LC: in reference to when you're doing all of these projects you've got the producer and the director, and in the case of Harry Potter, you've got the author, how does the involvement work? Who gets called in first? and how do you figure out the process and the collaborate of all those people together?
SC: the promise was made by the producer David Heyman to JK Rowling that we would be faithful to the spirit of the books, but she understood that we could never include everything that there would have to be huge omissions, and think she was very brave in allowing the films to be there own separate entities, she quite accepted from the beginning that books and movies could be separate and so we consulted her initially and she literally gave me a map of Hogwarts, a map of the world, where she did the drawing the first meeting in a hotel lobby and that became a massive aid direction help starting with her--so we consulted her throughout the series. When there were questions, the director producer relationship…the production designer would always address the director first. The initial conversation with the director to understand his priorities, and then i would prepare a sketch a model in the art department and go back to him and show it and then at that stage maybe introduce the producer to the idea so that they would obviously be in on what was happening, so it's really that dialogue between the director and the designer which is essential and which is …you follow that path wherever it leads…
LC: and so this after the script has been written and you're reading over the script. do you go back and whether it's Harry Potter or other movies you've worked on based on books or novels, do you read the novels over and over and over so you get a sense of some of the elements of novel or do you try to stick strictly to the script that's written--the screenplay.
SC: no. i think the background information is important as well. so quite early on the Harry Potter books were issued as spoken books as CDs so that helped. I would read the novel and then listen to it in the car on the way to the studio several times on the way to the studio.
LC: Steven Fry's version?
SC: Steven Fry's version. and i know you had Jim Dale. I liked both of them. I've listened to them both. so yes, that's essential, and it's not just reading the novels but there's a researcher Celia Barnett who worked with us on all the films and i find that process important too that she was researching things like medieval prop mechanisms and in the Prisoner of Azkaban this prop was important and she would research medieval architecture and the tapestries in the common room, Celia found in the Gryffindor common room those bright red tapestries she found in a museum in Cluny in Paris.
LC: Oh i think i know those tapestries you're talking about.
SC: Oh, yes, with the unicorn
LC: Oh, yes, they have such a life those tapestries so beautiful and very joyful which is a really nice element to those pieces…so in terms of the Harry Potter movies, has there been something where you've done everything and it's been filmed and you look at it and you realize it wasn't what you were after and you have to go back and change something?
SC: One big thing in the beginning the Sorcerer's Stone or The Philosopher's Stone, we were obliged to use existing locations quite a lot because we didn't have the time or the money to build the entire world. When we then would cut to a big exterior of Hogwarts those real places Gloucester Cathedral, Durham Cathedral, Christ Church College at Oxford all had to sort of be incorporated into the complex which was Hogwarts School. and this gave i must say not a very satisfying silhouette and i was at pains in subsequent movies fortunately the script had different demands and required different geography. If we had had all seven books from the beginning, then certain of those early decisions would not have been made those early choices didn't fit with the action in the later books. we didn't have that, so we used bits of cathedrals, bits of Christ church college, and then when obliged to make those changes in subsequent movies, i did take that opportunity to improve the silhouette of Hogwarts just to make it more magical. It was confused. and although it was always huge and complicated, it progressively get more elegant. nobody seemed to mind. they seemed to accept that it was part of a magical world and
LC: always changing
SC: yes things did change from film to film
LC: i would imagine not having all the books at once was a source of excitement though, for you since you have worked on all of them to get a new book and discover something that you get to sink your teeth into as an artist and work on and so what would you say in the last book when you first read it --that you were excited to work on--getting an opportunity to express visually?
SC: that's absolutely true, you know. the ministry suddenly appeared and that was a huge challenge, every book has something new. in the last book, book #7, we split into 2 parts, as you know, into 2 movies. the challenge of the first part is the whole movie, you never see Hogwarts, the movie takes place with the kids on the run. from Valdemort and the Ministry turned bad they are hunted and they are on the run so it's a series of physical locations and sometimes built sets there's a frozen forest with a frozen lake with the sword of Griffindor at the bottom of the frozen lake--that's a set on a soundstage here in london which has to be integrated with bit of real forest that precedes it. so that was a challenge there something we were quite unfamiliar with really, was traveling to distant locations for landscapes specifically. In part two, the great challenge is the destruction of Hogwarts. and you can't just knock holes in what you've got, you have to consider that as a new set--again this all important idea of strong profiles making strong images
LC: and all that fire and this light coming through and big sections knocked down…
SC: the sun rising behind the smoke and all those considerations but as i say the big big challenge was the massive remains of destroyed walls, the entrance hall, the entrance of the great hall, part of the roof of the great hall completely gone, so yea. a big challenge there. and an enjoyable one really--maybe it helped me and the guys in the art department sort of prepare for the end really--we demolished it before we had to strike it completely.
LC: Well, that might have been good catharsis. what about, when i think about the two last movies and i was trying to imagine what would be fun, because i listen to the books a lot, the Lovegood house and the wedding and then at the beginning with the manor with the body hanging, if i were someone putting together the visuals of the movies, those would be the most exciting part of the movie.
SC: i think you're right. the Malfoy Manor, the Malfoy house is a very strong architectural set, the exterior is based on an elizabethan house here in this country called Hardwick Hall and it has massive windows and these windows are kind of blinded out the shutters are drawn so they are like blind windows and they have a real kind of presence an ominous presence, so that gave us the basis for a good exterior, there's an extraordinary magical roof that's added and surrounded by forest which isn't there in reality but again is one of the devices to make it more threatening and mysterious.
LC: yes!
SC: and then the interior two floors on stages and very very muscular architecture, very strong architecture form. so that was great to get into that. The Lovegood house is a tower, JK Rowling says it's a black tower, in an empty landscape and that's exactly what it is, but i again take great care over the sculptural shape of that tower.
LC: but the interior is fantastic and crazy
SC: yes! and luna and her father both have eccentric tastes, we asked Luna--Evana, the actress to actually help us with this, she had painted, decorated the interior with painted decorations on the walls little murals and stuff so that was great!
LC: the actress actually painted that?
SC: yes, well she designed she proved herself very good at this, was it in Harry Potter 6 where she wore the lion's mask and she designed that, and we thought ah! we'll harness this ability again this talent again and ask her to do these wall paintings so she designs for them which we then reproduced.
LC: Zenophilius is new to this movie, right? So, it's exciting to create the world of a new character, yea?
SC: Exactly! and he has a printer, a printing press and one floor of this black tower is entirely consumed with his printing operation, the Quibbler. The magical world's magazine the Quibbler. So, the press was good, all that printing apparatus was great fun for Stephanie, the set decorator.
LC: and you made all of the furniture in curves?
SC: not exactly. (laughs) there is a sort of spiral staircase in the center of all this, some sort of fitted bits are made to fit the curved walls, but it's eccentrically furnished.
LC: one of the things i thought was most interesting about specifically the Lovegood wedding juxtaposed against the beginning of the movie is the sharp contrast of the dark and the shadows, and when i think of the book the one little joyful moment is the wedding. Even though of course it winds up a mess, but at the beginning of it, it's beautiful and there's a lot of light. How did you work that contrast?
SC: We decided the wedding should be, as wedding receptions often are, in a tent, in a marquis, and that marquis should sit in this flat marshy weedy landscape outside the Weasley house, so the question was do i make it the same, an extension of the Weasley house, with the same eccentricity the same color rather amateurish homemade feeling or something different, and this was the fun of something different and since Bill was marrying Fleur, Fleur Delacourt and we could say that her parents had a big influence on the wedding, in fact the mr. Delacourt would probably pay for it as father of the bride, and so that permitted a french influence and so we really went with that there's a very refined soft interior, painted silk, there are floating candles in little french 18th century candelabra the whole thing has a very elegant and quite un-Weasley look about it.
LC: How much would you say of your own artistic aesthetic gets injected into the work you do? specifically Harry Potter because that's what we're talking about, but on the whole, what would you say? Do you think you're just corralling other artists and you do these simple drawings because it seems that if the artistic buck stops with you, it feels like you do have to infuse and also harness as many different styles and artistic designs as you can in your work
SC: i think in different categories there are different answers. everything architectural i have a great deal not just control of but it's what i'm passionate about and reflects my interest and input and so on. Along with Stephanie McMillan the set decorator which we've already mentioned, we've worked together as a team a long time since Richard Attenborough's Chaplin, so there's a ready understanding there, of the architectural part and the decoration of that thereafter, and we've talked about color and so on. There are a team of concept artists working in the art department with me --two and three of them sometimes were concerned exclusively with creatures. There are a lot of magical creatures in Harry Potter: Thestrals and Hippogryphs and well, you know--they're everywhere. These guys, they have a fantastic facility for designing anatomically correct or credible but extraordinary magical creatures. so in the case of the creatures, i am the
facilitator as the head of the department in which they work, but it's their creative input that gets us there. and they draw absolutely spectacularly well, they draw like Raphael like Leonardo they do. Really beautiful. There's another illustrator Andrew Williamson, who i've used as an architectural illustrator, and so i will do a rough doodle of a set, the Lovegood house the Malfoy Manor, and will also do a plan an elevation, quite a rough preliminary one, none the less to scale, because i love to think, i imagine it, dealing with real dimensions right from the beginning knowing exactly how big it is and exactly the size of one thing against another and i give those early pencil sketches and plans and elevations to Andrew Williamson and he will then build a digital model in the computer, and together we will spin it, walk through it, choose an angle, and say "ok. that's it", then render it, illustrate it, and over a ten year period he started with pencil drawings and watercolor washes but now technology has changed now so fast he now he now does these amazing rendering which become so well finished that you can barely tell them apart from stills from the movie you can mistake some of these concept sketches from stills from the movie.
It's so good what a shame.
