From Shrek to Narnia
After years spent in the company of Shrek and in the wilds of Narnia, NZ director Andrew Adamson is ready to experiment
By Ruth Hessey
Adamson plans a break from the supernatural
Andrew Adamson has spent eleven years making films about Shrek and Narnia and now the director wants to take a break - "to think about nothing."
The super CGI boffin who crossed over into directing with the massive hit about the marshmallow centred ogre, is even ready to let another director, Michael Apted, take The Dawntreader, the next Narnia film, and Adamson's personal favourite, onto the big screen. The pressure of the big budget, high concept shoots required by these fantasias has left him gasping for room "to make something smaller and more experimental."
Tall, fair and gentle, the New Zealander says "before making The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, I re-read the book and it seemed so much smaller. My memories of the battles were bigger. As if every picture and film I'd ever seen had somehow expanded the story." Aware of the mysterious way our minds work, Adamson says his approach to the Narnia universe on both films has been "total immersion. I tend to reread and take notes, and sleep and dream." In fact the one fleeting image of Mr Tumnus (the little faun who befriends Lucy when she first enters Narnia) made its way into the film during a flash of inspiration in postproduction - " a piece for the flute from the soundtrack suddenly reminded me that I wanted to reference the earlier story in the new one." Of course the four Pevensie children re-enter Narnia in Prince Caspian, only to discover that 1,000 years have elapsed, and the castle Cair Paravel, as well as the rest of the kingdom they ruled over, is in ruins. Mr Tumnus is just a fragment of fresco in the room of the Stone Table.
Adamson says the second film was no easier than the first. "It took six months to break the narrative, and even in the edit I was still shifting the structure around to keep the story escalating, to make the three battles climax, and then lead to a bigger moment." But filming in Europe and New Zealand was quite magically pagan in itself. "There was a village we filmed in just outside Prague which they told me was a place of Druid worship. Its name translated as ‘God Forsaken'. That explained the terrible weather we had while we were working there."