Hybrids In Film - Mr Tumnus

After looking at hybrids that occur between animals in nature, and mythological creatures, I want to look at how hybrids are used in Film and TV. Often, a hybrid in movies is typically a bad guy, but in many films this is not the case. Films such as Narnia, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and Avatar contain hybrids, with some of their characters being based on those in Greek Mythology, such as the Centaurs in Narnia and Harry Potter.

Centaurs Harry Potter.

Oreius, Centaur, Chronicles of Narnia. 

The Chronicles of Narnia - The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.

Mr Tumnus is a fictional character in The Chronicles of Narnia, played by James McAvoy.. He is a faun, which means he has the legs of a goat, and the torso of a man. When creating the character, the KNB FX Team, led by Howard Berger, had many things to consider. When casting McAvoy, the director was unsure about whether his good looks and muscular body would take away from the unusual character he was to play. The prosthetics team began with larger prosthetic pieces, and began to realise that this was not the path to follow, as it was just too much. They began with a large nose, and ended up with just one small piece on the tip of McAvoy's nose, to make it more 'beast-like', using the actors face and enhancing it. It took the team 3 1/2 hours to 4 hours to complete the whole prosthetics look, which included ears, horns, nose and hair. During an interview, McAvoy noted that 'What looks good and what looks real were not always the same thing'. This is a real eye-opener for makeup artists, especially students. We are always wanting to go over the top, when sometimes, less is more. I am definitely going to keep this in mind when creating/designing my own hybrid. There was many back and forth moments for the KNB FX Team, especially when it came to shooting. They had chosen the hair colour to be a chestnut brown tone, but when the cinematographer began shooting, the contrast between the backgrounds and his hair did not work well. This led the whole team to go back to the drawing board and choose a new colour, make new wigs and body hair. There was a lot of body hair to be applied to McAvoy, which larger pieces running from all the way down his arms, up his back, on his chest, and then single hairs were applied around these parts to make them look more realistic. After the hair was applied, the team would hand style the hair, using hot irons, hair dryers etc to make the hair appear more organic and real. From his waist to his hips, McAvoy had the fake hair, then underneath he was to wear green screen trousers. These are skin tight green leggings, that had points marked on them, which helped the special effects team make up his goat legs. When filming, McAvoy had to walk on his tip-toes, both on set and green screen. This made not only his legs appear more goat-like, but also moved his body in a similar way. After the movement was correct in animation, another team were allocated the job to create the fur on the animated legs, and then another team had to make sure elements like footprints, and the hooves kicking up snow were working.

Mr. Tumnus live mould.
http://movieweb.com/go-skin-deep-with-the-makeup-effects-of-the-chronicles-of-narnia-prince-caspian/

Mr Tumnus, played by James McAvoy.
The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.

"This was so labor-intense, and we ended up having 42 make-up people on our crew that traveled with us from September to December wherever we shot. There's a large variety of creatures and species--23 different species on set. We had monsters all day long. We ended up standing there everyday doing all these make-ups, all these suits, all these creatures. We pulled every trick out of the bag. We had prosthetic stuff, heavy or light prosthetics, full suits, mechanical heads, background heads, puppets, etc. We used everything to just make it all work. Also, it's nice talking about the digital thing. If the audience sees that there's an actor in makeup yet he has dog-jointed legs, it might throw them off, thinking "That's not a full digital character, so how are they going about that?" I think that's where that plays best, instead of having a full CG creature running around. I think it's much more believable to have that human aspect".  - (Howard Berger, 2005).

Coming Soon (2005) Interview with Narnia special effects and makeup team - Narnia movies, C.S. Lewis, and more - the stone table. Available at: http://www.thesecrethill.com/articles/206,1.html (Accessed: 12 November 2015).

Tenable, J. (2013) Fauns and Faun mythology. Available at: https://wizzley.com/fauns-and-faun-mythology/ (Accessed: 12 November 2015).

Miller, R. (2007) Digital art: Painting with Pixels (exceptional social studies titles for upper grades). Minneapolis: Twenty-First Century Books (CT).

Kiri Seraphi (2012) Making of Mr.Tumnus(from Japanese DVD). Available at: https://youtu.be/ncKfRtxqzZ4 .

Gallagher, B. (2008) Go skin-deep with the makeup effects of ‘The chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian’. Available at: http://movieweb.com/go-skin-deep-with-the-makeup-effects-of-the-chronicles-of-narnia-prince-caspian/ (Accessed: 12 November 2015).