Multimedia
Blogs
Forum
Affordable HD
Whitepapers
Newsletters
Events
Advertisers
Blogcast
MillimeterPractical Magic
May 1, 1999 12:00 PM, Michael Goldman
Since William Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream focuses on a strange fairy world of fantasy and magic, it would appear to cry out for the liberal use of digital effects. Thus, director Michael Hoffman and team opted for exactly the opposite approach. Certainly the Fox Searchlight film, shot entirely in Italy, does feature a handful of digital sequences. However, filmmakers created the majority of the effects using practical techniques that take advantage of Luciana Arrighi's unique production design, based on 19th century paintings of fairies and other supernatural phenomenon.
"We went with all sorts of mechanical and in-camera effects," says Hoffman. "In one case, we have the character Puck creating a fog bank that envelopes two sleeping lovers, and then he makes the fog disappear again. All we did there was just shoot it and play it back in reverse, so the fog goes back into Puck's pouch. That's a crude effect you probably could have done in 1899, but for what we were trying to do, it worked and it felt more real."
"We felt that if we used too much technology to create the effects, they would look spectacular, but highly technical and modern," he notes. "We wanted them to have a physical and mysterious look instead."
Much of the magic takes place in an Italian "Enchanted Forest," created on Soundstage C at Rome's Cinecitta Studios. Hoffman says the stage is Europe's largest-and more important, it's Fellini's old stage.
"You kind of felt the ghosts of all the great filmmaking that has gone on there," he says. "Some of the older guys in the art department have been around forever and worked with Fellini and Bertolucci and other masters of the Italian cinema. So it was a real treat to work there."
Hoffman filled the stage with live vegetation-fresh trees, plants, and flowers, and the crew took great care with lighting.
"Comedy usually takes place in light, and darkness tends to defeat comedy, says Hoffman. "But this is a comedy that takes place in a forest at night. We thought we could defeat that problem through beauty and variation, so the design team really did great work on it. Then we lit it so that it appears as though there is this endless twilight in it-the kind of moonlit exteriors that you see in those great 19th century paintings."
Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.
