Many creatures underfoot in 'Chronicles of Narnia'

Sunday, May 11th 2008, 4:00 AM

There'll be no shortage of computer-generated characters to be found in movie theaters this summer, but for the sheer number of make-believe beasties onscreen, "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian" wins hands-down.

Centaurs, fauns, talking animals and humans mingle within seamless special-effects shots that will have even jaded audiences wondering "How'd they do that?!"

"We had a lot of people in blue tights," says "Caspian" director Andrew Adamson, explaining how his effects wizards erased and replaced the dressed-in-blue performers with their imaginary counterparts in post-production.

After directing the original "Shrek," its first sequel and the first Narnia film "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" in 2005, the 41-year old New Zealander is an old hand at bringing fantasy critters to life.

"It's a painstaking process, especially when you're doing crowd scenes," says Adamson. "On the previous film, we used some on-set faun legs that kind of worked, but we didn't have many people in fur pants this time - just blue pants."

Four high-end special-effects shops worked on "Caspian." Their challenges included grafting digitally created goat legs and horse bodies onto actors, many of whom wore power risers to bring them up to centaur eye-level.

"Sometimes the centaurs were fully computer-generated," says Adamson. "And sometimes they were a combination of a real horse and a CG person."

Computers also whipped up Reepicheep, the movie's smallest star: a scene-stealing, swashbuckling mouse capable of giving "Shrek's" Puss in Boots a run for his whiskers.

"I thought I was acting with a glowing tennis ball," which was on a stick held by an offscreen crew member, recalls Peter Dinklage, who plays the film's crusty dwarf, Trumpkin.

"Then when I saw the film: 'Where did the tennis ball go?' Suddenly there's a talking mouse [who] wasn't there on the set."

Adamson says making a live-action movie versus an animated film is like the difference between "running a sprint and a marathon - the intensity is the same, but the duration is different. In animation, you get a lot more chances; you can refine things over and over and over again."

During a live-action shoot, he adds, "you've got 500 people looking over your shoulder - you don't have the same freedom."

But when months of effects work follow that shoot, it's more like starting a marathon the moment the sprint ends.

"The nice thing about combining live-action with animation is that you don't necessarily have to reshoot stuff," says Adamson. "You can give lines to characters you create six months down the track. In both ['Narnia'] films, I've repurposed scenes later on with animated characters that made the live-action parts work better."

Even though he has more time to work with his computer-created actors, Adamson admits: "You don't always get the performance you need from them. You're obviously working on it for as long as you can, but at some point you have to say you're done." Joe Strike