New Zealand is seeing a lot of visiting journalist activity in the last few days. Over a week ago a bunch of international press visited the set of "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe". Director Andrew Adamson ("Shrek") talked with the NZ Herald whose article revealed a little about the locations.
Outside of the studios, the battle scenes have been shot at the huge plains and glaciers near Flock Hill, Christchurch, and scenes featuring Aslan's camp and training grounds, near Oamaru. After Christmas, some of the winter scenes will be shot in the Czech Republic and Poland because the snow is not deep enough in New Zealand.
Make no mistake this is a big production with a $100 million+ budget and well more than half of the film augmented with computer effects. Shooting wraps soon, but the movie will need a full year of post production as it's on such a large scale.
Meanwhile on the weekend I was lucky enough to attend a special panel in Wellington at the Armageddon Pulp Expo where Weta workshop head Richard Taylor, KNB makeup guru Howard Berger and VFX supervisor Dean Wright gave an hour long presentation.
The trio confirmed that both the film's opening wartime in Britain and the fantasy creature battle scenes towards the end have been greatly expanded upon from their short mentions in the book. The other books, especially "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" have been used as guides to working out the intricate details of this world.
The lion Aslan came up and they confirmed he'll be 99.5% CGI, though as photorealistic as technology can be these days. The other 0.5% is animatronics and I'll go into more detail about that when I'm allowed to release more details. The Stone table scenes are being shot right now. No voice has yet been cast for Aslan.
The Beavers will be CG, over 23 different species of creatures have been created by the KNB FX guys for the film including Minotaurs and Minoboars, and Mr. Tumnus is a half man/half make-up deal. Tumnus, played by James McAvoy who's best known as the 'rising to power' son Leto II in the "Children of Dune" mini-series and most recently played Paul Bettany's brother in "Wimbledon", has CG legs but his upper body will use quite a few prosthetics including a whole bunch of body hair along with horns and facial details.
Now, the biggest news is that the fourth book in the series "Prince Caspian" is already under consideration for the sequel with a writer being readied to have a go at adapting it. The film won't move past early stages until the first film comes out though as such.
Thanks to 'Jediyuth' & 'Kenny'.
