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Alien Covenant, The Agency, Inherent Vice, Fantastic Beasts. Throughout your career, you’ve played characters who are fighting for control and respect in a world that doesn’t really want to give you that…

“Well, I’ve only played women. I’m always looking for roles that are complex enough that I can suspend my disbelief though. I need to be able to fall into the fantasy and it’s often those characters that are frustrated, fighting against something or experiencing tension that do it for me.”

It seems like everyone involved in the Fantastic Beasts films has a different take on whether the series will ever get finished – what’s yours?

“The last two films probably won’t get made, but that’s only based on a gut feeling. I know nothing and I’d probably be one of the last to know if something was happening because with films of that size, people aren’t calling up the performers to keep them updated. Do contracts expire? I’ve never thought about that before, but they probably do at some point, right? At the moment we are bound to them but I think that ship has sailed.”

Did it ever feel like a risk to share your views on feminism and trans rights at a time where people like J.K. Rowling were preaching the opposite?

“I didn’t think of it as a risk at all. And if it had, I would have done it anyway.”

Some people have suggested that’s why Tina’s role was cut down in the third Fantastic Beasts film…

“With these huge films, you never know why anything happens. We are just so divorced from the leadership.”

A lot of Harry Potter fans feel conflicted about watching the films or reading the books now. Where do you stand on that?

“Fantastic Beasts was such a big break for me. Those films changed my life and I learned a lot from working on something of that scale. There’s so much that I’m grateful for and I want to be really clear about that. I do think about the fans a lot though. Harry Potter is a beautiful trans allegory and what a pity for young people [not to feel comfortable] engaging with that.

“There are those questions around the tension of two different things – can you be grateful and critical? Yes, of course you can. Life is brief and rife with pain and suffering, so if something brings you joy… That’s the closest I’ve got to an answer but it’s never felt truly satisfying. I really do love those fans though and the actors I worked with are friends for life. That was the real gift of the experience.”

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Law met with J.K. Rowling, whom he still regards fondly, in 2017, and she filled him in on the complete arc of the story she’d hatched for these new films. “I had a pretty clear sense of where it was going to go,” Law says, recalling that Rowling gave him many notes, including one that Dumbledore saw himself as a monster.

“And that’s why he liked Newt,” Law says of the character played by Eddie Redmayne in the films, “because Newt took care of monsters.”

In the movies, Dumbledore struggles with his identity as a gay man who falls in love with the Dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald. “Because of Dumbledore’s past,” Law says, describing a fight with Grindelwald that led to his sister’s death, “I think he always felt guilty that he had been misled because he was in love. It followed him. He found himself to be unlovable because he trusted his heart.”

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Jude Law: "The fact that everything didn't go precisely to plan, was precisely the plan." Ah. Oh, you know what? I've got a good story about this line. That's Dumbledore. I wrote this line. I just thought it was very Dumbledore. "The fact that everything didn't go precisely to plan, was precisely the plan," yeah.

I'd read all the books to my children and I really loved that world. He was absolutely sort of the heartbeat of those books, or rather the spirit. Harry was the heartbeat. There was something in the heart of Dumbledore, there was something in the spirit of the man that I really liked, and in fact, playing him put me in a very good place. Jo Rowling always said to me that he saw himself as a monster because of the way he'd behaved in the past, and he was always trying to forgive himself, but I just always felt like he was a very good, kind man, and it's nice playing good, kind men.

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Behind the Scenes of Vinda Rosier in Secrets of Dumbledore - Newt in the Wild & Behind the Scenes

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Behind the Scene of Queenie and Jacob in Secrets of Dumbledore - Battle in Bhutan

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Secrets of Dumbledore Concept Art by Max Berman

Another fun one from Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore. This was a coffee and sandwiches cart which was to appear in the train scene. The House Elf operator would push the cart and everything would wobble and look like it was about to fall off. When the cart was stopped, the elf would pull the handbrake and climb the wee stairs to serve customers. Coffee was served from a samovar and sandwiches were dispensed from a spiral chute. Ultimately never made it to the final cut but I think I heard it made it into some BTS stuff. Set decorator Anna Pinnock.

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Though not a gift from Dumbledore, Yusuf Kama secretly carries a brooch containing a picture of his half-sister, Leta Lestrange, which actor William Nadylam used as an inspiration throughout filming. The brooch was inspire by a Victorian piece found by Colleen Atwood. 'You don't see it that much,' sys Atwood. 'but for him it's a memento from his life.'

Fantastic Beasts －The Secrets of Dumbledore: Movie Magic

William Nadylam: He's going to help defend the world from Grindelwald's action, and eventually, obviously, he doesn't forget. That's another subject there. He doesn't forget.

－ Secrets of Dumbledore Interview: Brief Take

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Secrets of Dumbledore Production Design Presentation by British Film Designers Guild

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Crimes of Grindelwald Concept Art of Albus Dumbledore by Rob Bliss

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The story then leads the opposing forces to the Eyrie for a climactic confrontation, but the action occurs within a magical construct separate from reality. Digital Domain and the filmmakers tried a few different options for what this world might look like, including a bright, white area covered in fog, and an obsidian environment where everything was black and reflective. Ultimately, neither palette quite fit the story, leading Digital Domain to create a crystalline version of the real world that offered some of the best of both previous options. Using Redshift for the lighting and rendering, artists created a world that was intrinsically bright, but received less exterior lighting, giving it a moody feel. The glass-like setting also offered a reflective sheen to amplify the color, including the color-coded spells, all created using Mantra, with the geometry of the world handled in Houdini.

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Crimes of Grindelwald Concept Art of Fire Demon by David Freeman

At the end of the film, Grindelwald creates a mass of Demons that attack his enemies. Originally, the demons were to be more solid - made of a mass of black and blue flames. Later, they became more traditional, made of blue flame and less solid in appearance. We were tasked with creating 8-9 options for the fire demons, some of which are included here. The Zbrush Models are simple as only the basic shape was needed as they would be covered in flames.

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Secrets of Dumbledore Concept Art of German Ministry of Magic by Eva Kunts

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 “I was excited about the prospect of exploring fashion in Paris in the late '20s," Colleen says. "I pushed it into the early '30s because Paris is always ahead of the fashion curve; it’s [a] city known for its elegance and style and that was a great period for design.” 

Can you take us through your creative process for designing the costumes?

"The first part of the process was meeting with the director and reading the script where you get the idea of what the story is. The next step is meeting with the production designer so you see the world that he's creating. This particular movie is set in Paris and a little bit of New York. I start and go do my own research, and look for inspiration from that time period in Paris, which was a very rich and amazing time for design where so much was going on.

“Newt still has his beasts, but his shell is a little slicker. We put Eddie in clothes that are close to the same silhouette, just a bit better fit.”

"I took all the layers from the art world, to the carnivals, to Moulin Rouge, all the things in Paris that make it such a spectacular city, back into with the different levels of humanity that I'm creating for the film, for the real world, and for the wizarding world. [The wizards] are living not seperately from the muggle world, they have a double life. So they live amongst the regular folks but they have a little flare so I had fun with them with different shaped hats, and different things that were subtle so you could kind of tell it was them when they were mixed with the muggle world. But then when you separate them, I pushed reality a little bit more. They're more strange looking, with different kinds of color and things like that. In this case, because I know the main four from the previous film, I take each character and think about how they evolve and how they've grown from moving through a couple of years into their lives and breaking that down with each of them."

"[For Grindelwald] The name begged for an Alpine twist, and I’ve always loved Bavarian clothing. We made the lederhosen a little bit longer, coupled it with a tall boot, and ended up with a kind of Bavarian meets the New Romantic."

How would you describe the evolution of the costumes from the first movie to the second one?

"Since they went from America to Paris, they have a more European flavor in general. The principal characters are more sophisticated, they've evolved. Katherine Waterston's character Tina has moved back to her old vision as a higher up. Queenie has evolved and become a more grown up, less flippant character. She's in darker colors and a more grown up look. Slightly pushed into the '30s. For Eddie Redmayne's character, it was sort of similar in silhouette and shape as his previous costume, but with a more urban flavor, a more sophisticated fabric, and [with colors that are] a little less bright."

"[For Queenie,] it’s a bit more grown up and has a slightly darker edge than her dress in the last film, but at the same time, it’s feminine and has the whimsy of that big bow in the front. "

How would you describe your designs for the movie?

"In general, I think my designs defnitely have a flavor of movement and color, and a sort of trajectory into the '30s that was different from the first film. I think they're quite sexy in a quiet way, not in an obvious way. I have some amazing beautiful characters like Claudia Kim who is Nagini. She has a very amazing dress that  transforms into other things so I had a really magical times with  the costumes."

[For Nagini] “Throughout the film, she is wearing her performance costume from the magical circus, so I wanted to amplify the fantasy aspect.  For the material, I took lace and screened over it with metallic foil to give the look of snakeskin, and then added ruffles around the bottom and the sleeves to suggest the coils of the snake.”

Did you face any difficulties in designing the costumes?

"I think for a movie like that, the most difficult part is just the time you have to create a lot of ornate cotumes. Getting them ready and getting them aged and looking interesting takes just about enough time to get it done. For instance, Queenie's dress is a beautiful piece of fabric I found in Germany from the '30s, but in order to make it work for her costume, I needed enough to make 12 costumes. In order to do that sometimes I take the inspiration of that fabric and print it myself so I create the fabric for the characters before I make the costume in order to have the feeling of the period and the kind of fabric I want for that particular character. In doing that, everybody's costumes shouldn't look like it just came from a store, it should have a lived in quality. So the same people that do the printing and stuff make things look dirty, if there's a fight they tear it, they do dyeing of fabrics for making different colors and all kinds of things. It's a huge creative department painting, taking the leather coats—when I first get them they look very stiff— and breaking down things so they look like they're comfortably lived in."

“David Yates and I wanted Dumbledore to be the professor the kids all love, their go-to guy.  He needed to look professorial but at the same time approachable, so I used softer fabrics and textures in tones like heathery grays, which add to the approachability of the character. I also love corduroy, so I made a wide-wale corduroy coat for him and Jude just loved it.”

Would you say each character's costume says something about their personality?

"I think that each character's costume is part of their character, so for instance, the idea of Tina's leather coat gives immediate authority with its silhouette. I would consider how each character looks not only close up, but how they look far away, standing in a doorway or something like that. They don't have a lot of changes, but they have a look, and I think that's part of the design of the character that's the most important thing to find."

“Tina has more self-assurance since her reinstatement as an Auror.  She looks like a true detective in a great blue leather coat.  We were fond of everything about it…except how much it weighs.”

Did you have a favorite character to design for?

"That's a hard question! Not really, it was fun working with Zoe Kravitz on the film because she's so sylish and it's great to design things that are chic like that and more sophisticated. 

“Leta is from the manor born, so her clothes are all very elegant and rich in color.  Zoë looks fantastic in anything, so it was fun to dress her for the period.”

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At one point during the battle, Dumbledore and Credence teleport into a dark alternate world that looks akin to an inverted shadow of the actual Berlin above. At the two wizards’ feet are numerous puddles emanating light and reflecting what appears to be Berlin’s streets, with snow, cars, and people passing at half speed.

“We spent a lot of time coming up with the unique look for this mirror world and making sure we delivered something that The Secrets of Dumbledore’s director, David Yates, really liked,” says Timothy. “The idea was that the light entered the dark mirror world via the puddles in the real world. When the production shot the scene, there were lightboxes on the ground shining up onto the characters. We turned those lightboxes into puddles and ensured all the lighting interacted well with the actors.”

As with the Obscurus, Image Engine needed to take this fantastical scene but make it feel like a real, physical environment. “At the end of the sequence, we see Credence laid slowly into one of the puddles,” says Martyn. “In that puddle, the audience can see the rippling of the real world and all the Berlin street life and the cars going past. It had an ethereal beauty, but it also had to feel physical and believable. We worked hard to achieve that. The sequence involved a lot of teamwork between our FX, lighting, and compositing departments, who worked collaboratively on shots to ensure everything felt just right.”

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Image Engine likewise developed the aesthetic for one of the film’s magic potions: it was enough of an undertaking that Image Engine’s artists refer to it as their “fifth beast”.

Although Image Engine had delivered on set of FX simulations, director David Yates opted for a different style upon seeing the final cut, two months before the film fully wrapped.

“The potion didn’t really interact with the character before; we needed to make it feel like it was almost a creature itself, and almost threaten the character in question, like it’s about to grab her,” says Culpitt of the revised direction.

Despite the late-game shift, Image Engine went to work transforming the initial potion design into something ‘mercury-esque’, and certainly more terrifying. It paid off big in the end: “Re-doing those effects over two months was a challenge, but we pride ourselves on an efficient, high-quality turnaround at Image Engine. That was certainly what was delivered here, and across the project at large.

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Behind the Scenes of Poppy Corby-Tuech as Vinda Rosier on Secrets of Dumbledore

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Behind the Scenes of Poppy Corby-Tuech as Vinda Rosier on Crimes of Grindelwald