Ian Kath wrote:As some of you may know I’ve recently been working for a short time on the latest in the The Chronicles of Narnia at the Warner Roadshow Studios on the Gold Coast. This next, Episode Three, is The Voyage of the Dawn Trader and as it was for the previous two episodes this one is being Executive Produced by Doug Gresham.
http://yourstorypodcast.com/2009/11/doug-gresham-c-s-lewis-narnia-chronicles/
There are a couple of very interesting quotes in there....
(transcripts from audio:)
Ian Kath:These movies, how well are they sticking to the originals, the books?
Douglas Gresham:Well, The Lion the Witch and The Wardrobe was very close to the original book because the book was written in such a way that lent itself to being transcribed into the film medium. Prince Caspian we had to make some fairly major changes because the book isn't written that way. In this movie there are a lot of differences in it also to, as Hollywood says, "derive the plot". I'm ambivalent as to whether they're necessary or not, i don't really think so. But thats the way they wanted to do it, and it was either that or not make a movie, so i said "well go ahead and do it". It will be very interesting to see the audiences reactions
Douglas Gresham:But it is kind of interesting to see a set built in incredible beauty and detail. The sets built on this particular movie have been breathtakingly good to tell you. The crews here have been fabulous. We did a set, i'm going to try and tell this without giving too much away, we did a particular set which takes place in a kind of forest glade. It was built on a soundstage and it was absolutely perfect.
Ian Kath: I saw it
Douglas Gresham: You saw it?
Ian Kath: I saw it.
Douglas Gresham: You saw the Banquet?
Ian kath: No no, i missed the banquet, i saw it the day after
Douglas Gresham: It was just unreal. It was so unreal as to be unreal in the metaphoric sense.
Douglas GreshamThe last movie was quite frankly not very well marketed. It was released at the wrong time and it was marketed badly. There were things that should of been done differently. That's my view anyway. I think we'd have done an awful lot better if we had released it at Christmas as i wanted to do in the first place. But anyway, the powers that be in the distributor house decided they wanted to do it their way and i guess they messed up. But that's my opinion
Ian Kath: Is the next one scripted yet?
Douglas GreshamOh no no. We havent got that far yet. We haven't even decided exactly which one we are going to do yet. There are several reasons why we would go with The Silver Chair, but then there are other reasons why we might go with something else. One of the reasons for Silver Chair, im voting for going with Silver Chair, one of the reasons is that we have found an absolutely fabulous young actor to play Eustace
Ian Kath: It's an amazing amount of work that we've put into this, and i just love what we've done, and if the story is as good as the work and the passion that we've put into it..
Douglas Gresham: I think the story in the book is better but its still a great story
Ian Kath:I don't know the story.
Douglas Gresham: You should read it, you should read all of the Narnian chronicles, but yeah i think its going to be a great movie. It's a fabulous movie.
Anyway, also as i mentioned, Ian Kath is a prop maker on Dawn Treader. On his twitter page he wrote:
Ian Kath wrote:Good to be back at work. Have to build a stack of furniture for some scenes on Narnia. 4:27 PM Sep 27th
http://twitter.com/iankath/status/4428706319
There are a couple of pictures on his associated TwitPics, which i would assume would be the furniture he's referring to...
http://twitpic.com/jw1ej
http://twitpic.com/jo7ir
Plus a picture of a fellow prop maker carving a skull, which may or may not be from VDT, but worth a look anyway....
http://twitpic.com/jw6ap