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How can dans_myman say comparing Narnia to Potter is garbage?
Especially since he hasn't even seen Narnia so he doens't know how much superior it is to Harry Potter? Once dan finally sees Narnia he'll see how much more superior it is to Harry Potter.
Man finally some really good footage from the upcoming Chronicles of Narnia sequel, Prince Caspian, due out in May!
I can't wait for the teaser trailer!
http://www.comingso on.net/news/movienew s.php?id=22954
I absolutely loved the Disney footage here from Comic Con, bring on the teaser trailer, and let's all count the days until the Narnia sequel Prince Caspian shows audience members how a real fantasy film is done!
Check out the Penvensies in their new Narnia costumes! With this and the video game trailer I know this is going to be even more action packed than the first film, and it proves to me that it will be a better movie than the last Harry Potter film, Order of the Phoenix! With Micheal Apted directing the third Narnia film, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and possibly the fourth film, The Silver Chair, it looks like the Narnia film series is shaping very nicely!
Yes, Disney commits to ALL SEVEN Narnia books to be filmed!
by - you
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Narnia Movies Released Yearly
Disney is planning to apply the Harry Potter formula to their Narnia franchise. Cinematical caught Disney’s panel at Comic Con today, where they announced that starting with The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian next summer, they’ll be releasing one Narnia movie a year until they’ve made movies out of all seven of CS Lewis’s hit legendary books.
If Harry Potter can do it, I see no reason why Disney won’t be able to. Though I’m not sure what the rush is. With Harry Potter they were forced to do them as fast as possible before their child cast grows up. But only a few of the Narnia books contain the kids from the first movie. Once they get those out of the way, there’s really no hurry. But, with Harry Potter winding up in a couple of years, perhaps Disney is hoping audiences will simply jump over to their Narnia fantasy movies and re-adopt the same yearly movie going rhythm.
Comic-Con Breaking News: Disney Commits to Make All 'Narnia' Films, One a Year!!!
Disney's completely packed panel was about all things Narnia this afternoon, and the biggest piece of news was the fact that they'll be releasing a new Chronicles of Narnia film every May, starting with Prince Caspian next summer, and continuing through the rest of the seven books.
While that's fairly exciting news, I sure hope that doesn't mean the films will suffer as a result. It takes a lot of time and effort to make a film replete with special effects that's based on a classic series ... will they be able to keep that up? With five more movies yet to come after next May, that's a lot of simultaneous work that'll be going on. If the movies end up being disappointing in any way, the first thing people will blame will be a rushed production schedule.
Still, as long as they do some serious justice to The Magician's Nephew, I'm all for it. There's nothing more frustrating than waiting years for the next installment in one of your favorite film series to come out.
Prince Caspian Comic Con Report, with BIG SPOILERS!
by NarniaRulesForever 7 minutes ago (Wed Aug 1 2007 16:29:26)
UPDATED Wed Aug 1 2007 16:31:21
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Over the last two days I've had the amazing opportunity to attend the 2007 San Diego Comic-Con International, and today I was able to attend the Disney panel, featuring Prince Caspian! It was one of the biggest thrills of my life, and I have SO much to tell you all. This report is probably going to be really long and drawn-out, so get comfy.
But, where to begin ... there's so much to tell. Well, I might as well start AT the beginning. Yesterday I prowled around the massive Exhibit Hall with my new NarniaWeb friends, Julie (Narniajewel from NarniaFans.com) and Kristi (who runs The Lion's Call). There wasn't too much of a Narnia presence except for a large PC display containing a TV screen that played a constant loop of the first Narnia.com video blog and the video game trailer. They also handed out some pretty spiffy Narnian tote bags, but besides that, there wasn't anything really there. I would have minded the lack of Narnia a lot more if I hadn't know there was going to be an amazing panel the next day!
So, the BIG day came. Saturday dawned bright and early and I sat in Hall H ALL morning just to ensure my seat for the Disney panel in the afternoon. Since no one wants to hear about that, I'll just skip all that and go straight to the stuff you really want to hear. So, the place was PACKED, the time for the panel came, they did their usual introduction thing and then Richard Taylor came out, bearing two swords. Now, I couldn't get a very good look at them because at that moment I was on my way to the Q&A line, and from what I could tell, they looked like swords to me. But, I am told on good authority by Julie (who had a clearer view than I) that they were NOT L,W,W swords, but were in fact probably Prince Caspian swords. I can't know for sure, and either way, they were only seen for a few seconds.
Next to come in was Mark Johnson, followed by Howard Berger, Dean Wright and Isis Mussenden. They then switched to a satellite feed where we could see Andrew Adamson, who was still filming in Prague and couldn't make it down. Unfortunately there were a few technical difficulties at first and for a while we could see Andrew and see him talking and he could hear us, but we couldn't hear him. This was cause for some mirth among all parties involved; at one point he pretended to do sign language, which was pretty funny. Thankfully they got the problem fixed only a minute later, and all proceeded as planned. Of course, there was the inevitable two-second delay that made for some pretty amusing moments throughout the show.
So, first there was the usual introductions and whatnot ... apparently all the crew that were there today flew down yesterday, I think? And were flying back either tonight or tomorrow, since there were still about 3 1/2 weeks of filming left to do. They were joking about how they all left and deserted Andrew down in Prague by himself ... Andrew exclaimed, "Come back, all is forgiven!"
They showed two videos from the film, the first being a pre-vis animatic, which is a sort of rough animation that filmmakers use to figure out exactly what they want to do long before they start filming. The second was a sort of mesh between LWW clips, PC crew interviews, PC concept art and ... PC CLIPS! It had the sort of a feel that a Narnia.com blog would have and I have a feeling y'all might be seeing that sometime in the far future.
First shown was the pre-vis. The scene shown was from the Narnians' midnight raid on the Telmarine castle; an addition to the movie from the book. I'm going to try and write down all that I remember, but please be aware that I only saw it once and my brain can only process so much information at time. Also, this was a pre-vis video, so just because we saw it there doesn't mean it will be exactly like that in the movie.
It started out with a pretty cool aerial shot of the Telmarine castle (and yes, it did look to me as if water were at least partially surrounding it), with a Griffin (or Gryphon ... eh, I'll go with what's easier to spell) flying into view. Here's the interesting part ... the Griffin was carrying Edmund in his talons! Looked as if he just picked him up by his shoulders and set off. It was definitely ... unique ... I don't know about anyone else, but I have never seen anything like that before, so it was pretty interesting to see!
It's kind of hard to write down exactly what I saw so I'll try to summarize.
- After the Griffin set him down on one of the high towers, Edmund took out one of the guards and then (get this) used his flashlight to signal the rest of the Narnians. (Sorry, huge geek moment.) Looked like Edmund was using Morse Code to signal with his torch.
- The group of Narnians that arrived after the start of the clip included Caspian, Peter, and Susan for sure, and I'm 95% sure that Lucy was there as well. There was also at least one dwarf and perhaps others as well.
- Three mice were shown sneaking into the castle and doing some stealth fighting of their own, part of which involved a cat. Two of the mice were colored brown and one was colored white, and the white one seemed (to me) to be the leader. I dunno ... maybe Reepicheep is going to have white fur after all? That was all we saw of any mice ... none were shown in the second video.
- There was one short shot of a tied-up dwarf, which makes me think that this whole raid is partially to surprise the Telmarines and partially to rescue said dwarf. Based on what we saw in the second video, we think the dwarf shown was Trumpkin.
- Susan and Lucy were included in the raiding party, and one of them (I think Susan) took out a guard with her bow and arrows.
- There was a gag shot in the pre-vis that Andrew threw in just for fun; it was a spoof on the Legolas/Gimli/beard -grab moment in LotR. A Narnian dwarf nearly trips backwards over a high wall and to keep him from falling and alerting the Telmarine sentries, Susan grabs him by his beard and pulls him back. This bit was JUST a gag and will NOT be in the movie; Andrew said so himself.
The video cut out before too much action got started, but what I saw looked really, really cool.
Next up was the "blog-ish" ; montage that actually contained real Prince Caspian clips. This was a SUPER amazing thing to see and it went by so fast; I'll try to put down everything I remember.
- A panning shot of Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy at the ruins of Cair Paravel. They looked to be standing in the area where the thrones used to be. Peter and Edmund were wearing white long-sleeved shirts with royal blue vests (looked knitted but I'm not sure), and the girls had red school jackets on. It was mostly a waist-up shot so I didn't really see what the full costumes looked like.
- A shot of the Pevensies in a boat with Trumpkin (I think ... lol, so much is hazy!). They seemed to be traveling inland as there was a waterfall in the background. Georgie looked so grown-up I hardly recognized her. I think they were wearing their Narnian clothes (as opposed to school clothes) but I don't know for sure.
- The Pevensies running along a beach ... I think they had the aforementioned boat with them, and they were wearing their school clothes.
- Various shots of the fighting in the castle raid, although this was in daylight. I saw Peter fighting, some various Narnians fighting; lots of Telmarines.
- Lots of shots of the Telmarines in their glittering armor and those weird masks. There was one of what looked to be a horse charge, and one close up shot of a Telmarine; I'm assuming it was Miraz. Unfortunately he was wearing one of those aforementioned masks so I couldn't see his face!
- A shot of a hand picking up a dirty Aslan coin or other circular metal disk out of the dust.
- A shot of the Telmarines crossing the Bridge of Beruna.
- A shot of Peter looking at something in the treasure chamber, and then looking up ... may have been connected to the above scene; I'm not sure.
- A shot of the Pevensies in some sort of throne room; it may have been Caspian's coronation or it may have been Miraz's castle. I got a good shot of the dress Susan was wearing; it was like her green dress in LWW in that it was long sleeved and full, but the style and color was different. This one had a definite waist and was a very pretty color of purple. Lucy was wearing a red dress with gray accents; possible the one we saw in those New Zealand photos from so long ago?
- A shot of a dwarf tied up in a room of some sort ... it was a great, clear shot, but I couldn't quite register which particular dwarf this was. However, after talking it over, thinking about it and based on the pre-vis clip we saw before, we're 99.9% sure it's Trumpkin. He looked AWESOME, by the way.
- Well, what I DIDN'T see was shots of Caspian ... not sure why. Maybe he was there and I mistook him for someone else; that is very unlikely though. Anyway, before the video showed, Adamson said that he didn't want to show us a bunch of clips with guys running around in green screen pants, so everything we saw was completely CGI free. They may have had a few digital touches, but there were no CGI characters or animatronic creatures shown.
- Peter and Edmund's hair was back to their LWW length, and maybe it was just me but Peter's hair was very brown ... in LWW, it was brown with a lot of blond highlights, I think.
- Edmund was at Peter's height, maybe even taller. MAN, that kid has grown!
- And last but not least ... hehe. (Sorry, I get a fiendish delight thinking about reporting this one). This is going to make most of you mad, sad, glad, whatever ... guys ... prepare for Eowyn #2. Yep, I'm afraid our Susan was kicking some serious tail today. Fighting with a sword; with at least one, maybe two soldiers. Sorry, purists, but it happened. I personally liked what I saw... I mean, okay, Susan fighting like a guy was a shock, but it WAS a cool shot. She was also wearing some armor during this particular clip ... I couldn't see exactly what it was but I could see some chain-mail.
So, of course, we're all pretty much filled up and running over by now! Two awesome Prince Caspian videos in a row ... wow. It was AMAZING. I don't know if I mentioned this before, but Julie, Kristi and I were all in line for the Q&A (we were the first three there) so we got to see everything on the big screen up close. It was SO cool; I can't even begin to describe it. I was just jumping all around; I was SO tickled.
Anyway, so what with the videos being done, Andrew announced that there was a special guest with him, and that guest was none other than Ben Barnes! It was kind of funny, actually ... he did his whole "reveal" thing, and we started clapping but nothing changed on the screen ... finally he had to tell the camera guy to zoom out so we could see Ben sitting next to him.
It was a really nice surprise to see Ben there; really nice to see him and just kind of see what he's like, since all I know of him is a few photos I've seen. He didn't really talk much the time he was there, although he did say a few things about filming and how you really had to use your imagination since Reepicheep to him was just an orange ball on a wire!
So, after they got all settled in they started the Q&A session. Kristi was first and she asked if they were planning on making all seven books into movies. Andrew replied that while he wouldn't be directing anymore, he couldn't see himself not being involved in some way and Mark Johnson said that they want to make as many movies as they can; one a year, maybe! Julie asked which was the most challenging creature to work with this time around, and they all said Reepicheep and Aslan. I don't remember all of what they said because I was standing right behind her and it is so unnerving to be on six huge screens in front of over 6,500 people. ;) Anyway, I got to ask Andrew if he had any particular funny or unique memories from this time around. He laughed and said I was asking for "anecdotes before the filming was even done" but he said that just working with the whole "international family" was quite memorable ... he remembered one instance when he was meeting greeting the actors who that were playing various Telmarine Lords, and one was Czech, one was Kiwi, one was Italian, one was Spanish, etc. etc ... and he had to pretty much use a different language for each one!
answering questions we probably would have tailored some of our questions for specifically him, but oh well ... another time. By the way, NarniaWeb.com was represented there ... I made sure they knew that my question was courtesy of y'all!
Andrew mentioned that the scene they had been filming that day had been the one where Susan and Peter find out they can't come back to Narnia. Shane Rangi was standing in for someone in a blue-screen suit (he said he looked like the Tick). I'm not sure if he was standing in for Aslan or for someone else. To help get the actors emotionally into the scene Andrew had Shane talk to them about how this was their last Narnia movie and how sad they were going to be to leaving, and after a while he noticed that there were two big wet patches on the face of Shane's suit because he started crying! All the panel members said that they too were sad to see Anna and Will go, but Isis mentioned that they get to come back for The Horse and His Boy, so they're looking forward to that!
After we were done asking questions we headed back over to our seats where we stayed for the remainder of the panel. They only answered a few more questions (I can't remember what they were; sorry!) and then Andrew and Ben had to go, since it was the middle of the night where they were, and Andrew said it was "past Ben's bedtime, and he needed his beauty sleep". One of the panel members made a comment that Andrew was going to go to bed and Ben was going to go clubbing or something of that ilk, which got a really big laugh. I loved Ben's expression ... it was hilarious.
So after Andrew and Ben left, the rest of the panel stayed on for a bit longer to talk more about the movie. Quite soon after that Howard Berger pulled a new-and-improved Satyr animatronic head out from under the table (he remarked that he was going to get in big trouble with Andrew for this particular stunt), and proceeded to show us how it worked. Richard took the remotes and messed around with the stuff controlling the eyes, mouth, etc. It looked really amazing and the new design looked great!
Last but not least, Richard Taylor had a guy come on stage dressed in full Telmarine armor! It was really neat to get a close-up (well, close-ish) view of it. I still think the mask looks weird, but hey, I don't make the costumes. Isis spoke a little about the different cultures that inspired the whole look, including Tibet, Greece, pirates; just a whole bunch of stuff.
It's kind of hard to remember the placement and order of everything, so here's a quick bulleted list of all the random stuff not mentioned already.
- Filming goes for about three more weeks and VodT filming starts end of January/early February.
- One of the great things about PC was that since they had already done tons of the work in LWW, they could have more freedom and flexibility as far as creatures are concerned; hence the varied age demographic among all the PC creatures.
- The filmmakers want to keep continuity true to the book as far as filming goes, and it has really helped, with the kids especially.
- They had 330 people to outfit for the Telmarine army, and they made 2,500 swords for the film; a lot of which were water-jet cut and some which were hand-ground.
- Mark Johnson said that as long as people keep embracing the films, they have no intention to stop making them. :)
- Ben will be releasing a blog on Narnia.com in the near future...Andrew didn't say if it would be a written or video blog, but I'm hoping the latter!
- There is a hero Satyr in the movie (his head was the one that was shown) and his name is Tyrus.
- Miraz's armor is a rich bronze and he has pictographs of the history of Telmar emblazoned on his chest-piece. Isis said that Miraz's armor was her most favorite and beautiful costume to date.
- They had fun shooting in the forest with the Telmarines.
- The four original kids were even more close-knit this time around; they said they all seemed like real brothers and sisters.
- Richard Taylor brought his son to the set of Prince Caspian and he was still at that age where he couldn't distinguish the difference between characters and actors, so when he met Ben, to him it was just like really meeting Prince Caspian. Richard said Ben was so great about it and never broke character once, but treated his son just as a prince would treat a young boy.
- Prince Caspian the movie is four times the scope of LWW the movie.
So, at the very end of the panel, Howard Berger pulled out a bag of KNB Prince Caspian crew shirts that he'd brought along and showed everyone the two different kinds that he had. One was a dark blue shirt with a white stick-figure drawn on the back that was labeled "Prince Caspian". The other shirt was dark brown and it had a cartoon of a faun on the back with a HUGE Afro that he said was a "70's Faun"!. Then he started throwing the shirts into the audience; it was SUCH chaos. Amazingly, I was able to catch one of the Prince Caspian shirts! Thank you so much, Howard!
So, that's my report of that amazing day! I had SUCH a fun time and it was definitely an experience to remember. May '08 seems SO far away!
On behalf of NarniaWeb, I'd like to thank all the people who worked so hard to pull that panel off. Mark, Howard, Dean, Isis and Richard, THANK YOU SO MUCH for coming down! It was so great to see you and to hear you talk about the movie. The cool perks you brought with you were above and beyond any of our expectations and again, thanks for the t-shirts, Howard!
Thank you, Andrew and Ben, for getting up in the middle of the night to come and talk to us crazy fans! You have no idea how much it meant to all of us.
Prince Caspian is going to blow Order of the Phoenix out of the water!
Narnia has an Oscar and Harry Potter has never won one!
The Chronicles of Narnia won an Oscar on it's first try, yet after four films, the Harry Potter series has never won a single Academy Award. Why do you think that is? Feel free to speculate, but, let's try to remain respectful.
http://rated-m.blog spot.com/2007/09/chr onicles-of-narnia-pr ince-caspian-set.htm l
http://rated-m.blog spot.com/2007/09/chr onicles-of-narnia-pr ince-caspian.html
http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=mYkDJ_8C DfI
http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=fhZgKCqJ XR8&mode=related&sea rch=
Walden's Narnia Plans After The Voyage of the Dawn Treader!
We know that Walt Disney Pictures and Walden Media have scheduled The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian for May 16, 2008 and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader for May 7, 2010, but what are the studios' plans after that?
Walden co-founder and president Cary Granat gave Variety an update:
Hopes are highest for "Prince Caspian," which will cost at least $150 million. Granat promises that the battle-filled sequel is easily distinguishable from its predecessor and the third pic on the sked, "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader."
Producers had announced at Comic-Con in July that auds could expect one "Narnia" installment each May for the next few years. Granat is committing publicly to only four or five, saying that "Silver Chair" might be the best bet for the fourth, followed by "Magician's Nephew,"but he admits that there are a multitude of possibilities including The Boy and His Horse, and the final Narnia book, The Last Battle.
"There are a lot of stories to be taken from the seven books," he notes.
http://www.cinemati cal.com/2007/09/17/e xclusive-the-chronic les-of-narnia-prince -caspian-official-o/
More names to add to the growing D/Granger HP Trollusername list.
Wonder who the Harry Potter troll(s) are who invaded this board, it's one person by the name of Dgranger also known as D/Granger (and company)
So far the Harry Potter alter egos are hers are: Andrea_For_Vendetta , Beetfields, DeathlyRanch, Deathly_GabyPotter9 1 easycousin-1, Granger17 (we all knew that) movie_fanatic_5000, Nearly_as_Loony_as_ Luna, Pirate-At-Heart, Ron_weasley_is_my_l ove, Steal-Your-Pain, TrixiePiixie (who knows what other usernames she'll use here next.) So really, how many usernames does she have? We'll keep track.
I guess D/Granger has more usernames than she cares to admit. (who knows what other usernames she'll use here next.) So really, how many usernames does she have? We'll keep track.
Prince Caspian: The Warriors of Narnia!
Wrapping-up ComingSoon.net's visit to the sets and locations of The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, we spent a bit of time talking to the key actors who take part in the battles that comprise the largest part of the action in the 2nd installment of the "Narnia" series. William Moseley and Skandar Keynes, who return as the Pevensie brothers from the first movie, talked about the differences between the two movies, while newcomer Ben Barnes, who plays the title role of Prince Caspian, talked about coming into this sort of experience after his small role in Stardust. Established Ialian actors Sergio Castellito and Pierfrancesco Favino play the villains, King Miraz and his right-hand man General Glozelle, in what will be the biggest movie of their careers.
Skandar and Ben also talked about their plans and hopes for the next chapter in the series, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which will be helmed by Michael Apted (Tomorrow Never Dies.)
You can read each of the interviews with the actors by clicking on the appropriate link below:
Ben Barnes is Prince Caspian (http://www.comings oon.net/news/intervi ewsnews.php?id=38419 )
William Moseley is Peter Pevensie (http://www.comings oon.net/news/intervi ewsnews.php?id=38420 )
Skandar Keynes is Edmund Pevensie (http://www.comings oon.net/news/intervi ewsnews.php?id=38421 )
Sergio Castellito and Pierfrancesco Favino are King Miraz and Gen. Glazelle, The Bad Guys!
(http://www.comings oon.net/news/intervi ewsnews.php?id=38422 )
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian opens nationwide on May 16, 2008. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is scheduled to open May 10, 2009.
Narnia Production Designer Roger Ford On Prince Caspian.
The job of production designer is one that tends to be overlooked by the man on the street, but essentially, they're responsible for creating the look for the movie, working with artists, costume designers, props and other departments to help the director attain his vision. Roger Ford has been that man for many big movies including Peter Pan and the Babe movies, but his game had to be raised when he was brought into that position for Andrew Adamson's The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and he's back for the sequel Prince Caspian.
Ford was one of the first people we spoke to when visiting the Prague sets of "Prince Caspian" and appropriately enough, we spoke to him in the middle of one of the biggest sets he's ever created, the interior courtyard of King Miraz's castle.
ComingSoon.net: We hear that this is your favorite set.
Roger Ford: Well, this is certainly my biggest set. We built some big stuff for the second "Babe" film, but I actually think this is bigger.
CS: Can you talk a little about the influences?
Ford: We started off looking at a castle in France, called Pierrefonds Castle, as a location, and that gave us a feeling of size that we wanted. We were thinking that the Telmarines who are now predominant in Narnia, having chased the Narnians back into the forests and slaughtered most of them, came from pirates, long ago, a thousand years ago. They were pirates that were shipwrecked on an island and found themselves in a cave where there was a portal into Narnia, so that was the beginning of Telmar and the Telmarines. Telmar was always there in the first film, but just next to Narnia. So we started to think about pirates, and we started to think about Peter and the children being English, and wanting "Prince Caspian" to somehow be different. We didn't want another bunch of English people, in other words. It wasn't going to be interesting, and I said to Andrew, "Why don't we make them French?" because there's always been stuff between the English and the French. It kind of sets up a nice situation. And he said, "Well, let's go further. Let's imagine perhaps that they're Spanish from the Iberian Peninsula, which kind of fits better with pirates as well. So this castle here, the influences for it are a Spanish castle. We did a lot of research and it's pretty close in many respects. Even that detail up on the balcony [points up], the diamonds came from locations within Spain, references. We wanted it to be rather oppressive, so the color is not a happy, cheerful color. We wanted it to feel immense. These are not very nice people, Telmarines, particularly Miraz. We started to think about Fascists and the imagery, you know, war, and we started to develop the eagle and it almost has a 1930s influence, but they've definitely got a Fascist feeling. Then, as another symbol for the Telmarines, we thought "pirates" , and what would be a good symbol that we can use on banners and flags, and we developed the idea of the compass, and we've used that symbol in the heraldry and in the Great Hall in the floor. It's almost, if you can imagine, Italian Fascists sort of using something like those. These stories are all about the last War, basically, they were written after the War ended, and the Lion and England and good versus evil.
CS: How do you get your head around something this large? What's the first thing you start on, and do you have a vision of this and you work toward it?
Ford: We knew what size we wanted, because Andrew had seen this castle in France, and we use what's called pre-visualization in the film, which is a visualization of the film in a computer before the set gets built even, so pre-vis had taken the plans of [Pierrefonds] quite early on and put them into the computer and started to work out the action in the courtyard, so that as we started to design this thing, we used the same sizes as had been used in that castle. We were, of course, able then, while building the set, to give Andrew much more of what he wanted for the action, so all these stairs [points around] are specifically designed for the action of what we call "The Raid" in the film when the Narnians try and take the castle. They get surrounded by archers, crossbowmen, and quite unpleasant things happen, so it's purpose-built for the film. Everything here, the way it's all planned out, is built to suit the film, rather than just, "Here's a set. Do what you want to do with it."
CS: Did you feel any intimidation about the scale?
Ford: You know, basically, it's just more carpenters. I mean the scale, it's no different to designing any other set, except that it's more people, more money.
CS: Did you carry some of these themes into the Great Hall set as well?
Roger: Yes. This is actually the exterior of the Great Hall. It kind of loosely resembles it, so this big window here, you'd have in the Great Hall, that is vaguely that shape. We had some very big iron chandeliers hanging in the Great Hall, hanging from eagles like this, but made of like cast iron and bronze and these huge chandelier things all around the Hall. It's quite impressive, actually.
CS: Is the coronation going to be inside the Great Hall, or will that be outside in the courtyard?
Ford: Miraz' coronation is in the Great Hall. It has already been shot. Caspian's [coronation] is in [the courtyard].
CS: Since you don't have any of the same sets from the first film, how much of that did you carry over in terms of themes or the look of this movie?
Ford: Well, there is the same set, but we don't know it is when we first see it. They come into Narnia, the children. In this film they come from an underground station in London. In the book, it's a country railway station. The underground station seemed to be visually more interesting, and we'd been on the station in the first film, and then of course, you have this wonderful tunnel effect in London underground stations. We went to New Zealand to find where the children would emerge in Narnia and we found this beautiful beach called Cathedral Cove, which has a tunnel through a rock. It goes from one beach to another beach through a tunnel. So there's this great transition where they're in the underground tunnel, and gradually they go through into this rock tunnel on the beach in New Zealand, then they look up and they see ruins up on the headland, and make their way up there and eventually discover that it is, in fact, Cair Paravel, the castle of the Narnians in the first film. So we had to recreate, exactly, the Great Hall of Cair Paravel, in plan on a location on the headland as a ruin. But it's a subtle ruin. The kids can't quite figure it out until they stand where the thrones used to be, and they're looking down and they start to see the columns. So that carried on through from the last movie. But after that, this is a much darker film, and it's more Shakespearean in many ways. I mean, the uncle kills the father (laughter) and has a son and he wants to kill Prince Caspian. It could be Shakespeare.
CS: The world has changed so much since the first movie, but it's still Narnia, but not really, because so much time has passed. How did you approach that, coming into this design-wise?
Ford: Like 1000 to 1200 years have passed, and it's been overrun by an invading army who were pretty brutal, so the Narnians have retreated to the woods. As far as the Telmarines think, they've almost been eliminated, but they haven't. They're still in there. So we've got this contrast between a rather somber architecture of the Telmarines, and the fact that they've cleared the forest as far as they can. All around the town and the castle, they've cleared the forest, and it's all rather depressing, contrasted with when you go into the forest, it's very beautiful. When Lucy finds Aslan, we prettied up the forests of New Zealand with our greens department, and it looks absolutely fantastic. All the forest stuff is really beautiful. There's actually a set, I don't know whether you've seen it, you should probably poke your head in there. (Note: We talked about the Dancing Lawn in Part 1.) It's just starting to take shape now. We imagined that the six or seven oak trees are the custodians of Dancing Lawn, sort of the guardians. And that's where the Narnians gather. So we're building that set at the moment.
CS: What was the decision about building [the courtyard] outdoors? Was there ever a thought about building it in sections on a soundstage?
Ford: Well, yes, and of course, it's a mostly night scene, where you have to shoot all night which is very inconvenient and unpleasant, but this wouldn't fit in any stage in this country or any other. There's something to be said for sort've just being able to do that [indicates camera pan with his hands]. You can often pick when you've cheated, but with this, we don't have to.
A Disney Rep: Also, if they're in the middle of filming and they decide they like something better, it's easy to switch, and you're not limited to the small sections, so you can get better angles.
Ford: Of course. I should point out that what you see here will be at least two or three times higher in the movie. All around here [points up] will be extended three times as high, and we worked on the exterior a lot to get it looking really oppressive and huge. George Miller on the first "Babe" film taught me something. We were trying to build the farmhouse for Farmer Hogit and he said, "You know Roger, did you watch 'Psycho'?" And I said, "Yeah sure, who didn't?" He said, "Do you remember the motel?" I said "Yeah, clearly." He said, "That is a character in that film. One of the characters is the building. That's what I want the farmhouse to be." So, in a sense, when we tried to develop the exterior of the castle, I'm trying to put a character into the movie and make it reflect the Telmarine culture. It's imposing in its own right.
CS: Do we actually see the exterior [of the castle] from the village?
Ford: You'll see, quite often, the exterior. It's being built in miniature in New Zealand by WETA, and the town is built in miniature. The castle, actually there's already a poster of it on the net, the first version of it. It has changed slightly since then, but it's built on rock pinnacles. We found a location in Germany, which has enormous rock pinnacles where there was once a castle.
CS: Can you talk a little about Aslan's How?
Ford: We always go back to the book and look at the illustrations by Pauline Baynes, and then we think, "Well, we have a movie to make here, so what can we do to go a few steps further?" So that when the children who've read the book and seen the illustrations go see this movie, they'll be re-inspired, and that it's even better than they thought possible. The single combat between Peter and Miraz happens almost like in a boxing ring. Looking at that, you think, "Well, that's not going to work, who's going to be impressed by that?" So, we developed Aslan's How to have a kind of ruined temple out in front of it. Which then gives us a stage to work off, something interesting for them to jump on, bits of rock and ruin. It kind of sets it into the landscape rather than just two guys fighting. So that's one thing we did. And then, Andrew developed the battle wanting it have something other than just the two armies facing each other on the landscape.
CS: Can you talk about the decision to move the production from New Zealand to Prague? Was it because of the forest?
Ford: I think we looked at the studios in Berlin, and we considered Australia, you have to go through all the possibilities.
CS: But why not stay in New Zealand? There's a lot of wide open space there.
Ford: The problem was the delivery date for the film, and therefore, the time we had to make the film and have it finished, and it put us across winter and summer in New Zealand. No, the other way around. Summer and winter in New Zealand are winter and summer here. We don't want Winter. Well, we started off in Summer in New Zealand, and then as winter came on, we had to move here and wait for the Spring to come on, so those are the sort of things that make the decisions . I think we came to Prague because, well, I'm certain financial considerations played a big part, but also it's in the middle of Europe, and a lot of our locations are in Holland, Slovenia, you know, also in the Czech Republic.
CS: Do you know if you're going to be involved in future Narnia films?
Ford: No, I won't be. I have had four great years with Andrew Adamson. The next movie has already started, so apart from the fact that four years of Narnia seems like enough, it's been brilliant and I think it's great to hand it over to a new team, a new director, new designer.
CS: How has production design changed since you first started?
Ford: It's basically computers, isn't it? But, what actually happened is exactly the opposite. My job has become incredibly much more interesting and exciting because all these possibilities open up now. You can go to locations now that you couldn't have used because you'd see electric lines or clouds going across the landscape and say "Well, we can't use it." Now you can use it because you know you can get rid of those things and add things to it, so it has actually made my work much more interesting, exciting, and challenging. It's brilliant.
CS: A lot of times when you design something, you have to have a painter paint it, and if you want to make a change to that, you can actually change it with the computers…
Ford: Absolutely, it's brilliant. You can go inside your set before it's built. We started doing that on the second "Babe" film, and that was the first time I did it. We built this hotel which was like a four-story foyer with staircases going all the way up it. There were a lot of scenes in there and director George Miller wanted to see how it was going to work, so it was all put into a computer and we were able to walk up the steps before we even put a nail into a piece of wood. It's fantastic to be able to do that. For instance, now if you go out to Ústí where we're filming Aslan's How, we can take photographs of the set and put in what is going to be added and show Andrew and he can guide it and make comments about it way before that part of the movie is finished.
CS: How is it combining all this in the computer?
Ford: Well, this is where the pre-vis comes in really useful. We can do schemes and schematics of frames in the movie now and you can say, "This foreground part is one pass, and this bit we'll build in miniature, and the background from New Zealand…" So you know the way the film will be made up before you do it. So I know what I am providing, and I know what the supplementary stuff will look like. It's all to do with very careful planning.
CS: Before we let you go, do the hieroglyphics on Stage 6 that go around Aslan's table mean anything?
Ford: I was asked this question on the first movie, and I'm going to say the same thing: "If you want to know what it means, you gotta ask Aslan."
OOTP only caught LWW because it was released on IMAX screens!
That's pretty pathetic. Without it, it's way behind LWW in domestic sales. Don't worry, Prince Caspian will overtake OOTP's gross at the box office because it will be a better movie!
As usual, D/Granger is making false claims of her own again.
D/Granger and her entourage of at least 30 usernames on this board, is going around making false accusations, simply because she cannot accept the fact that some people on this board, don't agree with her viewpoints, so, instead of engaging with everyone, she conveniently links all of her enemies, because she can't deal with people individually. Of course that is also a bit of hypocrisy on her part, since she has brought everyone of the Harry Potter trolls posting on these boards recently.
Narnia has an Oscar, and Harry Potter has NEVER won one!
I'll bet that really bothers those Potter fans, doesn't it? After five films, Harry Potter has never won a single Academy award, and The Chronicles of Narnia, wins an Oscar after it's first film.
By the way, the trailer to Prince Caspian was better than any of the Harry Potter films so far! It will easily outgross Order of the Phoenix and Half Blood Prince at the box office!
Harry Potter fans think that Prince Caspian has only one good week......
They will be very incorrect, they predicted with the release of King Kong it would only have one good weekend, and it ended up back at number one after it's third week! If anything, Disney really knows how to market it's movies better than any other studio. Expect a bigger hit than the last two Harry Potter movies, and expect the full set of Narnia films at a theater near you in the coming years!
Some Great New Prince Caspian Photos!
http://poifect.com/ annapics/thumbnails. php?album=340
Man, this is going to be even bigger than the first film!
The first Narnia film outgrossed three of the five Harry Potter films!
Harry Potter 1: $317 million
Harry Potter 2: $261 million
Harry Potter 3: $249 million (Adjusted due to IMAX release)
Harry Potter 4: $290 million (Adjusted due to IMAX release)
Harry Potter 5: $292 million (Adjusted due to IMAX release)
Chronicles of Narnia 1: $291 million (without any IMAX release!)
Howard Berger confirms that Walden and Disney want to make ALL 7 NARNIA BOOKS!!
http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=6rJm8D2G rLQ
New Behind The Scenes Video on Prince Caspian!
This is great behind the scenes footage!
http://www.comingso on.net/news/movienew s.php?id=42490
Has anyone else seen the Prince Caspian action figures?
They look terrific, far better than the figures from the first movie!
http://74.52.193.82 /events/main.php?g2_ itemId=89571
Wow, You Can Already Pre-Order Prince Caspian Tickets NOW!!!!!!!!
http://www.fandango .com/thechroniclesof narnia:princecaspian _109333/movietimes
That's quick!!!!!!!!!!
Cool New Prince Caspian Photos (Mild Spoilers)
http://movies.aol.c om/movie/the-chronic les-of-narnia-prince -caspian/24862/chara cter-guide
Before the HP trolls start calling Caspian a 'bomb' remember......
This is only the first weekend, and kids are getting out of school. While it's true that Caspian won't make as much money as the first film here in North America, remember, this is only the first weekend, and Disney is pushing every dollar out of it. This is going to be a long summer, and the film will slowly be released to other countries around the world. Not to mention, Walden Media, and it's founder, Philip Anschutz, a multi BILLIONARE, are flush with cash and he is VERY passionate about the series.
I do have a very strong feeling the sequels will now be released in the holiday seasons from now on as Narnia is more of a Christmas type of film than in the summer. But, hold out hope, many box office pundits wrote off the first film as well after it's first weekend ($65 million), and it became one of the biggest box office hits of all time!
Remember Toy Story also had a slow start and it made over $200 million at the box office, and that there really aren't that many family movies at this time with the other summer blockbusters being rated PG-13.
In any case, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is going full steam ahead, and filming begins this October with Skander Keynes, Georgie Henley, and Ben Barnes all returning. Both William Mosely and Anna Popplewell may make cameo appearences in the beginning of the film, as has been hinted by some. I do have a feeling Disney will change the release date to November or December instead.
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