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Another year, another Harry Potter. But several months of pre-production and two weeks into shooting on Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, third in successful fantasy franchise, it’s happily proving anything but rou- tine for Stuart Craig.
A new director (Alfonso Cuaron) and cinematographer (Michael Seresin) as well as some starry additions (Gary Oldman, Pam Ferris, Sir Michael Gambon, David Thewlis, Timothy Spall) to the regular cast, have certainly helped spice up the challenge for Craig who is one of the series’ most acclaimed regulars.
“I sometimes have to pinch myself when I think I first began on all this nearly three years ago. It’s almost like a proper job - which I’m certainly not used to,” laughs Craig in his sketch-and- model littered offices at Leavesden Studios.
Not that he ever took it for granted he’d be on a hat-trick. “Alfonso had every right to choose his own crew. I suppose I came with the furniture but there wasn’t, I think, any obligation on him to accept me.
“I have to admit I also did think very hard about doing it because, before Harry Potter, I’ve never done a second of anything before, let alone a third. I had enjoyed the first two movies and felt that the second was consid- erably more polished. I was encouraged by that.
“I felt there was a lot of mileage left in it – especially with a different director with, perhaps, a different set of priorities. And I have to say it’s good work. They are not cheap films, there’s money to do things very well and the visual design challenges are great. No, I couldn’t come up with a single good reason not to do it. Truly.”
What was Cuaron’s brief to him? “The policy on the first two films had been that you create a world which is extraordinary, the- atrical in a sense, but still recog- nisably real. So you have this very real world out of which the fanta- sy and the magic grow. That, I guess, was the philosophy.
“What I quickly realised after first getting together with him on this way back last August was he didn’t disagree violently with any of that but he wanted a little more exaggeration, a little more ‘tweaking’, as he called it. That was absolutely fine by me. There’s no point doing to if you’re just going to stand still.”
Despite all his success and all his awards – three Oscars (The English Patient, Dangerous Liaisons, Gandhi) and a BAFTA (The Elephant Man) from count- less nominations across more than 20 years – you still get a sense of the wide-eyed about this most distinguished of British designers.
Ever since he started getting praise for painting the Gilbert & Sullivan scenery at a school pro- duction in his native Norwich, he knew the future way he was headed. A Fine Arts degree at Hornsey Art School was followed by a pioneering post-grad place on the Film & TV Design Course at the RCA.
Craig’s first real film job was a spectacular eye-opener when he started as a junior draughtsman about half way through the famously troubled production – five directors, innumerable star temperaments – of Casino Royale in 1966.
“It was like going to the University of Film Technique. There was nothing we didn’t do – miniatures, blue screen shots and massive sets. You were quickly aware that there wasn’t a script. You’d get two pages shoved under the office door at night and that’s what you’d be shoot- ing the next day.
“I remembering seeing Orson Welles sitting in the casino with a bullethole in the head because his contract had expired and they couldn’t afford the overage on him. At that point they hadn’t actually decided what the expla- nation was. It was truly chaotic,” he recalls, smiling at the memory.
Craig knows that he has a rep- utation for doing ‘period’ films. “I’d like to do sci-fi or musicals but, ultimately, the discipline is exactly the same. The subject makes only about two percent of difference.
A set is a piece of sculpture and the bit I always enjoy most is cre- ating this physical piece of three- dimensional sculpture.”
Before Harry Potter, the only repeat film business Norwich-born Craig had undertaken was with directors. Twice each with Stephen Frears and Pat O’Connor and a no fewer than five for Richard Attenborough.
Asked to nominate the best and worst of his designs, he thinks hard but not too long: “Dumbledore’s study on Harry Potter 2 was a great, fun set to do and I think it comes off pretty well in terms big, rich and complex.
“But if I had to choose one thing it’d be for perhaps the most
modest film I did, Shadowlands. It was the house we built for CS Lewis. My set decorator, Stephenie McMillan, with whom I’ve done about a dozen films, would proba- bly say the same thing.
“Worst memory? Jinnah’s house in Gandhi. It was about our fifth choice location, we had about half a day to decorate it and, frankly, it’s appalling. Mind you, there’s something in every movie that makes you wince.”
sculpting harry
Award-winning production designer Stuart Craig talks to Quentin Falk.
arts and crafts
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