Interview with Luis Pages Effects technical director on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Born in Caracas Venezuela on december 24th, 1980, Luis Pages is one of the few hispanic people involved in the making of the Harry Potter movies. With movies like Ice Age: The Meltdown, 10,000 B.C. and Horton Hears a Who! under his bealt, Luis also worked on the fifth installment of the Harry Potter movies. HarryPotterLa.com brings you exclusively an interview with one of the real life wizards behind the amazing special effects in Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix. - So, tell us about your life, where were you born and where did you grow up? Were you always interested in working in movies? I was born in Caracas in the year of 1980 and lived in different parts of Venezuela until 2001, when I decided to move to the U.S. Once I was in the U.S. I lived in different states, all depending on the best job offer. That took me to places like Miami, Orlando, Dallas, Tennessee, San Francisco and New York City. After five years of traveling and working in the U.S. I decided to take an offer in London to explore the industry in Europe. Thanks to that decision I met my wife who with I'm in Venezuela right now preparing for the next adventure that is going to take us to Weta Digital in new Zeland. To be honest I never imagined I was going to end up working in movies, let alone in productions of such magnitude, but because of several situations in my life one job took me to the next and when I least expected it I found myself watching my own work in movies. It was a very hard start but it was extremely satisfying as well. - Where did you go to college and what did you study there? I studied engineering for about a year in the University Simón Bolívar and two extra months in Santa María University in Caracas, Venezuela. After three years of studing I decided to move to the U.S. where I got a degree in Website Design. That took me to where I am now. I learned all the 3D animation stuff on my own, studing at home and practicing all day for almost eight months. - How did you end up working for super productions in Hollywood? I've worked in different things in my career. From special effects in the forensic department, going through effects for the pharmaceutical industry to music videos and such. After three years I managed to complete my first demo reel that made me work in Blue Sky Studios in New York City. There I was offered an amazing oportunity to work in the sequel of Ice Age as an Effects technical director. It was an amazing experience and I will be forever grateful to them for giving me this chance. - How did ou end up working in Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix? After finishing Ice Age 2 I started working on the short film No Time for Nuts which was included on the DVD of the movie. Once that project was done I started working on Horton Hears a Who for six months and then I was invited by The Moving Picture Company to work in London on the next Harry Potter movie. They had visited my website and were very interested in my work in particles so I accepted the invitation and lived in London for a year and half. - What did you do in Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix? I was involved in the development of the fireworks dragon in Umbridge's office, the sand tornado in which Voldemort disappears and other minor effects through out the movie. - Are you a Harry Potter fan? Have you read all the books? I had always been a huge fan of the story as such and I had seen all the previous movies. But to be honest I don' like reading too much. - Did anyone in your family freak out when they found out you were going to be working in the Harry Potter movies? Sure! Harry Potter is so big worldwide that there wasn't a member of my family and friends in the industry who wasn't jumping of excitement knowing that I was going to be working in the next movie. - For all the fans out there who have no idea, can you explain to us a little bit the process of making the visual effects for a movie? What do you work on and how long does it take to complete a scene? The process is very long and tedious in most of the cases. Depending on the shot, we start with illustrations that come from the art department or with the video of what was filmed on set with the actors. In the case of the dragon I started working with some illustrations and comments from the director. With all that information we started to experiment with different techiques to achieve in 3D everything that started with a sketch. |
In other cases, like with the sand tornado, I started with a video coming from the set with the actors. On this video we insert our effects and we present them to the director who makes tons of comments, revisions and changes. After several tries and millions of particles we manage to finish the scene. My effects for the dragon scene appear onscreen for less than a minute and it took me to make them over five months. It's the same in the case of the sand tornado. - What was the hardest scene to develope? I'm not sure about the situation with the other studios that made other effects for this movie, but I can say that the extensions in the sets for the Ministry of Magic and staircases of the school were the most complicated ones to finish. They went through a great number of revisions and adjustments to manage the correct lighting. |
- Did you consult with J.K. Rowling for the design of certain creatures and places? (like the patronus, the veil, Kreacher) Of course. The stage of design is something that involves not only the author but the director as well, and tons of other artists and producers. It's a huge collaboration with people and the author's opinion is very important. - Did you have to read some parts of the book for inspiration and to check for the description of certain things, or did you base everything off of the script and/or your own imagination? We read the book, and thanks to the popularity of it ithere was no problem for the artists in the studio. Or at least that was their excuse to have a copy of the book around! - What's the difference in this movie and the other Harry Potter movies as far as the visual effects are concerned? What new methods and programs were used? For this movie there were many new techniques and programs. For instance, it was the first time that there wasn't a model of the staircases in Hogwarts. In this case they were 100% digital. We used for the very first time a software called Flowline for the creation of the water prision that wraps up Voldemort. We also used it for the snake of fire in the Ministry. Several revisions were done to the Realflow software set up for the effects in the duel betweeen Voldemort and Dumbledore. There was also a new system developed by The Moving Picture Company to calculate huge quantities of "rigid bodies" for the sequence where all the crystall prophecies are smashed in the Ministry. In general, it's an industry that changes very quickly and every studio invests large quantities of money and time to improve their tools and techniques to garantee that the results keep improving with each production. |
- This is the first time in the Harry Potter movies that a set was created completely by computer. This set was the Department of Mystery. In this scene there's a lot of action and smashing of crystall balls, which would've been a complicated and expensive thing to do in reality. What can you tell us of this scene? This scene was developed by Double Negative in London. It's definetely one of my favorite parts in the movie. |
- The character of Grawp was animated with a new type of animation that allows a computer to copy the performance of a real life actor onto a character in the computer. What can you tell us about it? Is it like the effects used on Lord of the Rings to animate Gollum or like Marlon Brando face was animated from actual footage for the Superman movie released in 2006? For movies like Harry Potter several studios around the world are used. This is so we can complete the biggest ammount of effects in the shortest time. Grawp was developed by Double Negative in London. The technique that was used there is very similar to the one that ILM incorporated to the character of Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean. This was the same technique used for the character of Kreacher. |
- There was a special choreographer on set to teach the actors to move in a special way according to their character's personality when tossing a spell (for instance, Lucius Malfoy is very stiff and Sirius has more of a street style for the dueling) did you follow this concept to design the way the spells look and come out of the wand depending on each character? Yes, for this movie there were several variations of the spells that were then saved in libraries and used in scenes depending on the context of the scene, the character, type of spell, etc. - What was your favorite scene to work on? What was your favorite final product? (scene, effect, etc.) Generally speaking, the experience of working in this movie was very interesting and if I had to choose amongst my effects I would have to say it's the sand tornado in which Voldemort dissappears into. That's the result that I liked the most. These were three takes that took me a couple of months to complete and some of them went through more than 30 revisions. I ended up with over 40 million particles in one scene. To this day it's an effect that I keep watching because of how interesting the particles move. - What stories or anecdotes can you tell us about working in this movie? Any details that we missed? Not much, besides the fact that our effects supervisor almost died in a fire on set, or that the scene where Harry sees Voldemort on King's Cross the body of Voldemort was shot in London and the face was filmed in another country and then it was pasted together (the actor had schedule conflicts), or the fact that 100% of the fireworks are digital and in 3-D. After 10 months and over 120 millions of particles I can say that I contributed to almost 2 minutes of footage in total for this movie. In the end you don't know who the real wizards are ;). |
- This time around the effect of Sirius head on the fireplace was changed. Now the face can be seen reflected in the flames, as oppossed to his face being made from the pieces of wood in the fireplace like we saw in the fourth movie. The fans didn't like the way it looked. Was this the reason it looked different now? Exactly, for The order of the Phoenix the director decided to change the look of this effect due to the comentary made after the previous movie. Developing the new look was very difficult and I remember it being the only effect that took from the beggining of the movie to the end to complete. This was because there wasn't a clear idea as to how it was suppossed to look so we tried several ideas that took shape little by little until you see what you see in the final product for the scene. |
- The nose of the actor Ralph Fiennes was removed from his face digitally to give him the look of snake without the need of make up. What can you tell us about these effects? This part of the project was one of the hardest ones we did. It involved a great deal of the studio thanks to the number of shots that were needed, how close the camara was of the actor and in some cases the level of realism that is needed to obtain a real look. This was a collaboration between the teams in rotoscoping, animation,modelling, shading, illumination and compositing. I think the result is amazing. |
- Speaking of visual effects in faces, in the fourth movie we found out that there was a huge need to remove digitally acne marks and spots in the teenage actors, was this done again for this movie? and do you consider it's absolutely necessary to do this in movies? I'm not completely aware of the airbushing that was done here, but nearly 100% of the takes go through a process of cleaning, color correction, etc. In some cases it's amazing the difference between what was filmed on set and the final product after the digital treatment. This is very necessary and now directors count with this type of tools more often. It gives them more flexibility in their work and the costs of production are reduced a lot. - How does it feel to be one of the few hispanic people working in Harry Potter. We know so far only about Alfonso Cuaron and yourself. Is there somebody else that we don't know about? I'm very proud. And I'm very happy to be one of the representatives of Latin America in this industry. Unfortunately I didn't get the chance to meet other Latinos in Harry Potter but I'm aware that there's several others. I hope that as time pases by we are more and more. This is a very competitive industry but with big efforts it's possible. - What do you recommend to kids to study in school if they're interested in working in special effects in movies like yourself? That's relative. As I mentioned before I learned to work in 3-D on my own. I think that more important than where you study is the wish of wanting to go very far and persevere, trace a goal and not resting until you get it. This industry requiers a lot of dedication and like everything related to techology it changes constantly. I don't think there's a day in which we stop learning. Generally speaking, to be a good FX TD you need extensive knowledge of programs in 3D like Maya, Houdini, Max, Realflow, etc. Also some knowledge in MEL, C++, Python, Unix helps a lot. The key is to have a balance between the techical aspects and the creative aspects. Take advantage of every resource available, pay attention to the behavior of simple things around you like a drop of water slidding down the glass, etc. You need some knowledge in different areas of 3-D before you make a decission. This will alow you not only to choose what area you want to specialize in, but it will also be essential in the succesful comunication between other artists no matter what department you're working in. Don't be affraid to ask questions, especially in forums such as CGTalk, highend3d, etc. There's plenty of people that are willing to help. - There's two Harry Potter movies left, are you returning to either of them? If so, can you tell us something about them? I know that the the effects for the next movie have already begun. Personally I will not be part of that movie because I decided to take a break from London and explore other possibilities. I haven't decided anything on the last movie, so we'll see what happens next year. - What's next for you? What are you working on right now, what are your other projects? I'll be moving to Wellington, New Zeland in the next few days where I'm going to be working on a movie called The Day the Earth Stood Still that will be released in december this year and another movie called Avatar, that will hit theaters in december 2009. That's what I have planned for the next year and a half. This was HPLA's inteview with Luis Pages. Make sure you check out his awesome work in the upcoming movies 10,000 BC and Horton Hears a Who! |
HARRY POTTER y todo lo relacionado es propiedad de J.K. Rowling y Warner Bros. Harrypotterla.com es un sitio no-oficial y no tiene ninguna relación con Warner Bros., J.K. Rowling, Emecé, Salamandra, Bloomsbury o Scholastic. Prohibido "tomar prestado" y/o copiar contenido y diseño, así como material original. Todos los derechos reservados. No, no tengo el e-mail de nadie famoso. Sitio hecho en México. |
