The visuals…provide a constant feast for the eyes. The bears [especially] are strongly rendered…
Todd McCarthy, Variety

The blend of live action, CG and visual effects is superb, making what must have been a technological nightmare look easy as pie.
Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter

Opening on 5th December 2007 in the UK (7th Dec. in the US), The Golden Compass is the big winter blockbuster of 2007/08. In the glorious tradition of the Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter series, the film brings to the screen a favourite multi-volume best-seller featuring young protagonists, magical creatures and perilous quests. Framestore CFC were delighted to provide the film with one of its heroes, the massive armoured polar bear, Iorek Byrnison, voiced by Ian McKellen.

Based on Northern Lights, the first book of Philip Pullman's award-winning trilogy, The Golden Compass takes place in a parallel universe. Like our own in many ways, this world is one in which magic is a fact of life and people wear their souls on their sleeves in the form of daemons – animal companions that travel inseparably as part of every person. The story opens on our young heroine, Lyra Belacqua (Dakota Blue Richards), a girl on the cusp of adolescence, curious and determined, who embarks on an extraordinary journey from the academic cloisters of Oxford to the magical heart of the frozen roof of the world. She must deal with many strange and ambiguous characters en route, including her uncle, Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig), the sinister Marisa Coulter (Nicole Kidman), and assorted travellers, adventurers and witches.

Iorek Byrnison is her companion and helpmate through the latter part of her journey. Lyra first encounters him in the port of Trollesund, where he has become a drunken has-been, deprived of honour and his precious armour. With Lyra's encouragement, Iorek pulls himself together and joins her on her quest. Later, when they reach the kingdom of the bears from which he's been exiled, Iorek has a dramatic and deadly showdown with the wicked usurper, Ragnar (voiced by Ian McShane and also created by Framestore CFC), an epic battle which elicited audience cheers and applause at the film's London premiere.

Bear Bones
"Chris Weitz (Director) and Mike Fink (VFX Supervisor) made it clear to us early on that they regarded Iorek as a true co-star and expected an accordingly strong performance from him," says Ben Morris, Framestore CFC's VFX Supervisor on the project, "So the bar was set high from the off. We'd all the necessary experience, skills and technology in place, but we'd never previously brought them all together like this. Using over 200 team members, we worked on more than 300 shots for The Golden Compass (though fewer than that appear in the final cut). From look development to shoot to post we spent 15 months aiming higher than we'd ever done before. Fortunately, it really paid off."

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