There are several reports on the internet today reporting on yesterday’s tour and talk at the visual-effects house Rhythm & Hues – who are working on The Golden Compass. Last week’s trailer was shown again, along with additional footage of the house’s graphics work for the film. One of the nine graphics companies working on the movie, Rhythm & Hues primarily worked on the daemons. Movieweb have a lengthy transcript of the event.
The company revealed that director Chris Weitz had asked them to give daemons something “different” that would mark them out from normal animals, such as have been seen on film numerous times before. Experimenting with characteristics like mild transparency, they eventually decided upon giving the daemons a multicoloured sheen to their fur. Co-visual effects supervisor Raymond Chen spoke of the need to retain some sort of consistency amongst Pantalaimon’s many different forms, explaining how they modelled the daemon with a “little dark area around his eyes […] we tried to give a little hint of that in all of his forms.”
With the recent decision to cut the book’s concluding sequence from the film, the ending the effects house had been working on will be shifted to The Subtle Knife. “We had a long period of time where we developed this stuff. It’s very matte-painting-heavy and effects-heavy, and we did a lot of work for it,” said Mike Meaker, the film’s art director.
Visual-effects producer Gary Nolin said of the change, “The decision was made to have the movie end slightly earlier than the first book ends, so there’s a scene at the end of first book […] the plans right now I believe are to start the second movie with that scene”. He clarified it will be the “scene that takes place at the North Pole, with the aurora borealis and the window into the new world.”
Read more with the full transcript.
Well there you have it.
There’s quite a lot of information flying around the net today from these guys. Some really interesting articles about the effects and some news on visits with websites really bigging this film up.
As for all this ending malarkey… Hmm… whilst I don’t doubt that the ending of this film will be fine, I just can’t see how pasting it on to the beginning of the next film will work. I really can’t. It just won’t have the same emotional impact. Hopefully I’m wrong though… and I don’t want to bang on about it too much, I just can’t envisage it working all that well. But I guess they know best (hopefully).
Jeez, I was still kind of holding out hope that this whole thing was a mistake, but I guess I can’t do that anymore. I don’t see how it will work either, Jamie; I understand making change like this if it works better cinematically, but I don’t see how this will. Oh well. 🙁
multicolored sheen?? umm ok i really hope this doesnt turn out too cheesy or something…
yes and i also dont understand how ending the film early will be any good…
i’m pretty sure the end will kind of suck if the MOST IMPORTANT SCENE isn’t there to push you on to the next movie.
It probably will work out an all,
but it still annoys me when they tamper with stuff like this,
why move the most climatic scene to the subtle knife?
theyll probabaly use the Iorek/Iofur bear fight as the climax in the film rather than the bridge to Cigazze.
but thats a well good part, especially when you see the relationship between Asriel and Coulter.
Grrr.
suppose if Pullman okay with it, we should be.