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."

The team began their work with models based on real anatomy and physical structure, informed by a huge library of accumulated reference material – photos, videos, specially shot live-footage, even a talk by an experienced wildlife cameraman. Once the 'real' polar bear model, rig and fur groom were established, the anatomical fictions required by the action (such as opposable thumbs) were interpolated into the work in progress. In addition, models were created which helped define the different physical traits of Iorek and Ragnar. It was decided early on that Iorek's eye height when he was on all fours would match that of Lyra, making conversation between the two easier and more companionable.  Proportionately, this meant that when rearing up, Iorek was about 11 feet tall.

Iorek's beautiful armour is as much a part of him as the humans' daemon companions. It presented the Framestore CFC team with several unique challenges, as it meant fitting one CG element on top of another in such a way that it would still move naturally and interact with the bear's shaggy coat convincingly. There is, as they discovered, a big difference between armour that looks good in a still picture or model, and armour that will function well in motion or in a fight.

The armour is described as being made of 'sky iron' – an evocative name that carries connotations of meteorite metal, perhaps, as well as more mystical components. The look of it evolved into simple, organic plate shapes and complex surface colour and qualities.  The basic armour material looked similar to freshly smelted pig iron, with an uneven, pitted surface, weathered and battle-worn. Its magical look derived from a complex and unexpected blend of colours, as well as specularities, reflection and iridescence in the highlights and worn areas where plates rubbed against each other.

By contrast, Ragnar's armour, like his character, was the complete opposite of Iorek's – a gaudy, over-the-top, decadent plate steel armour and chain mail ensemble. The 'guard bears' featured in the scenes at Ragnar's Palace also sport real, procedural chain mail – a direction chosen by the Framestore CFC team that Morris – with the benefit of hindsight – laughingly characterises as 'pure folly'. "We thought that it might be a good option to get away from some of the movement challenges," he recalls, "But 36,000 rings of hand woven procedural steel per suit entailed its own little set of challenges. But when you see the result, it was worth it."

Bear Necessities
Morris attended the shoot throughout, and was joined by Dadi Einarsson (Animation Supervisor) for key performance scenes, and, towards the end of the shoot, by Ivan Moran (Compositing Supervisor). Every major scene had been previzzed with Weitz and Fink – the bear fight, Ragnar's palace, all the shots with Lyra interacting with and riding on the bear. With the production's blessing, this spadework became something of a template for the labours that followed. "It was also a big plus from Dakota's point of view," says Morris, "We'd show her a picture of how Iorek would look beside her and she would build it all into her performance completely naturally."

The same sort of help was available to the young actress on the scenes in which she rode Iorek through the snow and ice. For these sequences the team used a motion rig (the mRig) that Framestore CFC had developed in house some years ago – initially for work on the Dinotopia project, and used more recently in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. The rig functions like a programmable mechanical bull, allowing the team to animate the characters in pre-production (to Weitz's approval) and then programme the motion control camera and mechanical rig the actor actually rides on with that same 3D camera and body animation. The end result is a more convincing ride for the audience.

The exteriors for these ride sequences, as well as the outside environment during the climactic bear fight, were another purely CG element that the Framestore CFC were responsible for. Early in pre-production Martin Macrae, Digital Environment Supervisor, pored over hours of Genesis HD material and thousands of high res digital stills that Fink had shot on the real island of Svalbard at the North Pole. Along with concept designs provided by the production Art Department, this material enabled the team to create the necessary snowbound environments.

The biggest challenge posed by the interior of Ragnar's Palace, described in the book as a cold, dark, decaying environment filled with dense smoke from seal blubber lamps and an assortment of architectural styles, was lighting and compositing the sequence.  The Framestore CFC team had to bring together Lyra's greenscreen elements (often requiring heavy grades to balance the sequence), 2D plate elements of flaming flambeau's, many layers of 3D for Ragnar, the armoured guard bears, 3D digital environment and FX passes for smoke and God rays. Taken together, it required a masterly touch to bring it off.

Bear With Us
In addition to the massive challenge of making Iorek walk the walk – creating both a 'person' (someone that you cared for and were intrigued by), as well as a bear (a ferocious beast to be feared), it was Dadi Einarsson's job as animator to get Iorek to talk the talk. A long muzzle and rigid mouth area make it a particularly tough creature to give speech to. But Iorek's character played into the team's hands to an extent. He's a very stoic, understated personality – not a chatterbox or a gabbler – and this made his mouth easier to work with.

Another layer of animation realism was brought to the table by CG Supervisors Laurent Hugueniot and Andy Kind, who made sure – along with a crew of TDs – that all of the bears' fur, and the skin under that fur, and the fat under that skin, that all of it moved convincingly, with just the right amount of jiggle.

Audiences and reviewers alike are singling out Iorek and the bears as a favourite element in The Golden Compass. Morris himself says simply, "I knew as soon as I'd read the book that it was a film I had to do, and others clearly felt the same. Recruitment was not difficult on this project. When people heard that we were doing the bears, they came. That gave the team a very special energy."

 
The Golden Compass
A New Line Cinema release
presented in association with Ingenious Film Partners
of a Scholastic production/Depth of Field production

Produced by Deborah Forte and Bill Carraro
Directed by Chris Weitz