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“The Northern Lights is more of a child’s odyssey, so every episode is a complete new world, plus we had a lot more background creatures with the last two episodes being Iorek Byrnison and the bears. The Subtle Knife is a more personal story. It’s exciting because we visit new worlds but bounce between them more, rather than introducing new ones every episode, so it is a different challenge.” —Russell Dodgson, Senior Visual Effects Supervisor
WIELDING THE SUBTLE KNIFE FOR HIS DARK MATERIALS By TREVOR HOGG
TOP: A mandate for the visual effects team was to make sure that the fantasy elements felt grounded, not magical. (Image courtesy of HBO and Framestore) OPPOSITE TOP: Previs assisted in determining the appropriate camera angles for the balloon shots. (Image courtesy of HBO and Framestore)
20 • VFXVOICE.COM WINTER 2021
PG 20-26 HIS DARK MATERIALS.indd 20-21
Embarking on Season 2 of the HBO production of His Dark Materials has enabled showrunner Jane Tranter to expand the cast of characters and creatures, as well introduce new environments in the seven-episode adaptation of the second book in the trilogy called The Subtle Knife. Lyra Belacqua (Dafne Keen) pursues her father Lord Asriel (James McAvoy) after he kills her best friend in order to enter another dimension; she journeys to a mysterious abandoned city where Will Parry (Amir Wilson), a young boy with a troubled past, becomes her travel companion. Returning to the alternative fantasy adventure conceived by Philip Pullman is the visual effects team that includes Senior Visual Effects Supervisor Russell Dodgson, Senior Visual Effects Producer James Whitlam and Visual Effects Art Director Daniel May. “It’s a reduction in visual effects shots from Season 1 to 2, which is rare,” notes Whitlam. “It will jump back up again on Season 3. We went from a bit over 2,000 shots in Season 1 to 1,400 shots on Season 2. That’s predominantly because of losing an episode due to COVID-19. We went from eight episodes down to seven and reduced the appearances of the polar bears.” Episode 204 was going to be devoted to Lord Asriel. “It was a standalone that assisted the main narrative, but once COVID-19 hit we had to stop the shoot,” states Dodgson. “We then had to
back into the edit and restructure things to have the other episodes finished at different places. We had about a week where we dropped to 75% or 80% productivity. Then we got back up to 90% to 95%, which means we will all have to work that bit harder to match the results that come from all being together.” Whereas Season 1 was divided between Framestore facilities in London and Montreal, Season 2 saw the addition of New York in order to relieve the scheduling pressure caused by the global pandemic. “There is always the sharing of assets and we try to minimize the amount of shot sharing as much a possible,” explains Whitlam. “Framestore New York was brought into the mix and took on a big set piece at the end of Episode 207. We brought in another team from London that worked on another set piece in Episode 203. In terms of the actual split, we flipped it this time and more work was done in London than in Montreal. It was 50/50 between North America and U.K. We always try to make sure to cast individuals or teams for particular work and consistently keep that work with them. For instance, all of the Spectre work was done out of London.” The budget had to be kept in mind when deciding upon the balance of visual effects work. “We had to figure out the best mix of effects we need to tell the story and how do we work around that,”
states Whitlam. “Obviously, the daemons have to be there. The Golden Monkey and Pan [Kit Connor] are in a way as important as the actual actors who are in the show. There’s that baseline. Then you get into that place where you’re going between additional daemons, establishing shots and environment extensions. We want to create a world that is big enough to draw audiences in and dramatic enough to hold their attention.” There is a significant difference between the first book in the His Dark Materials trilogy, The Northern Lights, and the second one, The Subtle Knife. “The Northern Lights is more of a child’s odyssey, so every episode is a complete new world, plus we had a lot more background creatures with the last two episodes being Iorek Byrnison [Joe Tandberg] and the bears,” observes Dodgson. “The Subtle Knife is a more personal story. It’s exciting because we visit new worlds but bounce between them more, rather than introducing new ones every episode, so it is a different challenge.” “One of the things about the design stage is not to be afraid to sometimes pull the whole thing apart and re-do it, because we had a model with a lot of different ideas and out-of-date parts in it,” notes May. “It was all getting to be unwieldy, so we made the call to re-do from scratch and build based on the set. We made loads of what you call decals in video gaming language. We did a bitmap for
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