Behind the scenes: Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is the second in a slated series of five and marks the tenth film in the Wizarding World franchise, which includes the eight Harry Potter movies. For the Fantastic Beasts sequel, the setting has moved from New York to Paris.

Director David Yates was reunited for the sequel with joint overall VFX supervisors Tim Burke and Framestore Creative Director Christian Manz who worked together on the first of the series, Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, released in 2016. The VFX brief from Yates was to keep the magical world as real as possible.

Burke and Manz came on board in January 2017, reading initial scripts. Having directed the pre-vis and creature design together, the work was split between them, largely aligning so that they each worked with one set of vendors, as well as mixing it up a bit from the last film. Where Burke worked on the obscurus (the manifestation of the repressed energy of a magical child) last time, Manz took it on; where Manz did the magic suitcase before, Burke took his turn.

Throughout the core production process a close team of 50 looked after the VFX, but the overall VFX workforce numbered closer to 1,400.

After the shoot, based in the UK at Warner Bros Leavesden Studios from July to the end of 2017, around 2500 shots went into post vis. By the end of March 2018, the director’s cut included closer to 1450 shots. It was this version that was turned over to the vendors to build the VFX assets.

The opening sequence sees the anti-hero Grindelwald, played by Johnny Depp, being moved from…