Fantastic Beasts gives us a behind the scenes video of how the effects teams created magical creatures, and discuss the ones they cut.
For Harry Potter fanatics, the wizarding world is as real as the one we inhabit here in the muggle world. Somewhere, deep in london, there’s a Diagon Alley, and a pub called the Three Broomsticks, and up in Scotland, a school named Hogwarts. On screen Warner Brothers has worked hard to bring this world, both in the UK and in the US to life.
Reminder: None of that world is real. None.
Need proof? Check out this behind the scenes video:
It’s a stunning reminder of just how hard those VFX people worked on Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them last year (and they were robbed of an Oscar for it). They created so many creatures, Rowling had to go in and actually cut some.
According to the Radio Times, Christian Manz, who was the creative director from the VFX house Framestore that did the effects on the movie, told a London VFX festival that they’ve created over 200 creatures–some of which they just made up from whole cloth.
"“Out of the book, from the script. Stuff we made up…. “Story is important in moviemaking, and we didn’t want a creature there for its own sake. And in this scene, you’d see creatures once. So we wanted everything to have a gag, something that would make you remember it.”"
What were some of the scrapped ideas?
"“We came up with this idea for a fish that looked like a beautiful fish – and then it leapt out of the water and you realise it’s a bit of a crap-looking fish, but surrounded by beautiful fish that are making it look like a big one.”"
Another one he was very fold of was called an “ice turtle.”
"“The ice turtle – another thing of trying to explain away natural things as, maybe that is hidden under there…I think that was Jo Rowling thought… it’s a bit too much for Newt. Too huge a scale for the sort of film we’re doing.”"
Next: Daniel Radcliffe gets stranded in the Amazon
Maybe they’ll come up in the next film Fantastic Beasts 2: The Fantastic Beasts Take Paris. The not-actually-titled-that (yet) film hits theaters in 2018.