A Sunday Times Exclusive - Part #1

17th December 2006

AN INSIDER’S PERSONAL EXPERIENCES ON MAKING ERAGON

Eric German interviews Malcolm Scerri-Ferrante, Eragon’s Unit Production Manager

I had met Malcolm when I used to interview filmmakers while they were shooting part of a film in Malta.  Then I was ill for three years and when I recovered sufficiently to be active again, I found that he had immigrated to Canada.  After seeing his Eragon credit I was determined to re-establish contact.

I managed to track him down at his home in Vancouver, Canada and we did this interview there and then, on the phone and with me holding a tape recorder. 

Actually, I got the ball rolling by asking Malcolm what led to his working on the film.

“I had hardly made my first step in this beautiful city (Vancouver) when one of the producers who I had previously worked for called me.  He was a good friend so I did not hesitate much and got on a plane one week later. 

“The script and schedule suggested a tough six-month stay in Hungary.  It became ten months of very hard intense work in Slovakia and Hungary.”

The work of a unit production manager (UPM) is quite complex and versatile. Put briefly and simply, a UPM is the producer/s’ right hand man/woman. 

He/she has to organize the production in the most efficient way possible and that includes hiring the crew, dealing with suppliers and negotiating all deals, keeping the film on schedule and controlling the budget. 

Malcolm added that, “for every week that passed during preparation and shooting, our operations became bigger and bigger as creative ideas evolved and the project became a constant creative work in progress. 

“There was a great energy and enthusiasm from most of our crew in wanting to make the best movie possible. 

“So as UPM, besides dealing with normal production hurdles and the added pressure of working in a country with the world’s fifth most difficult language (Hungarian), I had to constantly keep my eyes on costs and wave the red flag whenever creative ideas became too challenging to afford. 

“The job of a production manager is very business oriented but it also requires a thorough knowledge of film production.

“However I believe a lot in putting every dollar up on screen so I was always very supportive of any ideas that worked towards this, be it aerial photography or elaborate set building.”

One of the questions that I most wanted Malcolm’s view on concerned the original concept of the film.

“The brief given by Fox was always that we must not seek to imitate Lord of the Rings.  In fact the mention of this film was banned from any discussions and we watched DVDs of this trilogy to make sure we are not replicating anything. 

“Eragon had to be a film that would stand on its own in its own unique way. This was not to be Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings.  It was the world of Eragon. 

“(Director) Stefen Fangmeier had a very strong vision of the movie. He has a strong visual effects background having been the VFX supervisor for Jurassic Park, Saving Private Ryan and other big movies. 

“He was the best person to give character to a totally computerized dragon, a character that the audience would be able to relate to emotionally. We all knew that if the dragon did not work, nothing else could save the movie.”

Script "a good read"

In replying to my comments on the script, Malcolm told me:

“I don’t choose my jobs according to the script.  There are many movies I’ve worked on where I felt the script was weak. I thought the Eragon script was a very good read and it flowed well.

“This meant quite a lot to me since generally, I am not a fan of fantasy movies. But after reading the first ten pages I just wanted to keep reading till the end.  That was a good sign for me.

“I often recall one amusing episode which happened when I had just started working on the movie and met the director for the first time during a dinner.  

“I like to be very honest and frank, sometimes at the cost of being perhaps slightly insensitive politically.  But that’s me and it takes getting used to me. 

“So I told him that I don’t like watching fantasy movies.  Stefen almost choked on his food in horror that I would be working on his movie when I wasn’t a fantasy fan. 

“It was only after I told him that the script was indeed a great read that he calmed down. It was obvious that he was a man who loved to take audiences to places they have never seen before and he wanted everyone to share this dream with him.” 

Casting Eragon

Malcolm’s reply to my comments on Edward Speleers, who plays the title hero, made me realize that despite what we see on screen, a lot of hard work and anxiety goes on off screen which we don’t get to know, much less acknowledge, unless there’s an interview like this.

“We were in pre-production for almost 20 weeks.  This was longer than we had anticipated and the reason for the delay was that the actor who would play Eragon could not be found” Malcolm revealed. 

“Stefen was flying all over the world on casting auditions, as far as Australia one time.  Thousands auditioned and a few hundred were short listed.  But the search kept going on and on.

“Fortunately Ed Speleers was discovered by our excellent casting director, Priscilla John. Ed had taken part in a school play and as soon as he walked into the room with Stefen and Wyck Godfrey (producer) they knew they had finally found Eragon. 

“He was found barely two weeks before shooting so we had to rush quickly into training him with sword fighting skills, personal fitness and an acting coach. He was only 17 and at first I was worried because working with kids that age could be difficult. 

“I already envisaged nightmares of him not showing up on set because of a long night or getting into some kind of trouble.  However Ed was truly a very responsible kid for his age.  He gave his maximum effort to the movie and he integrated well with all of the crew and cast.

On location

The film was shot on location in Hungary and Slovakia.  Malcolm explained why these locations had been chosen and he told me about some of his experiences in both countries.    

“Initially, Hungary was chosen as the main location of the film because of its attractive financial incentives. We got 20% back for almost every dollar we spent there.  One of the challenges was the language barrier. 

“Sometimes, meetings would take longer than normal because at times, I needed to have a translator and even then I needed to double check that every one understood everything.  It took quite a lot of getting used to.  It was a great lesson at making patience my virtue. 

“Also I had the challenge of finding the best crew possible since many other movies were shooting there at the same time as ours.  I was constantly trying to grab crew before they got snatched for Munich. Sometimes I was successful, other times not.

“On the brighter side, Hungary has very good technicians and good experience in the movie business.  They have been doing movies for decades so all that helped a lot.  Eventually we all spoke one common language, the language of film.

One of the many comments that I had, very reluctantly, edited out of my review for reasons of space, was the significant contribution made by the choice of locations which complemented the action and the narrative and sometimes enhanced both.

I told Malcolm about this and it led to some very interesting replies.  He started by telling me that, “We realized that Eragon needed some brilliant looks location-wise.

“Since the movie is essentially a traveling one (the major part of the film takes the form of a quest, a journey), we had to have significant changes in scenery and the scenery had to look stunning. That’s why we introduced Slovakia into the equation.  

“Slovakia borders with Hungary and has the mountains and certain sights that Hungary could not provide.   We flew to Slovakia several times to scout it.  Sometimes the weather was bad and we would have to return for more scouting. 

“Each time we would hire a small propeller plane and land in Poprad and then have our location manager show us locations which were occasionally two hours apart! 

“I love challenges and I love working hard when it comes to putting money out on screen.  Stefan kept insisting that one scene, the burial scene, had to be one of the money-shots of the movie.

A money shot varies from a shot to an entire sequence.  The common factor is that the shot or the sequence is very expensive but it’s worth spending a large amount of money to get on film because it makes a major contribution to the film and it gives the audience more value for their money.

The attempts to get what became know as “the mountain shot” is an epic struggle in itself but I’ll tell you about that in the concluding part of this interview. 

That will also include the aerial filming, the elaborate sets, the Varden and the dwarfs, which feature prominently in the film’s spectacular climax, the visual effects for the dragon and, sadly, two horrific accidents that happened during the filming.

A The Sunday Times Exclusive - Part #2

26th December 2006

THE ERAGON DIARIES

Concluding Eric German’s interview with Malcolm Scerri-Ferrante, Unit Production Manager on Eragon

My interview with Malcolm was different from all the others in my career.  It was the first interview that I did by phone and without that slender line it wouldn’t have been done.

But I missed the person to person contact of all the other interviews I’ve done.  When I interview someone in person, besides the information I get from the interviewee’s answers, I also get a revealing feedback from that person’s body language, his/her eyes and the changes in vocal tone during certain topics. 

The atmosphere, especially if I’m doing an interview on a film set, gives the interview flavour and a specific sense of place and time. 

With a telephone interview, most of that is usually lost.  But my telephone interview with Malcolm was unique in two predominant ways. 

I never imagined that I would eventually find him at his home in Vancouver, Canada as I thought that he’d be working on God knows which location, so I hadn’t prepared any questions. 

On his part, Malcolm had absolutely no inkling that he’d get a call from me. So we caught one another by surprise and that’s what made it spontaneous.

The other thing that makes this interview unique is that Malcolm had so many questions to ask me that it became a give and take interview.  The interview was done before the film’s premiere in L.A. At the time only three reviews had been posted on the iMDb, two in German and one in Dutch. 

Having worked so hard and for so long on the film, Malcolm was anxious for feedback from a professional film critic he could trust. I’ve grouped together three typical remarks of his which led to his questions and my answers, so that you’ll get the general idea:

“The CG effects of the Dragon took over a year to complete and the work went on well after we finished shooting the movie.  A lot of it took place in San Francisco.  So naturally, I am very curious, if not anxious, to know how the computer effects will complete the film.

“Whenever I saw rough cuts of the film, there were several spaces left blank where the dragon is supposed to appear or where any kind of visual effects need to be inserted, because it was far too early for them to be ready.

“Watching rough cuts without these effects, without the dragon and without the music track is really very rough indeed and of course, you can’t really judge a movie or predict how it will turn out until all these elements are in.”

I had already written this concluding part of the interview in my usual style.  As I was editing it, I started deleting some of my questions and accompanying comments to shorten it without losing anything important that Malcolm had told me. 

I then realized that, unknowingly, Malcolm and I had created a sort of diary on the making of Eragon.  It had a narrative hook and on its own it flowed and I read it through in one go.  

So I deleted all my questions and merged my comments and answers with Malcolm’s to give it pace and that diary feel.  I also realized that to have that effect, it had to be presented by using only one voice.  Since Malcolm had made the major contributions, I gave that voice to him. 

The style is different but this conclusion picks up where part one left off:

Struggle for the mountain shot 

At one stage we identified a mountain that we wanted to shoot on.  To scout it, we took a 45-minute flight out of Hungary and then traveled by jeep for two hours.

That took us to a mountain track and then we had to travel up using specialized mountain rangers in their land rovers.  The drive up the mountain was scary and treacherous as the track was just wide enough for the vehicles.  The 30-minute drive took us almost to the top of the mountain.

We then had a 45-minute walk up a trail to the very top.  Because of the high altitude the air was difficult to breathe.  Some of us, including myself, would fall on our backs gasping for air every ten minutes almost like we were asthmatic.  

When we scouted this mountain top, the fog was so thick we could not see more than four or five metres ahead of us. 

A few days before we planned to shoot the scene, the head of the national forest department had rejected the original permit - no helicopters allowed.  Apparently, there’s a rare breed of deer that is state-protected in many areas. This deer must be rare indeed because we never got to see it. 

The refusal seems to also have been caused by some afterthoughts following the shooting of Behind Enemy Lines some years ago which coincidentally was also a Fox movie and which had upset the Slovakian authorities by landing helicopters where the requested permission had been denied.

Still, we needed to get onto a magnificent mountain later that week come what may.  So I made the four-hour drive down to Slovakia. Eventually, we got exceptional permission to use helicopters on a different mountain range under some very strict conditions. 

One hour later I was in a helicopter scouting this mountain range, looking for a location that would give the audience the feeling of being on top of the world.  

Eventually, just before sunset we managed to shoot photos and video of the whole area and simulate the camera shot in the scene.  Stefen was ecstatic about the mountain shots and he selected one that could work. 

We had to leave long before sunset and we had a lot to filming to do, including aerial filming with another helicopter that was to be used for the end of the scene when the camera pulls away from the burial scene and we see the great view from afar. 

Standing on top of that mountain really felt like being on top of the world. The view was amazing.  When the film got back from the laboratory I knew that the week long stress in getting that scene done, however short, was well worth it.

Aerial Filming

We had to do a lot of aerial filming because of the dragon shots, point of view and side shots with the actor on the dragon’s back.  We used a real-sized helicopter for some shots but for others we used a model helicopter.  It took us places that a real helicopter could not. 

We wanted to get fast shots in narrow valleys and that would have been difficult with a real-sized helicopter, especially when flying at high speeds or making special and dangerous maneuvers. 

The speed of the dragon was always important.  We didn’t want to shoot the point of view scenes at a fast speed because this would have created a resolution that was not satisfactory for the visual effects work. 

So the speed of the dragon that you will see in the film is often the true speed of the helicopters as they flew.    

The elaborate sets

We built massive sets all over Hungary, designed by the legendary production designer Wolf Kroger who incidentally built Popeye’s Village in Malta back in 1979. Daret village, where the bridge collapses during a battle was one of the more elaborate sets. 

It was built on a lake five feet deep.  Our designer built the set using log poles to create man-made islands upon which the little huts were built.

The biggest feat

Our biggest feat was building the Varden (the volcano where the revolutionaries live and wait for the day to overthrow the evil king.  We shot this in a real volcano that was obviously no longer active and which was situated two and a half hours outside Budapest. 

We tried to find another location nearer the city, but all the time we knew that this was the best and we had no choice but to travel two and a half hours each way every time we needed to go there. To film in this location we had to use helicopters to place generators around the perimeter.

To make this set a reality we had to build a road through several trees so all the construction vehicles could have access.   It took ten weeks to build the Varden and we shot there at the end of our schedule way into the winter months. 

After some five weeks of filming there, on our very last day just when we wrapped, it began to snow and within a couple hours the whole set was covered in a white blanket of snow.  Had we not achieved all the shots in time, we would probably have had to wait the winter out!

Visual Effects

The dragon movements had to be simulated on set because the dragon does not exist except in the computers of Industrial Light and Magic (ILM). 

So we used a Motion Rig which basically would be the form of the back of the dragon where Ed would sit on, for example.  After filming, the Rig would be removed digitally and replaced with the fully animated dragon.

We then used another complicated Rig that had computerized motions and which we used inside a sound stage against a blue screen.  This was for all the complicated motions.

Dwarfs

In the book there’s a small community of dwarfs living in the Varden.  We could not find enough dwarfs in Hungary and I even tried to get some from a UK association in the UK, without success. Nothing is ever that easy.

We eventualy had no choice but to fly them in from all parts of the world. They were all stunt dwarfs and suddenly I found myself calling dwarfs from Japan to Australia and the States making deals for the climatic battle scene. 

Horrific accidents

To give you a measure of the size of the production, I’ll have to say we really experienced all sorts of events, some of then horrific.  A crane driver lost control and crashing into a house. A truck driver had a road accident which resulted in his leg being amputated. 

Some members of the crew became seriously ill and had to be flown back home and so on.  When you have to deal with all this, you know the movie is big.

In a sense, a film is only as good as the relations of its producer or production manager with the crew.  Of course there are other vital elements such as script, actors, director etc but when you’re pushing your crew to the limits, most will only go that one step further if there is a mutual respect.

I was lucky to have a very strong production team who could deal with all the finer details as they happened. We worked well together.

During the filming of Eragon, the push for creativity to obtain maximum quality was a constant factor which drove us all to maximum limits and also pushed the budget up further and further. That is why we all look forward to the movie doing well.

Overall experience 

I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t say it was a tough ride. But these movies are never easy to make.   This was the experience of a lifetime for many of the crew. 

The challenges we had to face at times were so difficult to even the most experienced on our team that sometimes we would joke about Winston Churchill’s popular quote:  “Never, never, never give up.”  

___________________________

Related links:

Prequel to the trailer of Eragon

Press review on Eragon

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