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At a time when CGI budgets are higher and more visible than ever, there has been some debate about exactly how to use them for TV shows. Every year there are more and more visual effects, and less “real” ones. But not with The Sandman, which featured a real talking raven.
Not exactly speaking. But it featured a raven, voiced by an actor on set and played in scenes by a real raven – something that Tom Sturridge, who plays Son, found delightful.
“A real raven!” exclaims Sturridge. “And a very tall man with a pumpkin on his head [играет Мервина Тыквоголового, озвученного Марком Хэмиллом]”.
While there were many other reasons why he wanted to be part of The Sandman, the choice to go for hands-on production wherever possible, even when working with a real bird, stuck with him.
In such productions, there is a danger of becoming a kind of CGI orgy. And there is so much striving to make everything always practical. All the beings in hell were prosthetic actors, so you could feel their breath. And that’s so important when you’re so often expected to make such leaps in your imagination as an actor, because so much of it isn’t there.
This isn’t a poke at shows that rely more on VFX, or even parts of The Sandman that use CGI to help convey the comic. But in The Sandman, Sturridge hopes the practical effects have not only improved his own experience of the show.
The thing is, you don’t know you’re inside them, they seem real. So it’s important that in all those fantasy environments, it looks like you could touch it. And we could–we could touch it, we could feel it. The leaps in imagination were tiny, and it was much easier that way.