Other Titles • The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) • The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe • The Chronicles of Narnia
“We had gigantic challenges along the way. The battle alone was made up of thousands and thousands of creatures, which includes polar bears, lions, tigers, centaurs, ogres, boggles, etcetera. Just an incredible undertaking.” —Producer Mark Johnson
The creation of Narnia would ultimately require more than just creative power—it also required massive computing power, combining the efforts of some of the hottest and most innovative effects houses in the world to digitally enhance the otherworldly characters and landscapes of this alternate universe.
“This is a story filled with incredible creatures,” remarks Adamson. “To give a sense of the scope, in the final battle, there are 20,000 creatures. All these creatures were created at least partly in a computer but no singular approach was used. Some creatures are CG all of the time. Some creatures are half computer-generated and half live-action. A centaur, for instance, might have a human upper body with a computer-generated horse lower body, while the beavers were entirely computer-generated. The idea was to have it all meld together into one cohesive universe that feels entirely real.”
“THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE is one of the biggest special effects movies ever made,” adds producer Mark Johnson, “and to pull it off we used three of the biggest, most creative effects companies in the world—Rhythm & Hues, Sony Pictures Imageworks and ILM—simultaneously.”
In the beginning, the filmmakers asked several effects companies to “audition” for the various characters, almost like actors. Johnson explains: “We would take a single character, let’s say Mr. Beaver, and ask five separate companies to take a stab at animating this character. There were no guidelines. We said, ‘Let’s see what you can do to demonstrate what Mr. Beaver would look like.’ That’s how we chose the best houses for the job.”
Overseeing the work was VFX Supervisor Dean Wright, a veteran of the second and third “Lord of the Rings” films. Wright collaborated with Rhythm & Hues’ Bill Westenhofer, Sony’s Jim Berney and ILM’s Scott Farrar to create somewhere between 1,000 and 1,400 CGI shots and images for the film.
According to director Adamson, “There really isn’t one frame, one scene, that is not touched by a visual effect.” Eventually, some 1,000 people would work on the effects and some 50 terrabytes of information for the film would be stored at three different effects houses. Large libraries of newly created images were shared back and forth by each of the houses as they worked in concert with one another, layering scenes with richer and richer effects.
So while Sony Pictures Imageworks was creating the CGI beaver performances and forging CGI wolves so photo-realistic they were able to mix seamlessly in with a pack of real animals in certain sequences, Rhythm & Hues was honing Aslan’s magnificent musculature and ILM was tinkering with how centaurs might walk. Then, the teams might switch, each working on a different aspect of Narnia’s massive world. “In every element, the aim was always to have each of the creatures be entirely believable right next to our human cast,” sums up Wright.
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