Tagline: Everything you know is about to change forever.
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian finds the Pevensie siblings pulled back into the land of Narnia, where a thousand years have passed since they left. The children are once again enlisted to join the colorful creatures of Narnia in combating an evil villain who prevents the rightful Prince from ruling the land. “Prince Caspian” was first published in 1951, and is the fourth book in the seven-book series written by Lewis. It was intended as a continuation of “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.”
The enchanted characters of C.S. Lewis’s timeless fantasy come to dazzling life again in this second installment of the seven book series, in which the Pevensie siblings – Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy – are magically and mysteriously transported back from World War II England to Narnia, where a thrilling, perilous new adventure and an even greater test of their faith and courage awaits them.
One year after the incredible events of “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” the Kings and Queens of Narnia find themselves back in that faraway wondrous realm, only to discover that more than 1300 years have passed in Narnian time. During their absence, the Golden Age of Narnia has become extinct, Narnia has been conquered by the Telmarines and is now under the control of the evil King Miraz, who rules the land without mercy.
The four children will soon meet an intriguing new character: Narnia’s rightful heir to the throne, the young Prince Caspian, who has been forced into hiding as his uncle Miraz plots to kill him in order to place his own newborn son on the throne. With the help of the kindly dwarf, a courageous talking mouse named Reepicheep, a badger named Trufflehunter and a Black Dwarf, Nikabrik, the Narnians, led by the mighty knights Peter and Caspian, embark on a remarkable journey to find Aslan, rescue Narnia from Miraz’s tyrannical hold, and restore magic and glory to the land.
The wardrobe is gone…the White Witch is dead…and Aslan has been missing for over a thousand years. Now, Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy Pevensie are beckoned back to Narnia to find a vastly different world, where a new enemy stalks the battlefield and the land’s kindly creatures find themselves on the brink of extinction.
The film continues the spectacular story that began with the Oscar-winning 2005 release, “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” which earned over $745 million dollars in its worldwide theatrical release, making it one of the most successful movies ever made, and one of the biggest successes in the annals of the Walt Disney Studios.
The Return to Narnia: The Story of Prince Caspian
The enchanting characters of C.S. Lewis’ timeless fantasy come to dazzling life again in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. This time out, the Pevensie siblings-Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy-are magically transported from World War II era England to Narnia through a tube station near London’s Trafalgar Square, embarking on a perilous new adventure and an even greater test of their faith and courage.
One year after the incredible events of “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” the former Kings and Queens of Narnia find themselves back in that faraway realm, only to discover that more than 1,300 years have passed in Narnian time. During their absence, the Golden Age of Narnia has faded into legend. The land’s magical talking animals and mythical creatures exist as little more than folk tales to the Telmarines, a race of humans led by the merciless Lord Miraz. The mighty lion Aslan has not been seen in a thousand years.
The four children have been summoned back to Narnia by Caspian, the young heir to the Telmarine throne, to combat his evil uncle Miraz. With the help of a crusty, valiant dwarf, Trumpkin, a courageous talking mouse named Reepicheep, and a mistrustful Black Dwarf, Nikabrik, they lead the Narnians on a remarkable journey to restore magic and glory to the land.
Prince Caspian is the second of Lewis’ seven-book Chronicles of Narnia series, which includes The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair, The Horse and His Boy, The Magician’s Nephew, The Last Battle, and the story that launched the series, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Published between 1950 and 1956 and long regarded as one of literature’s most enduring and imaginative classics, Lewis’ books have sold over 100,000,000 copies in more than 35 languages, making it one of the biggest book series.
As the creative and artistic director of Lewis’ estate and the C.S. Lewis Company, Douglas Gresham (the son of Lewis’ wife, Joy Davidman Gresham, and her first husband, novelist W.L. Gresham) worked for over twenty years to bring Lewis’ books to the big screen. Following the resounding success of “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” Gresham is embarking on what he calls “the second chapter in a lifelong dream.”
“I watched that dream come true when `The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ exploded onto movie screens around the world in 2005,” Gresham exclaims. “I always expected the movie to be a delight and a joy to world audiences, but I have been somewhat humbled by its level of success.”
Producer Mark Johnson believes the second film has surpassed the original in many respects. “This movie is bigger than `The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe,’” he says. “It’s bigger in terms of the number of people behind the camera. It’s bigger in terms of the number of people in front of the camera and, most importantly, it’s bigger dramatically.The themes that we’re playing out here, and the relationships, are much bigger and a bit darker than they were in the first film.”
Director Adamson explains: “PRINCE CASPIAN tells the story of Narnia 1,300 years after the Pevensies left. The Telmarines have taken over Narnia and driven all the creatures into the forest. Prince Caspian, the rightful heir to the throne, has been ousted by his uncle Miraz. Caspian blows Susan’s horn to bring the Pevensie children back to Narnia to save the land from Miraz, this unrightful king.”
The story reminds Johnson of the films he loved as a kid. “It harkens back to some of those movies that were full of adventure and swashbuckling and brave characters. We even have a castle and a moat! On top of that, it takes place in Narnia, so it involves C.S. Lewis’ imagination.”
Unlike the first movie, which deliberately started small and built to the epic battle scene, PRINCE CASPIAN starts big and gets even bigger. “We’ve seen that epic world now,” notes Adamson. “So, at the beginning of this movie, we had to start epic and then get more epic. We had a lot more exterior locations. We had castles and kingdoms created by a new race of men, the Telmarines. So there was this whole new world to design. Also, this film is probably a little darker and grittier than the last one, partly because the children are older, making the story more adult in nature.
“In the last film, I think we went to some pretty dark places,” he adds. “Aslan’s death, certainly, is one of the darkest moments in the film. I think this movie has the potential to be even more sinister. Miraz is potentially someone that we might actually see in real life, which makes him and the story that much darker.
“’The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,’ is a very emotional story about sacrifice and forgiveness,” Adamson says. “In some ways, this is a more personal story, a story of these kids returning to a place that they love, but that no longer exists. This is more about coming to adulthood, about growth and adventure.”
That idea resonated with the director on a personal level. Although born in New Zealand, Adamson spent his formative teen years in Papua New Guinea “which no longer exists as I remember it growing up. For me, it’s a similar experience for these four children as they venture back to Narnia, a world that is not the same as when they first went there.”
“When I read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as a child, I remember getting to the end of it and thinking, `well, hang on a sec’,” Adamson recalls. “These guys were kings and queens. They ruled Narnia for fifteen years. They fought battles. They won wars against giants and now they have to go back to school? I wanted to see what happened next.”
“PRINCE CASPIAN is a completely different story from `The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,’” producer Johnson explains. “The children have adjusted to a varying degree to being British school kids again. All of a sudden, they’re brought back to Narnia because they are needed to help save the land once again.”
The Characters of Prince Caspian: Old and New
“It’s a wonderfully nostalgic story,” adds Adamson. “Basically the children have come back to a place that they’ve longed to be, the place they ruled for 15 years. Everything has changed. Cair Paravel is in ruins. The people they know have been driven into the wild. Aslan hasn’t been seen for a thousand years. They’ve got to come to terms with that, and at the same time, try to restore Narnia as they know it.”
That theme intrigued the screenwriters as well. “It’s an area Lewis left mostly untouched,” offers screenwriter Markus. “Lewis memorably examined what it would be like for a 1940s school kid to become King of Narnia. However, he didn’t much consider what it would be like for a King of Narnia to return to being a 1940s school kid.”
“Their year back in London must have been awkward at best,” adds writing partner McFeely. “Given their different personalities, each Pevensie handles the situation with varying levels of success. Their sudden return to Narnia pushes different buttons in each.”
And, how do the experiences of the four young British actors compare to what their screen counterparts encountered in the new story?
The eldest of the foursome, 21-year-old William Moseley, says his anticipation and anxiety to get back in front of the movie cameras echoed what his character Peter endured in the time between his fifteen-year reign of Narnia and his return to the kingdom in the new story. Just like his character, the handsome British native returned to secondary school.
“Finishing the first film was an amazing experience,” he says. “Then it was all taken away. Even though I didn’t react the same way Peter does, I can really understand how he feels.”
Once the senior sibling returns to Narnia, “he becomes slightly arrogant,” the actor notes of his character. “There’s fighting within the group. Peter cannot accept Caspian. His plans are not set from his heart, but from his ego. Even when he doubts himself, he still is too stubborn to back down and accept that he might be wrong. And ultimately, he pays the highest price.
In the process, Moseley says, his character becomes a man. “When he gets back to Narnia, it’s 1,300 years later and people don’t know he’s a high king. They just see a boy. Peter has to prove who he is to the Narnians.”
“When we cast William as Peter, he was just 15 and had never done anything like this before,” Adamson notes. “William’s transformation was not dissimilar to that of his character Peter in the story, from this 17-year-old boy into a young man. I don’t think he’d even been on a movie set before. He was just this really great kid you wanted to be your big brother. And now, William has turned out to be a handsome and capable young man.”
Adds co-star Anna Popplewell, “Although William is 21, he’s playing a 16- or 17-year- old. But he’s an adult now. I had my first audition with him when I was 13. And we really have sort of grown up together. Everyone has grown up a little bit, and changed a little bit,” she observes.
However, Popplewell did notice how the character of Susan had changed when she read through the script. “Susan gets to be involved in a bit more action this time,” the actress enthuses. “I loved doing the fighting scenes. I loved being in the raid and the battle and getting my teeth into some of the stunts. I didn’t get to do much of that in the first movie.”
The film marks the end of Narnia’s road for the eldest Pevensies, Susan and Peter. Popplewell admits, “I feel incredibly lucky to have had this experience, a fantastic time. And I’d so much rather have been here than not been here. But, at the same time, it’s really sad that I won’t be coming back.”
After finishing “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” Popplewell concentrated on her secondary school studies and landed a coveted spot at Oxford’s Magdalen College, the same school where author C.S. Lewis served a three decade tenure from 1925-54, although she did not know of Lewis’ longtime connection to the college until she read a biography of the famed author.
Co-star Georgie Henley has grown into a bright and studious 12-year-old who has written two of her own stories, The Snow Stag and A Pillar of Secrets.
About Lewis’ imaginary world, its story and its characters, Henley says, “They’re just brilliant because of the way C.S. Lewis wrote them. He didn’t put too much description in, so Narnia is almost our complete imagination. We can interpret it however we like. I think that most people have their own interpretation of these books and these characters.”
Henley acknowledges two changes in her character in the second film. “In the last film, I was sweet little Lucy, and now I’m a bit more actiony, which was quite fun,” she says, adding that she spent time learning to ride a horse and wield a dagger for her role. “Also, Lucy stands up for what she believes in more than in the last film-her faith in Aslan. She’s braver and she has her own view about what she thinks is right. She sees Aslan before her siblings do, which I think shows Lucy’s trust in Aslan more than the others.”
Producer Mark Johnson describes Lucy Pevensie’s dilemma as a fundamental question of faith. “She’s asking `Who am I? What is the right thing to do?’ Her conscience dictated a lot of what she did on the last film. In this one, it’s put to some pretty severe tests.”
Skandar Keynes, who plays Edmund, was 12 when he started shooting the first movie. By the end of PRINCE CASPIAN, he had turned 16. Despite his being five years younger than his co-star Moseley, Keynes sees his character as taking the role of the older brother in his relationship with the elder sibling Peter this time out.
“Edmund is always looking out for Peter,” says the young actor. “He always helps him, but never gets the credit he deserves and that gets to him a bit. It’s one of the recurring themes-how Edmund’s always helping Peter out. You know, there was even a day on the call sheet where the scene description was `Edmund saves the day.’ I didn’t let anyone forget it. I walked around with a call sheet in my hands all day saying, `Edmund saves the day’. That was really cool.”
Co-star Moseley believes moviegoers will see the Pevensies in a new light in PRINCE CASPIAN. “Peter and Susan especially. These two had challenges in the first film, but nothing on this level. I think audiences will be surprised and engaged by both the physical battles and the emotional battles endured by our characters.”
“They’ve all grown up really well,” Director Adamson says, sounding like a proud parent of the young actors portraying the Pevensie clan. “A large reason for me to do this again was working with the same children. There is this wonderful relationship between the kids, how they became a family and how they let us become a part of that family. There’s change in very positive ways in growing up, but I’d like to say the movie didn’t change who they are, which I’m really happy about.”
The New Characters
The characters battling for control of the vastly altered Narnia are played by two new faces on the Hollywood movie scene-the young, charismatic British stage actor Ben Barnes as the film’s title character, and seasoned Italian movie star Sergio Castellitto, who embodies pure evil as King Miraz.
Barnes was no stranger to the C.S. Lewis literary series. “I was a massive Narnia fan as a kid,” Barnes exclaims with the exuberance of an eight-year-old boy delving into the novels for the first time. “I definitely remember the books being a big part of my childhood. When I found out I got the part, I looked through my bookshelves and found this copy of Prince Caspian with 1989 copyright, when I was eight.”
“We took a long time to find Ben and saw many actors for this role,” Johnson says. “We needed a young man who could be heroic, but who also had something in his personality that reflected what the character learns through the journey in this film.”
English casting veteran Gail Stevens had an assistant who had seen Barnes in the recent West End staging of the award-winning drama, “The History Boys.” When she contacted his agent, the actor taped an audition reading for Adamson.
That video introduction led to a personal audition where the director crowned him the star of his new movie. “When we finally met Ben in person, we found him charming and fun and comfortable. He won us over,” Adamson recalls. “You could see from his effort and enthusiasm how much he wanted the role. I admired his work ethic.”
Barnes’ whirlwind adventure began almost immediately. Costume fittings, horseback riding practice, dialect lessons, fencing and stunt rehearsals consumed his early days and weeks on location in New Zealand.
In addition to immersing himself in the role, he also had to find a place for himself in a tight-knit film family. All four Pevensies were anxious to meet Barnes and see how he would fit in when he first arrived in New Zealand. “He became an honorary Pevensie,” jokes Keynes. “And the fact that he was 25 when we made the movie made everyone else act a bit more mature.”
“Ben had a lot to live up to before we’d even met him,” says Popplewell. “Especially for William and me, because we knew that we were not in the next story. We were, in a sense, passing the films onto someone whom we really liked. He had that something that we very much connected with.”
Before he meets the Pevensies in Narnia, Caspian is rallying support among the Narnians for a campaign against his own people, the Telmarines. “They’re trying to kill him,” Barnes explains. “I blow the magic horn and summon the Pevensies back to Narnia. Peter, as the High King, rightfully assumes that he’s in charge. We both have different ideas about how we should go about defeating my evil uncle, which leads to this conflict between us.
“Even though the story takes place in a fantasy world, you have to play every moment as truth,” says Barnes. “I hope those moments translate into something that the audience can really become involved with. If so, they will get behind Caspian and see him through from the beginning to the end of his journey.”
“The adult characters are much more scary in this film,” says Moseley. “The White Witch was scary, but you’ve seen nothing until you’ve seen Miraz. I fought both of them one-on-one, and Miraz took my breath away. It was really interesting watching Sergio change into Miraz. He takes on a whole new persona!”
During the casting process for the evil Miraz, the filmmakers were immediately intrigued with Castellitto. “Sergio is one of the most accomplished and well-regarded European actors around today,” says producer Johnson about his screen villain. “As soon as we saw his audition tape, we said, `Let’s explore this further.’ ”
Castellitto’s lengthy acting resume includes some of Italy’s best known movies over the last quarter century. He is well-known for roles in Luc Besson’s “The Big Blue,” and Best Foreign Film Oscar nominees from Italy such as “La Familia,” and “L’Uomo delle stele.”
“I have a lot of admiration for Andrew Adamson because he pays attention to the psychological aspect of the performance and character,” Castellitto says. “We spoke about the character as a human being. We spoke about the battle between youth and age. The good and evil is evident in that dichotomy between Miraz and Caspian.”
Once actor and director had established Miraz’s psychological profile, they next turned to his physicality. The physical look of the film’s human cast fell to a team of makeup magicians led by two-time Academy Award nominee Paul Engelen (“Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan,” “Lord of the Apes,” “Casino Royale”) and hair designer Kevin Alexander (“Casino Royale”)
Engelen, a 40-year industry veteran with one of his craft’s best professional resumes, in collaboration with Adamson, created a Mediterranean look for the Telmarine characters. The longtime makeup artist felt immediately that Miraz should have some kind of beard. “The character of Miraz demanded that he be very forceful and intimidating for the part to succeed, and I very soon arrived at the triangular design we decided to use,” Engelen says. “I enlarged the chin area with an extension piece. With the addition of extended eyebrows, some darker color in and around the eyes, and the character’s trademark earring, we ended up with a good character look for Sergio.”
Add to this a wardrobe that costumer Mussenden describes as “a bit pirate, barbaric in character, but sophisticated in style and all inspired by images of 15th century Spanish soldiers,” plus Weta’s magnificent armor and weapons, and Miraz came to vivid and terrifying life.
The Creatures
Berger and his award-winning makeup magicians had been waiting two years to return to Narnia. “We were chomping at the bit to go back for the next film and get a chance to revisit all the Narnian inhabitants we helped create for the first film,” Berger says.
Berger was eager to create the new, wilder look of the creatures of Narnia, who have been living in hiding for centuries when the film begins. “In PRINCE CASPIAN, we had heavy set fauns, old age fauns, female dwarves, African-Narnian centaurs and their families. The minotaurs are now on the side of good. We have a new hag, a werewolf and the Satyrs are back, but all redesigned to be more animal-like.”
The task would require a large staff of experts ranging from concept artists to creature-suit fabricators, from hair designers to latex piece manufacturers. “We estimated close to 3,000 makeups on the film, which would keep the foam department busy almost 24/7 for the next nine months. We ended up applying 4,600 makeups by the end of the shoot, which is, I believe, a world record,” Berger reports.
Howard Berger and a team of more than 40 special makeup artists gave birth to the film’s more fantastical creatures. “My favorite Narnians are the dwarves,” Berger says. “We had two fantastic dwarf characters in the film: Trumpkin, played by Peter Dinklage, and Nikabrik, played by Warwick Davis. We designed some very intricate makeup applications to transform them into Narnians.”
When the role of Trumpkin was being conceived, director Adamson knew that Dinklage was his first choice to play the role. “I knew when I saw The Station Agent that I wanted to cast him,” the filmmaker says.
“He’s the first actor we cast for this movie,” exclaims Johnson about Dinklage. “He’s just phenomenal.”
Once signed on, Dinklage turned to the books-which he did not read as a youth-for research and inspiration. He describes his character as “curmudgeonly,” but adds “too much of that and you’re not going to want to spend time with him on the journey. Let’s just say that the Pevensies annoy him, and he’d rather have a glass of wine back in his tree.”
Before agreeing to take the role, Dinklage caught a glimpse of what Trumpkin might look like when he visited with Adamson in Los Angeles for an introductory meeting. The filmmaker showed Dinklage some of the pre-visualization materials, “some computer animation of what appeared to be these big battle sequences,” the actor remembers.
“I sat there in this room filled with computers, and watched as my likeness came up in these computer images,” he continues. “I had never seen anything like that before. It was weird really, but I felt like I couldn’t say no at that point.”
Even with this unexpected peek at Trumpkin’s appearance, Dinklage had no notion as to what Berger and his team would devise to transform the blue-eyed actor into a vivid Narnian creature. Berger and Tami Lane, who both earned Oscars® for the first movie, rendered him unrecognizable, except for his piercing eyes.
Working from a concept painting of what Berger envisioned for the character, Lane began the daily two-and-a-half-hour transformation by shaving Dinklage’s head completely and painting it. She dyed his eyebrows before gluing on latex face pieces. Finally the makeup artist tacked on the intricate hair work that turned Dinklage into a fantastical, otherworldly creature.
“The last thing was a really long red beard and wig made of yak hair,” Dinklage says. “And somewhere there’s a yak on top of a mountain who’s very cold. And I’m sorry. However, because we filmed in the summer in Prague, it was not the coolest of makeups for me.
“With a lot of makeups, you can lose the actor underneath them,” the actor continues. “Howard and Tami really managed to make me look completely different and still allowed my expressions, my emotions, to come through.”
“Peter brought so much life to the character,” says Berger. “I always say that a makeup is half successful if we do our jobs right. That, plus the performance, made Trumpkin truly alive and believable. We gave Trumpkin his look. Peter gave him his heart.”
While Lane concentrated her daily efforts on actor Dinklage, fellow makeup artist Sarah Rubano won the assignment to metamorphose Warwick Davis into a character the actor himself calls “sour inside.”
“Howard’s makeup was loads of help for me in understanding the character,” says Davis. “Then you find the character’s voice. Then Isis’ costume, which was such an immaculate piece of workmanship… while the detail may not come across for audiences, subliminally, it’s all there. As an actor, it makes you feel so at home in the character. I lived, worked and fought in those clothes. You are then placed in the surroundings, the sets, and magically, you are in Narnia.”
“Warwick is an actor who has been able to imbue all of his characters with something different,” notes producer Johnson. “That’s what I prize most in an actor-surprises. I think his Nikabrik character is very surprising because he is irascible, yet speaks real logic. Nikabrik has really paid for the fact that Narnia has been under the thumb of the Telmarines. So he has some real surprises as a character up his sleeve.”
Davis was intrigued by a clever illustration of the character done by one of Berger’s associates at KNB, John Wheaton. “It was brilliant, because it was me, but as an old man. It was my photograph over which he painted the character concept. It captured Nikabrik perfectly.”
When Davis looked in the mirror after the marathon session, “What I saw was the character in three dimensions that Howard’s artist had portrayed in two dimensions,” the actor notes. “It was astounding.”
Another daily visitor to Berger’s trailer camp was English musical theatre star Cornell S. John, who plays Glenstorm, the powerful Afro-Narnian centaur who aids the Prince Caspian and the Pevensies in their fight against Miraz.
“For Glenstorm, Andrew wanted a tall and imposing actor of African descent,” casting director Stevens remembers. “Glenstorm is a wise, spiritual character who is also a great warrior, so he needed to move with grace and dignity. We did a global search that went as far afield as Africa and found Cornell in London. We had known and admired him in many leading roles in musical theatre and opera, from `The Lion King’ to `Porgy and Bess.’”
John endured a lengthy makeup process that transformed the actor into one of mythology’s quintessential creatures, the centaur-half-man and half-horse. Latex face appliances combined with green screen tights over which the VFX magicians superimposed the body and legs of a horse turned the soft-spoken actor into one of the film’s most imposing creations.
“I’m 160% Mike Fields, the guy who did my makeup,” John states. “In the beginning, I had no idea what I should look like. I was hoping for something that expressed honor, pride and tradition. Because centaurs can live for hundreds of years, there’s no age limit on this. I put myself at 170 Earth years. This face of Glenstorm is the face of time.”
And, as they did on the first film, KNB created life-sized animatronic puppets and suits for the CGI character of Aslan for use on the set during filming.
“Andrew wanted him to be 15 percent larger,” says Berger. “We were able to utilize the digital scanning information from the first film and have Cyber FX mill out a new sculpture 15 percent larger than the first. We ended up with a very large lion in the shop.”
The face of Reepicheep, the swashbuckling mouse, did not come from the brush of one of Berger’s talented artists. Instead, the rodent was born from the strokes of a keyboard mouse, through computer software under the control by VFX co-supervisor Wendy Rogers.
“I grew up on the Narnia books and Reepicheep was definitely one of my favorite characters,” director Adamson says of the gallant, honorable and noble mouse who wields “a tiny little rapier,” in author Lewis’ description of the character. “He was ingrained in my imagination. The trick here was finding the right voice. He was difficult to find, but we finally cast Eddie Izzard for the part.”
The filmmakers auditioned over 100 voices to find the right actor to bring the character to life, says producer Mark Johnson. “Eddie Izzard’s voice came closest to the seriousness of the character and yet didn’t in any way repel us or not let us have immediate affection for Reepicheep.”
Once the filmmakers chose Izzard, Rogers focused on physicalizing the character. “Reepicheep is a big mouse, some 22 inches tall,” Rogers explains. “That will take some suspension of disbelief. At that size, we still have to make him feel like he’s a mouse. We have to find the correct balance between anthropomorphizing Reepicheep and maintaining the fact that he is a real animal-a mouse.
“The voice actor plays such a big part in defining the character,” Rogers continues. “It’s not the fact that the animated character resembles the actor playing him. The actor may do some mannerisms or a physical flourish, like wave a sword. We have lipstick cams at these recording sessions to capture that. That helps our exploration of who the character is.”
Of all the Narnian characters London-based visual effects house The Moving Picture Company (MPC) had to create for PRINCE CASPIAN, Reepicheep was the one requiring the most art direction and overall attention to detail, says MPC’s Greg Butler. “One of the first challenges was that a very big mouse would be hard to keep looking ‘mousey.’ We wanted to make sure Reepicheep didn’t end up looking like a rat. We also had to work out an anatomy that was based on a mouse, but still allowed him to sword-fight, wear armor, and walk on two as well as four legs.”
“This story is Reepicheep’s introduction,” says Adamson. “Dawn Treader will be his story. What we’ve done is establish him for the next Narnia adventure. I didn’t really get to exploit him like so many other characters. But he is so worthwhile and interesting.”
The Production: Recreating Narnia
C.S. Lewis began Prince Caspian with the following passage: Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy, and it has been told in another book called The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe how they had a remarkable adventure.
The second remarkable journey for Adamson and his team of artisans and actors (which numbered about 2,000 by the time filming ended) began while the first project was still in post-production. While screenwriters Markus and McFeely toiled on the script, pre-visualization artist Rpin Suwannath coordinated a staff of twelve artists and started visualizing the movie in a computer.
“Pre-visualization is the process of creating computer generated animatics that serve as a creative, technical and useful tool for budgeting the movie, and let Andrew visualize his scenes months before he shoots them,” explains Suwannath, who oversaw the same responsibilities on the first movie.
The process was vital to Adamson’s ability to mount a film of this magnitude. “It helps you see pieces of the puzzle that aren’t there on the day you direct these huge scenes,” the director says. “I can’t imagine not using pre-viz for a movie like this.”
While Suwannath and his team began to visualize the world of Narnia inside their computers, the filmmakers began their lengthy, global search to find locations that would evoke a vastly different realm than the winter landscape depicted in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
“Narnia doesn’t exist,” says Mark Johnson. “Except in C.S. Lewis’ imagination. And in Andrew Adamson’s vision. In putting together this physical Narnia, we had location scouts all over the world for almost a year before filming began, trying to find places we could use to portray Narnia.”
James Crowley, who served as location manager on the first film, along with a team of regional scouts went to twenty countries spanning six continents.
“There was a predetermined feeling about New Zealand,” Crowley says. “Europe was also discussed, but not where specifically. Part of this was due to the seasons. For this story, we needed an endless summer, so the seasons and the hemisphere played a huge factor in determining the final locations for the movie.”
The filmmakers ultimately chose to shoot in the Czech Republic (including Prague, Usti and the Brdo region near Dobris), Poland (Stolowe National Park near Kudowa-Zdrój; the Kamiencyka Gorge in Szklarska Poreba), Slovenia (the River Soca in Bovec near the country’s only national park, Triglavski Narodni Park) and New Zealand.
“The thing that New Zealand offers that a lot of places don’t is a proliferation of old-growth forests,” Adamson says, explaining what drew him back to his native country. “There’s not an area of Europe that hasn’t been felled and regrown at some point, so finding an old growth forest is very difficult. In New Zealand, the whole west coast of the South Island is covered with ancient forests.”
Shooting began at two breathtaking sites on the Coromandel Peninsula’s Mercury Bay, which served as the settings for scenes in which the Pevensie children take their first steps back into Narnia: Cathedral Cove, a spectacular beach on the eastern shore of the peninsula, and a majestic bluff rising several hundred feet above the ocean where the siblings discover the ruins of Cair Paravel.
The company then departed for the country’s South Island, a magical place offering some of the planet’s most glorious scenery. Three sites were chosen for the two-week trip south. The first two, spectacular rivers in the country’s South Westland area have been given aliases to prevent them from being overrun by tourists-the “Westland River,” a scenic site which dramatically empties out to the Tasman Sea, and “Glasswater River.”
This second locale is defined by a dramatic river chasm bookended by cascading waterfalls that plunge 200 feet into the glassy waters. The water shimmered so clearly, actress Popplewell says, “Audiences won’t believe it’s real water because it appears to be an optical illusion created by VFX in post-production.”
The third South Island site chosen for filming was Paradise, a privately-owned horse ranch about an hour’s drive from Queenstown. “There were a couple of locations that were perfect for this movie that only New Zealand could offer,” says Johnson. “In many ways, it is a fairytale country with the kind of locations that make your jaw drop. New Zealand gave us the magic of Narnia.”
After a ten-day break in production to relocate scores of crew members and the film equipment literally halfway around the world, PRINCE CASPIAN resumed filming in Prague, also known as “the City of 100 Spires” because of the plethora of church and castle towers that dot its skyline.
“Prague is a popular place for film shoots,” says Johnson, “for a number of reasons. They have very good film crews; all the necessary equipment and sound stages are available here; and it’s a relatively inexpensive place to shoot, which is a real factor these days.”
The location was also an advantage for the cast. “It was really difficult on the children and their families to spend six or seven months in New Zealand on the last film,” he says. “From central Europe, they could be back home in England in a couple of hours. That was really important for them.”
The capital of the Czech Republic doubled for World War II England with the collective help of the art department, costumes and transportation. The road in front of the Praha Rudolfinum, one of the city’s grand concert halls, was transformed into Trafalgar Square circa 1941, with a bit of help from VFX supervisor Wright, who rotoscoped in footage from that era.
Prague is also the home of legendary Barrandov Studios, which has attracted plenty of large-scale productions over the last decade, of which this film is reportedly the biggest. Since its beginnings in 1931, Barrandov has launched the careers of cinema giants including Milos Forman, Jirí Menzel and the late Ján Kadár. In recent years, Hollywood has brought in productions including “Casino Royale,” “The Brothers Grimm” and “The Bourne Identity,” as well as “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.”
The studios are large enough to house a small forest. In fact, Barrandov’s brand new `Max’ Stage 8 became C.S. Lewis’ Dancing Lawn, an indoor forest complete with a sophisticated sprinkling system to feed the living set. “Dancing Lawn is a place so deep in the forest that the Telmarines have never found it,” production designer Roger Ford explains. “In the book, it’s a place where the fauns and other Narnian creatures go to dance in the night. In the film, it’s the place the Narnians gather to plan their campaign with Caspian.”
The designer used Lewis’ scant descriptive phrases as the inspiration for his vivid interpretations of the film’s settings. He did not take his obligations lightly, understanding that his interpretations would be closely scrutinized by fans.
Ford’s signature set piece was the mammoth castle courtyard built on the studio’s backlot. The set, which he calls a character in the story, began with Lewis’ simple phrase: “Caspian lived in a great castle…” Six stories high, the castle shoots some 200 feet into the sky courtesy of VFX augmentation and contains more than 20,000 square feet of interior space. The magnificent design took 200 carpenters, painters, sculptors and other craftspeople 15 weeks to build.
Two symbols were chosen to emphasize that the Telmarines “are warlike, and not a very nice bunch of chaps,” according to Ford. Much of the Telmarine world is adorned with the head of an eagle, which embellishes not only the castle courtyard on the backlot and the crossbows used by the Telmarines, but the arms of the various thrones scattered throughout Miraz’s Great Hall.
In addition, Ford was inspired by the Telmarines’ origins as a pirate culture to use the compass on the soldiers’ shields, in the architecture of the Great Hall and in the banners fabricated for each of the 21 lords under Miraz’s rule.
Equally impressive in scope and detail are the ruins of the Stone Table in the How, where Aslan the Lion was sacrificed in the first story. The crypt-like, circular structure was carved out of plaster and polystyrene, with pillars reaching dozens of feet towards the stage’s towering ceiling. It contains a series of detailed plaster carvings that depict the history of the Narnians over the past 1,300 years.
“The How was such an important storytelling piece because of the Stone Table,” explains supervising art director Frank Walsh. “We had to develop and tell the story of what happened during those missing hundreds of years. These carved stone panels are all very important images.”
Adamson came up with the idea of “a channel or trough around the How directly beneath the wall carvings,” Ford says. “It is a well of oil that Caspian lights with a torch. The flames encircle the room, lighting up the panels.”
“We couldn’t use real oil or burning liquid because it’s hard to control,” explains mechanical effects supervisor and designer Gerd Feuchter. “We had to create a special propane burner which we then placed underneath a level of colored water.” The grid of propane valves sat underwater in the circular trough, which baffled set visitors, who had no idea that propane could burn underwater.
Ford’s crew spent over two months in the Bovec region of Slovenia erecting a massive bridge over the River Soca and its tributary Gljun for the setting of what may be the most memorable moment in the film, the River God sequence.
“In the book, the Bridge at Beruna is built by the Telmarines hundreds of years earlier,” says the designer. “When the Narnians are finally victorious, Aslan calls on the River God to destroy the bridge and free the river.”
Industrial engineers were called in to reroute the river’s flow to accommodate Ford’s set designs for the scene. The film’s bridge was constructed out of over-sized pine logs lashed together with massive ropes. It had to be a practical bridge that could hold 200 soldiers (and dozens of crew members and heavy equipment) charging across it. “It was really quite extraordinary,” Ford says, referring to the engineering and the machinery involved.
“It required a real piece of civil engineering,” adds supervising art director Frank Walsh, “We were introduced to the biggest bridge builder in Slovenia, the Primorje Group, and they didn’t even bat an eye. They adapted their operation and approach to what we wanted, came on board and were fantastic.”
One of Ford’s more whimsical designs for the film is Trufflehunter’s Den, an octagonal structure built on wheels so that pieces of the set could be dismantled to allow intricate camera angles. Director Adamson mounted a still photo camera on a pole, and used it to photograph an actual badger’s den inside the hollow of an oak tree. Those photos inspired Ford’s set design and Kerrie Brown’s set dressing, which added a touch of verisimilitude to Lewis’ imaginary world.
At New Zealand’s Henderson Studios outside of Auckland, Ford’s crew built the Treasure Chamber, a decaying, two-story subterranean cavern. For inspiration in creating the massive treasure collection, Brown visited several museums in London and Paris and took photographs of lavish gifts that had been presented to the nobility of various countries. “We wanted the room to show that Peter and Edmund and Susan and Lucy, when they were kings and queens in Narnia, had been presented with treasures from people from different lands,” she says.
Brown next scoured prop stores in Australia and New Zealand to rent chalices, urns, armor and such, “but there wasn’t enough to fill up this huge room.” She added over 2,000 props designed, molded and sculpted by her prop department. That busy department, headed by Roland Stevenson, kept a staff of 35 working around the clock to manufacture over 7,000 prop pieces for the entire film.
Costume designer Isis Mussenden engineered the creation of hundreds of original wardrobe designs to clothe the Telmarines. Supervising a staff of over 70 artisans in both Prague and Auckland, Mussenden drew upon two sources for her vivid designs-folk dress of Sardinia and the paintings of the Cretan artist and Byzantine Mannerist, El Greco. “There are images in Pauline Baynes’ illustrations for the book that stay with one forever,” Mussenden recalls. “We never intended to ignore them. At the same time, I could not be bound by her illustrations either, because we are designing three-dimensional costumes.
“I like to start with a color palette,” she notes about the cool silver and gray shadings of the Telmarine army. “We already had the palette of the Narnians, but we needed to create one for the Telmarines. We didn’t want to use red and gold. Those are Narnian colors. I eventually chose several paintings of El Greco. They are gruesome images, acidic and cool, and were perfect for our needs.”
The next piece of the puzzle was taken from a book about the Sardinian cultural dress she found on a shopping trip to Italy. “Sardinia is a notorious rough-and-tough island which sported the new look I was after,” Mussenden says. “Skirts, vest, wide belts, garters and jackets…no capes! We went for the Mediterranean feel, which was a call by Andrew, to get ourselves in a different culture, a little different skin tone, a little different flavor.”
She also visited the curator of one of the world’s foremost armor collections, Stuart Pyhrr of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. A private tour and an afternoon in the archives provided the spark for what would become the Telmarines battle gear.
“The scope of this film for us in the wardrobe department was ten times bigger than the first one,” she exclaims. “Not only in the actual count of how many characters and extras for whom we had to make costumes, but also the number of multiple costumes we had to make to cover stunt doubles, photo doubles, actors’ growth and just wear and tear over six months of shooting.”
“I designed and manufactured an army, which I have never done before,” Mussenden says. “While it was fascinating and interesting, it was also more work than I could have ever imagined.” Mussenden and associate designer Kimberly Adams, her longtime colleague and friend, estimate they built 262 cast outfits, 3,722 individual items for the Telmarine army including helmets, masks, brigandines, underbrigs, shirts, pants, boots, gloves and grieves, 1,003 Telmarine villager stock items and 2,184 metal rivets per brigandine (for a total of almost 1 million rivets).
Mussenden closely collaborated with Weta’s Richard Taylor in the design of the weapons and armor for both Telmarines and Narnians. “We also had a wonderful team of armorists in the Czech Republic who fabricated everything for the Telmarines soldiers and Lords using Richard’s prototypes for the helmets and etching motifs,” she continues. “It was an interesting contrast of old world techniques and the high-tech new design world of Weta.”
“Miraz and his Lords needed special weaponry,” Taylor says. “Weta created individual swords, scabbards and sculpted faceplate helmets for the featured Lords including Glozelle, who also has a beautiful dagger. Miraz himself has a special shield, sword, scabbard, full plate armor and an ornate faceplate helmet.”
“Miraz’s helmet and facial mask represent the manner in which he commands his forces,” Taylor says about the unique designs. “The idea that it’s a faceless army hidden behind these masks, not showing their emotions or their faces, is captured in these very stylistic Italian ceremonial masks they wear.”
Taylor felt strongly that the sword defines the Telmarine culture. For Miraz and his fierce army of soldiers, he chose rapiers and falchions. “The rapier is a sophisticated weapon with a very long blade and a basketed hilt. It is used in a much more refined and subtle motion than the hack-and-slash motion of some of the weapons in the first film,” he says. “There’s a lot of ceremony in these various pieces, as well as an ornamentation that illustrates the pomp and ceremony of Miraz and his people.”
Taylor’s team manufactured 200 polearms in two different styles, 200 rapiers of varying design, over 100 falchions, 250 shields and 55 crossbows, including the handsome and deadly weapon wielded by Miraz’s queen, Pruniprismia. The Telmarine cavalry was equipped with soft shields and stunt gear, which included stunt-safe horse faceplates for the warhorses and unusual sculpted faceplate helmets for the soldiers.
“The Telmarines were a very exciting race of people to design,” Taylor concludes. “They are almost feudal. Their armor is resplendent and rich and beautiful, complemented by some very fine weaponry. They are a very fierce fighting force, so quite an adversary for the Narnian creatures.”
The world of Narnia was magically enriched through the collective talents and efforts of the production’s visual effects artists, once again headed by Oscar nominee Dean Wright. Wright and longtime Adamson ally Wendy Rogers collaborated with a whole new group of computer wizards for PRINCE CASPIAN.
Wright and Rogers drafted three of the industry’s top VFX designers to bring the world of Narnia to the screen in this new chapter. Two London firms, The Moving Picture Company and the Oscar-winning Framestore/CFC, joined the Oscar winners from Weta Digital in New Zealand to digitally enhance the world of Narnia and envision CGI creatures the River God, Jadis the White Witch, Trufflehunter the faithful badger, Aslan the Lion and the valiant, swashbuckling rodent, Reepicheep.
As in the first film, virtually every moment and scene in the film has been touched by a VFX shot of some sort. “This is one of the biggest visual effects films ever made,” claims Wright. “Andrew was bound and determined to up the ante this time. We started off with at least twice the number of VFX shots as The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”
For the castle raid sequence, the movie’s epic action set piece, Wright partnered with two colleagues-The Moving Picture Company’s Greg Butler, whose team oversaw the action and character effects created for this sequence, and Weta Digital in New Zealand’s Guy Williams, who created the environments for the scene.
A virtual glossary of VFX practices were used to bring together all the elements to complete the film’s first big action scene. Wright estimates at least 300 VFX shots have been incorporated into this single scene.
Adamson also wanted to break the CGI barrier by merging real people realistically with the CG characters. Lucy hugging Aslan, Susan riding on the back of Glenstorm the centaur during their escape from the castle raid and the Pevensies and Caspian being carried into the castle by Gryphons all are prime examples of the intricacy of the film’s VFX work.
The decision to have Gryphons carry the children, Caspian and Trumpkin into the castle meant months of technical design, research and development with the assistance of motion control expert Ian Menzies. The VFX teams all over the world had to work in perfect synchronicity in order to pull off this eye-popping effect perfectly.
Animators at MPC in London plotted the path the children would fly and supervised the intricate moves on-set in Prague. The digital files for the shots were sent to Weta Digital in New Zealand, where “matchmakers” converted them for Alex Funke’s miniature crew to use in a camera test on the 1/24th scale castle model. Any changes required were then passed onto the on-set animators, who incorporated the new camera moves into their animation before finally sharing it with Menzies’ team. He took the information and fed it into the computer control “Gryphon rigs” connected to the motion control cameras to shoot the blue screen photography of the actors.
Months after the actual castle raid sequence was completed on location in Prague, Wright returned to New Zealand where he and Funke, one of the industry’s best miniature effects directors, shot footage on various miniature versions of the castle built at different scales.
“Andrew is a big fan of trying to put whatever is real in the frame,” Wright says. “Miniature sets make it seem more organic within the frame and the story. When you have a well-lit miniature, you again fall into this world of believing everything you’re seeing, and that’s what we wanted to do.”
“Having Andrew in the director’s chair is a godsend for us,” Dean Wright says. “As visual effects professionals, we want to be pushed. I think all the innovation that comes from visual effects comes from a director pushing you farther than you ever thought you could go.
“Andrew wanted to make this film bigger than the last, which meant throwing more complicated stuff at VFX,” the effects supervisor continues. “When kudos go out for visual effects, there should be an honorary place for the director. He’s the one that comes up with 95 percent of the vision of what you’re going to create. We’re there to help it and enhance it.”
Adamson says his goal was to give the audience something they hadn’t seen before. “And I think we’ve done that. There are a lot of things technique-wise that we developed and experimented with that we can take advantage of in the future. How do you do a centaur? How do you do a minotaur? We’ve got a forest of trees that join the battles this time, and we’ve generated trees that can move and wade through the earth. Now that we know how to do it, we don’t have to spend that money again.”
The biggest challenge for the film, according to Johnson, is living up to the standards created by The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. “People have seen the first movie and enjoyed it throughout the world,” he points put. “Their expectations are even higher. So we cannot be as good as The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. We have to be even better.”
Adamson says directing THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA films has been one of the most satisfying projects of his career. “I have been given the opportunity to take a hugely important childhood memory and show people something that had previously only existed in our collective imaginings. I’ve approached these films by setting out to make movies inspired by my memory of the books as an eight-year-old. You’re very lucky if that happens once in your lifetime… but for me, it has happened again.”
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008)
Directed by: Andrew Adamson
Starring: Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, William Moseley, Anna Popplewell, Liam Neeson, Ben Barnes, Alicia Borrachero, Peter Dinklage, Vincent Grass, Warwick Davis, Alicia Borrachero
Screenplay by: Andrew Adamson, Christopher Markus
Production Design by: Roger Ford
Cinematography by: Karl Walter Lindenlaub
Film Editing by: Sim Evan-Jones
Costume Design by: Isis Mussenden
Set Decoration by: Kerry Brown
Art Direction by: David Allday, Jules Cook, Jill Cormack, Matthew Gray, Stuart Kearns, Jason Knox-Johnston, Elaine Kusmishko, Phil Sims, Jirí Sternwald, Frank Walsh
Music by: Harry Gregson-Williams
MPAA Rating: PG for for epic battle action and violence.
Distributed by: buena Vista Pictures
Release Date: May 16, 2008
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