DRAMA | H I S DARK MATER I ALS
Lighting the fur so it still looks like fur is its own nightmare
Fur is next in the VFX pipeline, but before this can be added, the artists have to understand how it responds to light – which proved quite tricky when working with the transparent and tube-like fur of a polar bear. “In this instance, light does three things. If it hits the surface of the bear it either bounces off, travels through (and, as it travels, the light changes colour based on the bits of colour in the fur) or it goes inside the fur and bounces around before coming back out again. We have to know this, so when we light the fur, it still looks like fur, which is its own nightmare,” he laughs. “There’s also someone that’s grooming the daemon, someone who’s literally giving it a digital haircut. What they do is brush the fur to follow the flow of the fur as the body moves. And then they twist and clump it when the fur touches the ground or gets a bit matted. This is then attached to the skin and simulated in the same way as we simulated skin falling over bone and muscle.” Dodgson explains that if one person sat down to do all this it would have taken them eight months to do just one daemon – and they did 50. He says: “It’s a labour of love, and this was just the beginning. We hadn’t done any shots yet.” THE GOLDEN MONKEY For Dodgson, the most important thing was defining the daemon’s personalities and making sure they would match the strong performances of their human counterparts. He explains: “This show has Ruth Wilson, who is powerful and emotive as Mrs Coulter – and our job is to put a monkey in the shot next to her. Can you imagine how disastrous that would be if it went wrong?” The golden monkey is an interesting daemon, because it doesn’t speak. Its personality has to be conveyed through its physicality, which took some time to work out. Before production on the series had started, Dodgson and Wilson discussed what it meant that Mrs Coulter’s daemon
on-screen. He also spent time at a zoo and took up the company of pine martens, where he studied and filmed them as reference for Pan. Creating the daemons is a lengthy process that starts with an initial sculpt to define the animal’s body shape, volume and proportions. It’s a digital sculpt, but it’s done in the same way you’d do an actual physical sculpt with clay – only you’re using digital clay and sculpting tools on a computer. Then there is a rigger, who fuses art and maths to create the skeleton of the animal. Every single bone joint, from jaw to toe, is constructed and assigned limits, so an elbow would only have the range of movement of an elbow, for example. Muscles are created next and are made to bend and flex just as a muscle would. These are then applied to the skeleton and the sculpt is wrapped around the bones as skin. Dodgson says: “Then we build our creature effects system, which simulates skin sliding over bone as the muscle moves. The best way to describe this is if you imagine a horse running; you can see its skin sliding over its ribs, and it’s in that moment that you realise an animal is made up of muscle, bone and sinew.”
had settled as monkey when she was and child; and what she had done to herself emotionally over the years to create such a dysfunctional relationship with him. He explains: “If your daemon settles as a monkey, it’s likely because you’re a bit cheeky. But for her, the monkey is evil. He’s a sort of self-harm for her. In the book, there is a scene where she grabs the monkey and pinches its fur, which is basically visual externalised self-harm. The pain makes her focus. It’s quite a complex relationship – so we looked into the third book to see where her relationship with the monkey goes and worked our way back to make sure we’ve got a way of getting from one place to another just through physical performance.” Dodgson resolves by telling us his favourite scene, which is the bit where Mrs Coulter is visited by emissaries working for the Magisterium, who threaten to shut down her research. When Lyra confronts her about it, she sets her monkey on Pan. It is a one-sided conflict, an act of pure bullying, which he describes as being “more like emotional child abuse, since the daemons represent their souls rather than their physicality.” In the aftermath, Mrs Coulter blurts out the truth: Lord Asriel is Lyra’s father, but fails to mention that she is also Lyra’s mother. “That’s what I love about this scene. Mrs Coulter has just dropped this knowledge bomb on Lyra and wants to give her a hug, because she’s her mum, but Lyra doesn’t know that, so she remains without feeling. But, if you watch the monkey, you will see that we delivered the internal softness and empathy Mrs Coulter feels through his facial expressions.” It’s a lot of pressure to adapt a series that is so beloved by its readers, but it certainly seems that Brown and Dodgson are determined to do it justice. HIS DARK MATERIALS IS ON BBC ONE/ iPLAYER AND HBO/HBO NOW IN THE USA
IMAGES (Top) Mrs Coulter and her golden monkey daemon, and (above) Lee Scorseby’s daemon, a hare called Hester
22 DEF I N I T ION | DECEMBER 20 1 9
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