Order of the Phoenix: Escalating Potter VFX -- Part 1
What do you do when you survive an encounter with evil sorcerer Lord Voldemort, only to discover that nobody within the wizarding community believes you? Things are not getting better for young Harry Potter in his fifth year at Hogwarts Academy. As if being called a liar was not enough, he has to deal with a new Defense Against The Dark Arts teacher whose only goal is to replace Dumbledore as Headmaster. A perfect situation for Voldemort to make his big come-back indeed…
On the most recent Harry Potter movies, the visual effects workload had been spread somewhat evenly among several key vendors, with many additional vendors contributing to the worldwide effort. For Order of the Phoenix (which opened July 7 from Warner Bros. Pictures), overall visual effects supervisor Tim Burke opted for a new approach and assigned the larger part of the 1,400-plus vfx shot count to lead vendor Double Negative. The London-based company eventually produced over 950 shots, four times more than the next largest vendor.
Visual effects supervisor Paul Franklin and vfx producer Dominic Sidoli were approached as early as September 2005 to work on previsualization for the whole movie, a process that lasted until March 2006. Double Negative's shot list was divided into four distinct geographical areas: Hogwarts, the Forbidden Forest with teenage giant Grawp, the Hall of Prophecy and the Veil Room. Two teams started working in parallel, totaling 250 artists, technicians and developers. CG supervisor Richard Clarke and compositing supervisor Jelena Stojanovic took care of the key Grawp sequences, while CG supervisor Justin Martin and compositing supervisor Jolene McCaffrey focused on the Hall of Requirements, the Hall of Prophecy and the Veil Room sequences.
Hogwarts Inside and Out Double Negative also worked on several exterior shots of Hogwarts and Hogsmeade, all of them involving multiple camera passes on huge miniatures built by Cinesite Models, and digital environments.
Into the Forbidden Forest
When their new professor refuses to teach them defensive spells, Harry and his friends set out to practice on their own. They do so in a secret magical room that opens up only in time of need, the Room of Requirements. There, the young sorcerers learn how to create a Patronus spell, an effect previously seen in Prisoner of Azkaban. Each child casts a unique version of the Patronus with its own individual animal at its core. Created in Maya, the 3D creatures were exported to Houdini, which was used to generate spiraling soft body trails. These were then re-imported into Maya where they were mapped with vfx shaders producing complex, coruscating patterns of light. The shots were composited in Shake.
Confronted by Harry, Ron and Hermione, Hagrid exposes the reason for his furtive behavior. He leads them into the depths of the Forbidden Forest where he reveals Grawp, his younger half brother -- a teenage giant. The Forbidden Forest was a practical set built on a sound stage at Leavesden Studios in England. "The set was big enough that it was quite possible to lose your direction within all the enormous trees!" Franklin recalls. "However, due to the restricted height of the ceilings in the studio, the trees topped out at about 25 feet, and their proximity to the lighting rigs meant that only the first 10 feet or so of the trunks were useable in the shots. Everything else had to be enhanced and adjusted. All up angles into the forest canopy required extensions."
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