BUILDING A BETTER DRAGON GETTING THE FANTASTICAL BEAST TO TALK AND ACT NATURALLY WAS TRICKY.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

The makers of ``Eragon'' may have had the most promising source material a movie could want: young writer Christopher Paolini's boy-and-his-dragon novel, which has sold more than 2.5 million copies in North America alone.

But no matter how large the established fan base, the movie had one tough nut to crack for there to be any hope of box-office success: how to build a better dragon.

``Essentially, from the studio's perspective, dragon movies have generally not been commercially successful,'' notes Stefen Fangmeier, who makes his directing debut with ``Eragon'' after 15 years of supervising visual effects at Industrial Light & Magic.

``To find out why they've been flops, I just went to the recent ones, `Dragonheart' and `Reign of Fire.' I figured one was just about these simplistic, terrible reptiles and the other one had a very overpersonalized dragon.''

Something somewhere in between those two extremes seemed like a good idea for Saphira. A blue-hued dragon -- raised by the title hero (played by English newcomer Ed Speleers) from a hatchling into his closest friend and ally against the wicked King Galbatorix -- she had to be both powerful and endearing, a recognizable part of the long folkloric tradition of firebreathers yet original enough to be worth the price of a (hopefully E) ticket.

The requirements

``We needed to have a fierce animal, something as believable as `Jurassic Park,' and yet with a personality that would allow us to feel a strong connection between Eragon and her,'' says Fangmeier, who worked on ``Jurassic,'' as well as ``Twister,'' ``Saving Private Ryan'' and ``The Perfect Storm,'' among many others.

The latter was enabled by the fact that Paolini had helpfully written that Eragon and Saphira communicate telepathically.

``That allowed us to avoid the whole lip-sync issue, which becomes this talking-animal business,'' Fangmeier notes. ``It was sort of the saving grace. Otherwise, it becomes a cartoony sidekick thing.''

But that also required a whole new approach to human-dragon communications. Although Saphira's voice is provided by no less than ``Constant Gardener'' Oscar winner Rachel Weisz, body language and, especially, eye contact had to convey more than their usual share of emotional information.

According to ILM's animation director Glen McIntosh, whose team designed as well as helped bring Saphira to digital life, this required nature research beyond the reptile and bird studies that went into creating ``Jurassic Park's'' dinosaurs.

Avoiding anthropomorphism 

``We didn't want to go too human, because that's too anthropomorphic, and it gets into the realm of cartoony,'' McIntosh explains. ``We looked at puppies and lions and wolves, because you can tell when they are angry or sad by their eyes.''

That settled, the animators set about programming Saphira's moods and moves -- but without the benefit of Weisz's voice tracks, which, in a break with the customary approach to CG effects, were recorded after the artists did their digital drawing.

``Which was tricky,'' McIntosh admits. ``We created the acting inflections, which Rachel then looked at and matched to our beats.''

And if that sounds complicated, consider that the same approach was applied to flying scenes in which Eragon rides on Saphira's back -- from their earliest, awkward flights to a dynamic aerial battle against Galbatorix's dark forces.

``The reference from the studio was like a fighter jet flying around,'' says Guy Williams, co-visual effects supervisor for the New Zealand-based effects house, WETA Digital, that ``Lord of the Rings'' built. WETA contributed some 200 shots. ``So very rarely does she beat her wings to stay up in the air, which is a significant departure from a lot of dragon movies we've done and seen in the past. We were able to just sell the energy of her swooping along and doing these strafing runs and full-body tackles in the air,'' he says.

Animation first

But to do that, again, the animated part had to be made before the flesh-and-blood elements were shot.

``What was really a breakthrough was to integrate these actors and put them onto these things in the air,'' director Fangmeier says. ``It's technically quite difficult to solve that. We used motion-control cameras on a bluescreen stage and a programmed gimbal, sort of like a sophisticated mechanical bull. We had to pre-visualize and pre-animate all the dragon in a rudimentary form, as well as the camera movement.''

``We're used to being a post-production facility, where we get all of the bluescreen footage of the actor,'' ILM's McIntosh reiterates. ``But Stefen specifically wanted the ability to control the performance of the dragon, so it looked like we were the ones driving it.''

By now, you'd think, we've covered the hard parts. But not so. According to WETA's Williams, the absolute toughest thing to overcome was what might be called the blue dragon blues.

``Things 20 feet long that have shiny blue scales, we have no frame of reference for,'' Williams says. ``So even if we make it look completely realistic, it challenges believability regardless.''

In this case, nature wasn't much help. Of the relative handful of blue-hued animals out there, tiny lizards tend to be too vivid and bluebirds evoke the uncool hue of baby blankets.

``In the end, what we ended up doing was reining back on the saturation, toning down the brightness of it all,'' Williams reveals. ``Another trick that we thought of was using the blue in the highlight more than in the actual pigmentation of the skin, so it's more like an iridescent sheen on the surface. All of these things add up, to let you have a little bit of blue coming back through without having it look so contrived.''

In the end, ``Eragon's'' dragon builders hope they've created a convincing creature, as well as a compelling and imposing one.

And they hope they haven't gone too far in any one of those -- or any other -- directions.

``There were many challenges for this movie, specifically because there have been so many movie dragons that we've seen before,'' ILM's McIntosh sums up. ``So the goal for us was, what can we bring to the table that people haven't seen before and still stay in what people's expectations are of what a traditional dragon looks like.''

Bob Strauss, [phone]

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2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) Fantasy soars

From teen's imagination, `Eragon' takes flight

(2) Young adventurer Eragon (Ed Speleers) rides atop his dragon, Saphira.