Baseblack & the Deathly Hallows Part 1
Supervisor Tim Burke and producer Emma Norton first approached Stephen Elson in early 2009 to ask if he’d be interested in working on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the two-part epic finale to the most successful franchise in cinema history. Baseblack had worked on several previous Potter outings, on single sequences and last minute awards. This time Tim and Emma were thinking about using a flexible boutique who could be deployed across the films to mop up stand alone work while larger vendors concentrated on major setpieces. Inspired by the scope and variety of shots being offered, Stephen put together a new team, headed by VFX Supervisor Matt Twyford and VFX Producer Kate Phillips, which went on to contribute more shots than any other vendor to Deathly Hallows Part 1.
Baseblack’s work makes a low-key entrance into the film with a poignant moment showing Hermione erasing herself from her parents’ memories. Besides a series of shots showing her disappearing from family photographs, Matt Twyford designed a wand effect of a subtle fractal displacement which met David Yates’ concern that the process be low-key and gentle. A more ostentatious look was developed for the Deluminator which Ron receives in Dumbledore’s Will (the will itself is a piece of cg animation by Baseblack). This magical artefact can dim and restore lights and its use recurs throughout the film. Baseblack were asked to create a look to augment on-set lighting changes, and compositor Stuart Bullen contributed a series of 2D animations of flying balls of light which, with extensive interactive lighting generated in Nuke and painstaking recreation of optical effects, nonetheless demonstrated a sense of depth and presence which sold the concept very effectively.
Baseblack also contributed another of Dumbledore’s bequests, in the form of one of the most recognisable icons of Harry Potter’s world: the Golden Snitch. The Snitch is given a bit more of a personality in Deathly Hallows Part 1 than in previous appearances, following Harry around like a faithful dog and even escaping from a Snatcher’s pocket to be reunited with him. While a number of beautiful physical snitches were made for onset use, we stepped in whenever it was required to take to the air. CG Supervisor Fred Sundqvist built an accurate cg model of the practical version and created a series of wing animations – allowing it either to hover like a hummingbird or to fold its wings elegantly away – before blocking its flight path into the shots.
We also created a more malevolent object in the form of the Horcrux Locket which Harry, Ron and Hermione retrieve from Dolores Umbridge in the Ministry of Magic. Once again, we took over with an animated cg version when David Yates’ requirements outstripped the limits of the practical locket. This included bouncing it around and setting it on fire as the trio make their initial attempt to destroy it; we also created the exciting sequence where the tables are turned and the locket attempts to drown Harry as he dives in the frozen pond. This involved complex body tracking of Daniel Radcliffe’s spirited performance before animating the locket as it jerks Harry around underwater and twists itself into his neck. To increase the violence of the scene, we also added animated bubbles of air pouring off Harry as he thrashes around in the water.
Besides picking up individual effects which recur throughout the film, Baseblack were tasked with two full action sequences. In the first, the trio are on the run after the devastating attack on the wedding at the Burrow. Holing up in a cafe in the West End, they are promptly tracked down by a pair of Death Eaters and a ferocious wand battle ensues. Besides dropping a Soho street and pedestrians outside the blue-screen windows of the set, Steph Kelly and Klaudija Cermak created a series of rapid wand effects and impacts to augment the impressive special effects destruction and to realise Tim Burke’s conception of the scene as a magically enhanced take on a classic movie shoot-out. Similar effects were called on for a later sequence where Harry, Ron and Hermione are pursued through the woods by Snatchers. We added a palpable sense of danger to the exciting hand-held chase with vivid bursts of light bursting from wands in the dusk, and debris filled explosions ricocheting from the trees, besides creating the cg bolus which eventually wraps itself around Ron and brings him to the ground.
A gentler contribution came in enhancing the sense of cold in several winter scenes which were shot in the height of summer. For a couple of wide views which were impractical for the art department to dress, we replaced lush grass and green trees with an icier version of the landscape. We were also asked to create a pipeline for adding visible breath issuing from characters’ mouths as they discuss their plans in the freezing woods. Due to pressure on the schedule, it was necessary to come up with something simple, fast and, as ever, cost-effective. Matt Twyford eschewed a 3D solution in favour of writing a particle emitter in Shake which could be driven by the audio dialogue to create a very convincing initial look and which could be tweaked for density, velocity and lifespan by individual compositors. This elegant solution enabled us to deliver 40 shots within two months from a very small team.
We were very proud also to contribute to the film’s chilling final scene as Voldemort breaks open Dumbledore’s tomb to steal the Elder Wand. The scene was something of a complicated collage job since filming schedules dictated that many of the elements in it had to be shot separately. For the dramatic establishing shot, compositor Tim Young dropped a matte painted island into a helicopter plate of a real loch before the action cuts to a CG tomb being magically lifted open. Voldemort’s face to face confrontation with his dead nemesis was also helped along by Baseblack since Ralph Fiennes and Michael Gambon were filmed separately on greenscreen stages and then combined by Senior Compositor Rudi Holzapfel with a motion-controlled plate of the smashed tomb which stands in a fully cg island environment. Finally, for the film’s closing shots as Voldemort tests his new power by sending a lightning storm into the sky, 2D Lead Adrian Banton created a side view of the island, comprising a small live-action element of Ralph Fiennes on a matte painted island, hand-animated lightning arcing into the sky and a fully CG cloudscape which explodes with light.
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