At a time when CGI budgets are higher and more flashy than ever, there has been some debate about how exactly to get them into TV shows. The nature of television doesn’t really allow for equal time and money require visual effects, but with television becoming more of an arms race, companies are certainly willing to include as much as possible. That’s all to set the stage for it The Sandman on Netflix, which featured a real talking raven.
Not really (sorry if you learn it here, but ravens don’t speak humans). But it featured a raven voiced by an actor on set and played in scenes by a real raven – something Tom Sturridge, who plays Dream, found delightful.
“A real raven!” exclaims Sturridge to Polygon. “And a very tall man with a pumpkin on his head [playing Mervyn Pumpkinhead, voiced by Mark Hamill].”
Although there were so many other reasons he wanted to be a part of sandman, The decision to have practical production wherever possible – even if it was a real bird – caught his eye.
“With productions like this, there is a risk that it becomes a kind of CGI orgy. And it’s always about making everything practical that’s possible,” says Sturridge. “The creatures in Hell were all actors in prosthetics, so you could feel their breath. And it makes a big difference when, as an actor, you’re expected to do those leaps of imagination so often because so much of it isn’t there.”
That’s not to knock out other shows that rely more on VFX, or even parts of sandman who use CGI to translate the scope of the comics. But with The SandmanSturridge hopes the practical effects have enhanced more than just his own experience of the show.
“The thing about dreams is you don’t know you’re in them, they feeling real. So it’s important to make it look like you can touch it in all of these fantastical settings. And we could — we could touch it, we could feel it,” says Sturridge. “The jumps were tiny and that makes it so much easier.”
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23918642/TheSandman_Season1_00_28_21_18R.jpg)
