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MillimeterFade to Black: Stefen Fangmeier, Director
Jan 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Ellen Wolff
When Stefen Fangmeier prepared to make Eragon, a fantasy featuring a 3,000lb. flying blue dragon, he wasn't concerned about creating a CG star. “The dragon was never a big issue. I knew it would be great.” Fangmeier speaks with the confidence you'd expect from one of Industrial Light & Magic's (ILM) premier visual effects supervisors, who worked on such films as Jurassic Park and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and earned visual effects Oscar nominations for Twister, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, and The Perfect Storm. But Eragon presented a bigger challenge — it would be Fangmeier's directorial debut.
It seems fitting that the film adaptation of Eragon, a publishing phenomenon penned by a novice author, should be given to a first-time director — and the opportunity arrived unexpectedly. Fangmeier admits he'd been thinking of taking a hiatus from ILM to give himself a window of opportunity to pursue directing. But he didn't have to. “I'd met people at Fox during Master and Commander, and they sent me the Eragon script to see what I had to say.”
Based on Fangmeier's ideas, Fox gave him $25,000 and two weeks to craft a presentation. ILM artists pitched in, creating concept paintings that Fangmeier believes probably earned him the job. Not surprisingly, ILM later contributed to the film's 527 effects shots, along with Weta Digital, Cinesite, CIS Hollywood, and CafeFX. Fangmeier says VFX supervisors Samir Hoon, Glen McIntosh, and Michael McAlister freed him from having to concentrate on the effects, which included breathtaking POV shots from the dragon in flight. “I didn't want to do that job. I wanted to concentrate on the actors and the staging, ” Fangmeier says.
That task proved eye-opening. Fangmeier got the Eragon script in October 2004, and by spring, he was scouting locations in Hungary. “It was a nail-biter,” he admits. He wanted to shoot in real settings, despite the challenges of ever-changing weather and light. “It's so different from visual effects, where you can re-work shots for months. But when you have one day for four pages of dialogue, you have to follow your intuition.”
After having worked with such directors as Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, and Peter Weir, Fangmeier had a new appreciation for their abilities. “Watching them do take after take, I wondered, ‘How do they know when they've got it?’” he says.
In his cast, Fangmeier had unknown actor Edward Speleers in the title role, but the film also included such pros as Jeremy Irons, Robert Carlyle, and John Malkovich. “When I'd asked Jeremy why he'd agreed to do the movie, he said, ‘I checked you out.’ I knew people would wonder if a visual effects guy could get performances that weren't cheesy. Even with experienced actors, I had a very parental role. They had to trust that what I was asking them to do would ring true. I felt a profound responsibility to them.”
A crucial performance also had to be elicited from Rachel Weisz, who voiced the dragon. Fortunately for Fangmeier's animators, the dragon's comments were presented as telepathy, so no lip sync was required. “That allowed us to wait for the last minute.” he says. “I don't think we got Rachel until about two months before the completion of the film, which is highly unusual. The funny thing about working with studios is that as long as choices can be delayed, you do so.”
Fangmeier was keenly aware that studio execs were watching him closely. “It gave them comfort to have someone who wasn't going to spend wildly. Eragon was green-lit at $85 million and it came in at $100 million, but in today's world, these movies usually are more in the $200 million range.” Despite budgetary pressures, Fangmeier was determined to do what served the project — and deal with the consequences later. He actually articulated this attitude in a line he contributed to the script: “It's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.”
After completing Eragon, Fangmeier recalls meeting with Terminator 3 director Jonathan Mostow. “He said, ‘Stefen, you've done the things I'd tell a first-time director never to do — not direct your own material, or have a CG main character and huge battle scenes,” Fangmeier says. “Then he said, ‘But hey, it worked out okay!’”
