set underwater and they're allsinging. You go, really, well,
that's a challenge. Yeah. Andthen also the main character doesn't talk
when she's on there. I knowexactly, I know, yeah, yeah,

(52:45):
the other big character is half anoctopus and then she grows to be
one hundred foot tall at the end, and there's a big battle and it's
I mean, there's a story,it has everything, and it's a funny
It's a funny thing because my daughter'sfavorite film and she watched it on the
peats on her VHS was literally rundown to nothing, and I've never seen
it. I've never sat and watchedit with it, and I feel terrible

(53:07):
for that. And then when Igot us to do it, I sat
and watched it and went, oh, wow, this is a great story
because the story, it's just afantastic classic story, love stories everything.
It's got the evil you know,sort of a lot to us lady in
there, and a great third act. So it was it was an instant
Yeah, I'd love to do this, but it's the biggest challenge I'll I've

(53:28):
ever undertaken to date. Yeah,I can imagine. But it's such a
Oh it's such a fun film.I absolutely loved it. Honestly, it
is my favorite live action and yeah, I actually I went with like a
to a cast and crew screening withHannah, So I went to see it,
which was amazing seeing on the bigscreen. But obviously it's on Disney,

(53:49):
so you can just so I've watchedit several times. I just I
love it. I love it sogood. That's good to hear. And
Halle Halle is amazing. She's she'sreally just amazing, and she was.
In truth the reason it works becauseif we hadn't had an actress who could
give that performance, well, it'sso demanding being in those rigs and moving

(54:15):
around and making it believable. Butyeah, if we didn't have the right
person to do that, you wouldn'thave believed it. But she was just
as you said, it's all inthe eyes, you know, you do
most of the time you're looking ather eyes. It's yeah, that's what
That's what I think because obviously thepart where she's when she's out there,
she's got her legs and you don'teven realize that she doesn't speak in that

(54:37):
part of her face is so expressiveand I guess that also paid was great
for you to have as when you'reanimating the rest of the body that you
just have a really expressive face.Yeah, and a lot of the times
they're actually fully CG as well,because they couldn't move the way we need
to. You know, it's alot of the time, so there is

(54:57):
a lot of facial capture in that, you know, and Silver and Aeriel
quite often at full CG characters,but hopefully you can't suppot the difference.
No, that's fine. I meanI had no idea. That's why I
thought I have to I have noidea how you would have how you would
have done that? Because it looksit's amazing. It's a really beautiful film.
So it's really good that. Ah. I do love Harry Potter,

(55:22):
but there is something super fun aboutgetting the chance to speak to people about
other amazing films they worked on,like with Tim and Little Mermaid, which
I think I was fangirling quite hardat the end. But yeah, that
was lovely to speak to him aboutthat. When I watched bout the recording
of me and Tim speaking, whenwe first started talking, it was broad
daylight and by the end we wereboth almost sitting in pitch black. So

(55:45):
I think that just shows how generoushe was with his time. Next week,
I'm speaking to Nicholas Hooper, thecomposer for Order of the Phoenix and
The Half Blood Prince, So wetalk about scoring some huge moments of heartbreak
with the death of Sirius and Dumbledore. We also talk about what it's like
taking over from another composer, notablyJohn Williams, and also just the very

(56:07):
basics of how it works, scoringa film which I knew nothing about.
So I'm wishing you all are weak, filled with happiness and magic, and
I will see you back here,same place, the same time,