Set Report
Chapter IV - Costumes/WETA
"The Lord of the Rings" trilogy turned Richard Taylor's Weta FX and workshop business into an instantly recognisable name. With the trilogy now over, the company has branched out into other films with their work seen in such titles as "The Last Samurai", "Master and Commander", "Hellboy", "Van Helsing", "Peter Pan" and the upcoming "King Kong". Now, you can add 'Narnia' to the list which all up they will have been involved with for over three years. Taylor himself gave us an interview during an extensive tour of the Weta studios complex which has been around since the very early 90's and which had devoted more than 2/3 of its workers to "Narnia" at the time.
Question: Had you read the C.S. Lewis books before this project came to you?
Taylor: I actually had a more intimate knowledge and history with C.S. Lewis' work than with Tolkien's. Being a dyslexic chap as a young guy, my reading skills weren't particularly hot. I wasn't thrilled by The Hobbit, struggled with Lord of the Rings, and found C.S. Lewis' writings - all of his books - a wealth of fantasy worlds I could celebrate myself. I read The Magician's Nephew first - most people enter the world of Narnia through The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe. The Horse and His Boy is my favorite. To me, that book has an intimacy that none of the others have, while still painting this vast landscape of worlds and turmoil. It was [necessary] to really understand the mythology through all the books to bring reality to the book we were making. Voyage of the Dawn Treader explores the world of Narnia more thoroughly than any of the others, and that's where we were able to pick up so many of our notations on cultural references. It was a delight, when we entered Narnia, to discover that much of the team had an incredible amount of knowledge in the world of Narnia, just due to the fact that it was so heavily read in this country.
Question: How many different creatures did you guys create?
Taylor: When we started on the film it was Andrew's intention to bring them all to the screen. And we touched on or designed sixty-four separate creature lines and derivates from those lines. As the movie has progressed, and as the visual effects department has come on board, budgetary issues have come on board. As Andrew has tried to put his arms around what is Narnia, things have dropped out - there were stalks and pelican in there. It will be interesting to see, if the visual effects department gets hold of the film in post-production, how many of those creatures actually make it back into the story. In the visual world of filmmaking, the last thing you want to do is jar the audience - especially a young audience - out of the story because they're analyzing the disparities between all of these massive creatures. I keep coming back to the man faced bull because it's part of Grecian mythology, and its such a strong image, you try to design it as a piece of film work - suddenly you get this truncated animal and unless you've got some sort of a cultural world to support its just this bull with its head chopped off.
It's amazing how odd some of these concepts are once you start putting them into a visual reference. Even the centaur, we've done centaurs to death over the years on Hercules and Zena, when you start to analyze the physical structure of a centaur, as we've had to do on this one... Where does the spine go? Where do the hips go? Are they human hips, or the hips of a horse? It is a complex design issue. And the centaurs we probably worked on for nine months, trying to find the right musculature and seating. So in answer to your original question I think you'll find a thinning out of the original creatures. I'm really pleased by the choices he made- surprised at, but pleased. The werewolf - to find a werewolf in the land of Narnia is an odd one. It feels like it's part of modern filmic mythology, but of course it's a creature that's been around modern mythology for a long time.
Question: And then there are good guys and bad guys, but they're the same species...
Taylor: That made for the most wonderful interplay in our design phase. In Lord of the Rings, there are goodies and baddies, but we always denoted the baddies as the hard cruel aggressive forces. They had blackened armor, they had no teeth, as Tolkein described them... In Narnia, just because they're baddies doesn't mean they have crap armor. Our most lethal baddies are the menators, and those, we've made the most opulent and exotic armor. They've used repuso- they've used an Italian Renaissance technique of taking sheet steel and with the use of chisels and bars, beating the steel from the back to create these voluptuous rich sculptural shapes that you can see in ceremonial Italian armor. They're so arrogant, so assured in their confidence and strength, there's almost a pomposity in their military force. They've become ceremonial in their presentation; they're chest pieces are emblazoned with cultural shapes. As opposed to the goodies, fawns, who don't have huge amount of military might, have to be nimble and light and sprightly on their feet - [they] use their skill and talent the way a Japanese ninja might.
Question: How did you decide on colors that would bring the world of Narnia to life?
Taylor: Because we were in the medieval period, the range of dyes and oxides accessible were only those of an organic mold. So as our characters journey through the three movies, they're colored by the oxides of the lands that they're walking across. The world of Narnia isn't like that; we can play so much more with the rich colors because we're drawing from the dies that were possible in Victorian England - so many rich colors. The technology that Shawn had gotten to at the height of technology, it was probably Egyptian. So you can start to bring more exotic colors into things - and use the colors really carefully to denote good and bad. We didn't play off the Christian or religious overtones in the story, but we're always aware [of them]. Aslan is emblazoned in the golden crown of light, his heraldry and the heraldry that plays onto the insignia of the weapons of the good guys has to in some way also be emblazoned in gold, because it is the blazing of the light and so on. We tried to bring that in in a subtle but necessary rhythm.
Question: And what about the children's armor?
Taylor: It's so easy to go, 'Okay, we want to create a medieval soldier.' But the moment you start locking the leg guard, suddenly you set it into a very defined period of our own culture - a fourteenth, fifteenth century type of military armor. We realized, very early on, even though there was talk of the need for that, as we drew into it we start - a twelfth or thirteen century- chain-mail armor, small pieces of articulated plate armor. It feels like the armor has been sitting, waiting for the children to arrive, the kings and queens of Narnia, taking their seats. They have been going on a journey to discover whether they can take the seat of Narnia and when they ultimately do, there is the armor waiting for them there. And so we wanted the armor to feel as if it had a history of antiquity, as if it was a treasure in its own right. Each piece is a symbol in a very utilitarian way. This 13 year old boy has to fight with skill and agility without overt difficulty.
The helmet was a complex thing to design. What the audience wants is to go on an emotional journey through the actor's emotions, their faces. As soon as you close off the face and profile you can't get a reaction shot on the actor. This is where so much of emotion is expressed, the musculature, the way the eye moved. It's imperative, even though military helmets have their own history, you've got to set them back behind the eye. We needed the boy to be able to emote through his helmet, though 90% of the time he's wearing it. He's making a physical decision that now he's going to lay his life down for the saving of Narnia. We came to the realization that nothing is going to be stronger than the final lowering of the helmet. That is set in a physical and visual and permanent mode. He's becoming a man. The helmet had to take on an innocent simplicity so it contemplated the youth of him. What we tried to do was weave in the motifs of Aslan. By putting down the face piece he is in theory embodying everything that Aslan represents, he's a soldier in Aslan's army. The face piece of the helmet is incredible subtly visually complements that of a face of a lion. That helmet had 5 prototypes beaten out, hand written in steel, subtly changing the shape and tone, taking it to Auckland, having Andrew comment. It's been amazing working with a director who has such an eye for aesthetic subtleties.
Question: The children have grown since the start of production. Has that been a problem?
Taylor: Well, steel does not stretch, and it's caused us...normally it wouldn't be an issue, because of course children grow. We can't say, we'll show you what it looks in 4 months because in 4 months the children will be 4 inches higher. It's expected of you to dress the actors, in every fitting, in armor. At least they haven't lost their baby teeth. I was talking to [the people] who did the Harry Potter shows, and [they said] that's something they never predicted, that the children's teeth would start falling out.
Question: How much work went into creating Susan's arrows?
Taylor: The arrows for Susan have as much focus and design aesthetic put into them as anything else, really. Most importantly, the point is a leaf motif that we've used that is off the apple tree from the Magician's Nephew, emblazoned with a sculptural head of Aslan, so the intention is that the arrow is carrying the intent of Aslan to the heart of the enemy. The bow is emblazoned with the face of Aslan, so as she holds her bow towards the enemy, she is also holding Aslan's face towards the enemy, the two of them are in camaraderie together. All this will mean nothing to most viewers of the film, but it sure means a lot to the people who have grown up and see Narnia as a religious text. For us to have delivered anything other than a complete saturation in the design of Narnia would have been a discredit to them. Just the children's belt straps alone, each has a different Narnian motif, some of them have multiple motifs woven together to tell a graphic story from certain flowers that C.S. Lewis described, certain vines and shapes from nature have been graphically woven into these things.
Chapter One >> The Basics
Chapter Two >> The Sets
Chapter Three >> The Major Players
Chapter Five >> Visual Effects
Chapter IV - Costumes/WETA
"The Lord of the Rings" trilogy turned Richard Taylor's Weta FX and workshop business into an instantly recognisable name. With the trilogy now over, the company has branched out into other films with their work seen in such titles as "The Last Samurai", "Master and Commander", "Hellboy", "Van Helsing", "Peter Pan" and the upcoming "King Kong". Now, you can add 'Narnia' to the list which all up they will have been involved with for over three years. Taylor himself gave us an interview during an extensive tour of the Weta studios complex which has been around since the very early 90's and which had devoted more than 2/3 of its workers to "Narnia" at the time.
Question: Had you read the C.S. Lewis books before this project came to you?
Taylor: I actually had a more intimate knowledge and history with C.S. Lewis' work than with Tolkien's. Being a dyslexic chap as a young guy, my reading skills weren't particularly hot. I wasn't thrilled by The Hobbit, struggled with Lord of the Rings, and found C.S. Lewis' writings - all of his books - a wealth of fantasy worlds I could celebrate myself. I read The Magician's Nephew first - most people enter the world of Narnia through The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe. The Horse and His Boy is my favorite. To me, that book has an intimacy that none of the others have, while still painting this vast landscape of worlds and turmoil. It was [necessary] to really understand the mythology through all the books to bring reality to the book we were making. Voyage of the Dawn Treader explores the world of Narnia more thoroughly than any of the others, and that's where we were able to pick up so many of our notations on cultural references. It was a delight, when we entered Narnia, to discover that much of the team had an incredible amount of knowledge in the world of Narnia, just due to the fact that it was so heavily read in this country.
Question: How many different creatures did you guys create?
Taylor: When we started on the film it was Andrew's intention to bring them all to the screen. And we touched on or designed sixty-four separate creature lines and derivates from those lines. As the movie has progressed, and as the visual effects department has come on board, budgetary issues have come on board. As Andrew has tried to put his arms around what is Narnia, things have dropped out - there were stalks and pelican in there. It will be interesting to see, if the visual effects department gets hold of the film in post-production, how many of those creatures actually make it back into the story. In the visual world of filmmaking, the last thing you want to do is jar the audience - especially a young audience - out of the story because they're analyzing the disparities between all of these massive creatures. I keep coming back to the man faced bull because it's part of Grecian mythology, and its such a strong image, you try to design it as a piece of film work - suddenly you get this truncated animal and unless you've got some sort of a cultural world to support its just this bull with its head chopped off.
It's amazing how odd some of these concepts are once you start putting them into a visual reference. Even the centaur, we've done centaurs to death over the years on Hercules and Zena, when you start to analyze the physical structure of a centaur, as we've had to do on this one... Where does the spine go? Where do the hips go? Are they human hips, or the hips of a horse? It is a complex design issue. And the centaurs we probably worked on for nine months, trying to find the right musculature and seating. So in answer to your original question I think you'll find a thinning out of the original creatures. I'm really pleased by the choices he made- surprised at, but pleased. The werewolf - to find a werewolf in the land of Narnia is an odd one. It feels like it's part of modern filmic mythology, but of course it's a creature that's been around modern mythology for a long time.
Question: And then there are good guys and bad guys, but they're the same species...
Taylor: That made for the most wonderful interplay in our design phase. In Lord of the Rings, there are goodies and baddies, but we always denoted the baddies as the hard cruel aggressive forces. They had blackened armor, they had no teeth, as Tolkein described them... In Narnia, just because they're baddies doesn't mean they have crap armor. Our most lethal baddies are the menators, and those, we've made the most opulent and exotic armor. They've used repuso- they've used an Italian Renaissance technique of taking sheet steel and with the use of chisels and bars, beating the steel from the back to create these voluptuous rich sculptural shapes that you can see in ceremonial Italian armor. They're so arrogant, so assured in their confidence and strength, there's almost a pomposity in their military force. They've become ceremonial in their presentation; they're chest pieces are emblazoned with cultural shapes. As opposed to the goodies, fawns, who don't have huge amount of military might, have to be nimble and light and sprightly on their feet - [they] use their skill and talent the way a Japanese ninja might.
Question: How did you decide on colors that would bring the world of Narnia to life?
Taylor: Because we were in the medieval period, the range of dyes and oxides accessible were only those of an organic mold. So as our characters journey through the three movies, they're colored by the oxides of the lands that they're walking across. The world of Narnia isn't like that; we can play so much more with the rich colors because we're drawing from the dies that were possible in Victorian England - so many rich colors. The technology that Shawn had gotten to at the height of technology, it was probably Egyptian. So you can start to bring more exotic colors into things - and use the colors really carefully to denote good and bad. We didn't play off the Christian or religious overtones in the story, but we're always aware [of them]. Aslan is emblazoned in the golden crown of light, his heraldry and the heraldry that plays onto the insignia of the weapons of the good guys has to in some way also be emblazoned in gold, because it is the blazing of the light and so on. We tried to bring that in in a subtle but necessary rhythm.
Question: And what about the children's armor?
Taylor: It's so easy to go, 'Okay, we want to create a medieval soldier.' But the moment you start locking the leg guard, suddenly you set it into a very defined period of our own culture - a fourteenth, fifteenth century type of military armor. We realized, very early on, even though there was talk of the need for that, as we drew into it we start - a twelfth or thirteen century- chain-mail armor, small pieces of articulated plate armor. It feels like the armor has been sitting, waiting for the children to arrive, the kings and queens of Narnia, taking their seats. They have been going on a journey to discover whether they can take the seat of Narnia and when they ultimately do, there is the armor waiting for them there. And so we wanted the armor to feel as if it had a history of antiquity, as if it was a treasure in its own right. Each piece is a symbol in a very utilitarian way. This 13 year old boy has to fight with skill and agility without overt difficulty.
The helmet was a complex thing to design. What the audience wants is to go on an emotional journey through the actor's emotions, their faces. As soon as you close off the face and profile you can't get a reaction shot on the actor. This is where so much of emotion is expressed, the musculature, the way the eye moved. It's imperative, even though military helmets have their own history, you've got to set them back behind the eye. We needed the boy to be able to emote through his helmet, though 90% of the time he's wearing it. He's making a physical decision that now he's going to lay his life down for the saving of Narnia. We came to the realization that nothing is going to be stronger than the final lowering of the helmet. That is set in a physical and visual and permanent mode. He's becoming a man. The helmet had to take on an innocent simplicity so it contemplated the youth of him. What we tried to do was weave in the motifs of Aslan. By putting down the face piece he is in theory embodying everything that Aslan represents, he's a soldier in Aslan's army. The face piece of the helmet is incredible subtly visually complements that of a face of a lion. That helmet had 5 prototypes beaten out, hand written in steel, subtly changing the shape and tone, taking it to Auckland, having Andrew comment. It's been amazing working with a director who has such an eye for aesthetic subtleties.
Question: The children have grown since the start of production. Has that been a problem?
Taylor: Well, steel does not stretch, and it's caused us...normally it wouldn't be an issue, because of course children grow. We can't say, we'll show you what it looks in 4 months because in 4 months the children will be 4 inches higher. It's expected of you to dress the actors, in every fitting, in armor. At least they haven't lost their baby teeth. I was talking to [the people] who did the Harry Potter shows, and [they said] that's something they never predicted, that the children's teeth would start falling out.
Question: How much work went into creating Susan's arrows?
Taylor: The arrows for Susan have as much focus and design aesthetic put into them as anything else, really. Most importantly, the point is a leaf motif that we've used that is off the apple tree from the Magician's Nephew, emblazoned with a sculptural head of Aslan, so the intention is that the arrow is carrying the intent of Aslan to the heart of the enemy. The bow is emblazoned with the face of Aslan, so as she holds her bow towards the enemy, she is also holding Aslan's face towards the enemy, the two of them are in camaraderie together. All this will mean nothing to most viewers of the film, but it sure means a lot to the people who have grown up and see Narnia as a religious text. For us to have delivered anything other than a complete saturation in the design of Narnia would have been a discredit to them. Just the children's belt straps alone, each has a different Narnian motif, some of them have multiple motifs woven together to tell a graphic story from certain flowers that C.S. Lewis described, certain vines and shapes from nature have been graphically woven into these things.
Chapter One >> The Basics
Chapter Two >> The Sets
Chapter Three >> The Major Players
Chapter Five >> Visual Effects
