Читать книгу Inside the Magic: The Making of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them - Ian Nathan - Страница 9

NEWTON ARTEMIS FIDO SCAMANDER, MAGIZOOLOGIST, IS A TYPE OF WIZARD WE HAVEN’T ENCOUNTERED BEFORE IN THE WIZARDING WORLD.

He has made it his life’s work to study and understand magical creatures. J.K. Rowling describes him as ‘weather-beaten’ and ‘wiry’. Played by the highly versatile and very English actor, Eddie Redmayne, he has the appearance of a bewildered student dressed in an ill-fitting bow-tie, blue greatcoat, and turned-up trousers. And he is inseparable from a leather case that has seen better days.

‘What I love about Newt,’ says Redmayne, ‘is he’s a passionate fellow. He’s got his own agenda. He’s got his own interests. In many ways, he’s not a people pleaser.’

No matter how dangerous, or peculiar looking, Newt is of the opinion that every beast is fantastic. It’s in the company of humans he’s all at sea. He is not what you would call one of nature’s conversationalists.

‘He’s an oddball,’ beams Redmayne happily. ‘He feels more at home with creatures than he does with human beings.’

As director David Yates explains, ‘He’s one of the very few wizards who believes that creatures have a place in the wizarding world and they should be cherished and appreciated. Everybody else thinks he’s nuts, because they’re so dangerous. So he’s a bit of a lone figure.’

Newt’s great hope is to bring the wizarding world round to see the value in these beasts. With the proper education they could learn to live side by side with them, and appreciate how extraordinary they are. So he has been travelling round the world, researching his book. At the beginning of the film he has spent a year in the field collecting these endangered species, which he keeps, naturally enough, in his case.

Redmayne does a quick tally in his head: there was definitely Egypt, where he found a Thunderbird; there was India; and also Equatorial Guinea. ‘Take it from me, he’s a well-travelled man,’ he says. But nowhere has been quite as eye-opening as this incredible city.

New York was really only supposed to be a brief stop on his way to Arizona, where Newt would return his majestic Thunderbird, Frank, to its natural habitat. But when some of his creatures get out, well, things get complicated.

‘What’s wonderful is when you read Jo’s script you take it into your own world,’ says Redmayne. ‘And you add ideas of your own. It’s been kind of childhood dream stuff. You sort of have to regress to your inner child.’

Yates has encouraged all the actors to come up with their own ideas. Redmayne calls it, ‘trouble shooting by magical ideas’. For instance, when he came up with idea of using his wand as an umbrella, Yates was delighted: ‘I love it. Use it.’ Indeed, apart from a small amount of puppetry, the beasts were going to be conjured up later with CGI. On set they mostly existed entirely within the actors’ imaginations.

With the welcome assistance of the design ­department showing him concept art and even acting out how they behave, he was able to picture the likes of the Niffler – ‘the bane of his life’ – that looks like a cross between a badger and an anteater and has a fondness for shiny things. Or the tiny, twig-like Bowtruckle, one of which has ‘attachment issues’ and Newt keeps in his pocket. Or, for that matter, a female Erumpent – like a mix of rhino and elephant – that is currently in heat.

Eddie Redmayne as Newt Scamander, wearing his signature blue coat and armed with his ordinary looking case.

Newt & Tina hide behind some MACUSA filing cabinets.

Newt and Jacob: two guys on the same seat in the same bank with the same type of case. What could possibly go wrong …? ­

Newt takes cover behind an ­overturned car.

‘Newt has to try and entice her back into the case,’ Redmayne recalls ruefully. ‘That involved one of the more humiliating moments in the film. I had to do an Erumpent mating dance. It is weirdly exhausting trying to seduce an Erumpent.’

Katherine Waterston, who plays the witch Tina Goldstein, found herself mesmerized by the ­different relationships Redmayne created with each of the beasts he is looking after.

‘It might be my favourite thing,’ she laughs, ‘because he has developed ways of communicating with them. It’s the middle of the film and suddenly we’re ­watching an excerpt from a nature show. He crawls around with them, he makes cooing sounds – it sounds ridiculous, but it’s really awesome and sweet, and Eddie’s done such detailed work with that.’

Over the course of the story, however, the ­fantastic beasts Newt is going to learn most about are human beings.

‘There’s something really sweet and endearing about him,’ thinks David Yates. ‘He’s amazing with these beasts, and his journey is ultimately to discover how to get on with regular people.’

‘He is learning to be himself,’ says Redmayne, which means he must learn to trust and find comfort in other people. Almost out of necessity, Newt will form two very different friendships with two very ­different locals. First, he literally collides with Dan Fogler’s ­forlorn Jacob Kowalski, a No-Maj whose dreams of opening his own bakery have come unstuck.

Newt’s British passport reveals that he left to go travelling in search of fantastic beasts on 16 June 1923.

‘It has this odd buddy movie quality to it,’ says Redmayne, capturing this unlikely but touching ­partnership. They are comical opposites: portly Jacob, ­aspiring baker, is a real people person, whereas Newt is a tall, thin, scatty wizard who is a bit standoffish. Somehow they will draw out the best in one another.

Meanwhile, Waterston’s witch Tina, a former Auror with a complicated past, is hot on his trail. With some justification, she suspects all is not what it seems with this tourist and his case.

Yates explains that, ‘In the course of the story Tina and Newt have this unrequited, quite tender, quite funny journey together.’ Newt’s romantic past, which complicates matters, is as haphazard as most of his dealings with humankind, particularly his family.

The Scamander family are none too impressed with the career path the younger brother, Newt, has taken.

The wizard has a significant background. ‘Newt actually went to Hogwarts, and he trained under Albus Dumbledore,’ says Yates. The director goes on to explain that Newt was expelled from the famous wizarding school under ‘enigmatic circumstances’ and only Professor Dumbledore spoke up for him.

Dumbledore has always had an affinity with misunderstood wizards.

Newt looks to be in a spot of bother.

NEWT’S WAND

‘Wands are weird,’ declares head prop modeller Pierre Bohanna, ‘because they can be so simple, literally a stick. But there are so many opinions that have to be included in how they look, because they are absolutely bespoke to the characters.’

The process of designing each of the principal wands – those belonging to Newt, Tina, Queenie and Graves – began with junior concept artist Molly Sole, who worked in Stuart Craig’s art department.

Beyond a general sense of the fashions of the era and the American setting (wands owned by New Yorkers are more Art Deco than Gothic), individual wand design boiled down to what best reflected the character in question. In Harry Potter lore, a quasi-sentient wand matches a wizard or witch’s character. How they look speaks volumes about who is casting the spell.

After the design is set, a prototype wand is first carved out of wood, and then, if possible, crafted with real materials. This is then used as a reference to create a mould, from which various replicas can be made. There were practice versions for the actors to take home and get the hang of casting spells round the house. As well as rubberized versions that were action safe. ‘A fourteen- to sixteen-inch long, half-inch-thick shaft made out of wood is actually quite dangerous,’ says Bohanna. ‘If it splits and cracks it’ll get quite spiky, so it’s only for very close-up work that you’ll use the original wand.’

When it came to Newt’s wand, says Bohanna, they wanted something that could be traced back to some ‘animal component’. However, Eddie Redmayne, who attended special ‘wand-work’ classes and, like all the wand-wielding actors, was thrilled to have input into the final model, was insistent there could be no leather or horn involved. Newt wouldn’t stand for that. Which definitely ruled out anything macabre like bone.

More practical than eye-catching, the handle was conceived to be made out of a piece of shell, but tubular like a sandworm’s shell. In reality, the prop department made it from a piece of ash wood, which was then given a pearling effect for the desired texture, and finally weathered to look as if it had already seen years of service.

‘It had quite a lot of character,’ says a ­satisfied Bohanna: ‘chips, knocks and bangs to show a ­well-worked life.’