For Adamson, the most important recent advance in vfx is the increased ability to create sophisticated interaction between live-action and CG work. Here, an epic battle takes place to determine control of Narnia. 

As post-production neared its end, "you end up getting very involved, particularly when there's bottlenecks and the quickest way to resolve things is just to be there as much as possible. I was doing four to six hours of visual effects daily, sitting in a dark room with a pointer going: 'See this, this little bit here?' I literally put the last visual effects shot on at 2:00 Monday morning [April 28th, three weeks before the film's opening], so it's been right to the wire.

"The process of directing for the last month or so is letting go. I think Woody Allen said that directing is just choosing your compromises. All along the way you make decisions that have consequences, and in the last few weeks you make decisions that are final. You're just trying to finish the film because people are literally grabbing prints out of your hand and shipping them off, We actually finished this film one reel at a time to make the print date -- they were printing reel one before we had finished reel five.

"It was a difficult film to finish as any film is. You're now saying this is as good as you're going to get and you hope it is good enough."

For Adamson, the most important recent advance in vfx is the increased ability to create ever-more sophisticated "interaction between live-action and CG work. A lot of time they used to cut between live-action and CG characters who weren't even in the same frame. Then the lighting got sophisticated enough to for them to be in frame together. Now we've got a little girl rolling around with a CG lion with her hands in his mane.

"The other thing that is becoming more and more achievable are complex simulations. [ScanlineVFX] created the water god [seen at the end of the film]. It was a really masterful effect: to control water like that is incredibly difficult. They told us they'd been waiting do a shot like that for 10 years." Adamson recalls the earliest days of CG animation when water and fur were two of the hardest textures to simulate. "Now we have wet fur."

After his 11-year Shrek-and-Narnia sprint, Adamson plans to take a year off before settling on his next project. Other than a planned return to New Zealand, "I'm developing some stuff and looking to do something quite different," is all he'll say about his future. And what of his past -- does he ever miss his earlier life as a pixel pusher, sitting at a workstation for hours on end? Was he tempted to go hands-on while wrapping up Wardrobe, just for old times' sake? "I'm not getting on the keyboard anymore; I gave that up a while ago. The one thing I really miss about it, though, is listening to music. I used to have my headphones on and listen all day. But when you're in meetings continuously talking to people, you can't sit there listening to music. I really miss that."

Joe Strike is a regular contributor to AWN. His animation articles also appear in the NY Daily News and the New York Press.