SNAPSHOT
When you’re bringing an imaginary creature to life through CG, you can make it move however you want. But when you’re bringing a toy millions of kids spent their childhoods with to the big screen, you need to use every trick to make them move as believably as possible — including something as simple as just playing with stuffed animals on set.
BBC Click talked to Chris Lawrence who served as the visual effects supervisor for last year’s Christopher Robin; a film that included photo-realistic, real-life versions of Winnie-the-Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, Eeyore, and other characters from the Hundred Acre Woods. (synopsis (c) Gizmodo)
It’s one of the great conundrums of modern filmmaking, one made all the more acute by the ubiquity of behind-the-scenes featurettes accompanying the digital/streaming release of any movie worth its marketing salt.
Do you find out how the magic was made or do you simply remain enchanted by the magic and wonder before you and refuse to pull back to the curtain to see the moving parts?
I am one of those people who loves to peek behind the scenes, enthralled by the artistry and skill that have gone into making a movie I love, such as Christopher Robin, happen and who is then able to seamlessly move back to the cinema seats and watch it the film all over again as if the curtain concealing everything had moved not an inch.
This featurette by BBC Click takes a delightfully brief but informative dive into how Winnie the Pooh, Tigger etc came to life in the film, with every technique employed to, as Gizmodo describes it, “reinforce the idea that it was a child’s imagination that originally brought them all to life.”