His Dark Materials is set in an alternate universe
populated with iconic characters, daemons and magical creatures.
To adapt this for television,
there's no doubt that this much-loved story
would be an ambitious undertaking.
It's got to be epic, it's got to be a grand scale.
You can't really just pop a book and make it a TV series.
That's probably the paramount challenge, I think.
I believe it will translate really, really well.
Follow production as they tackle this challenge head-on
from envisioning the costumes...
Everybody that reads the books
is going to have a different imagination
and they're going to visualise it differently.
..building the worlds...
It always stuck in my mind as something
that was going to be a very hard thing to try and do,
and it's such a fun challenge that
I defy anyone to not think it would be utterly brilliant thing to do.
..mastering the daemons...
The scale of this is, I would say, unprecedented,
especially from a creature perspective.
This is one of the most ambitious projects I've ever come upon.
I just thought, "This is utterly extraordinary",
and I wasn't entirely sure that it was doable.
Yeah, this show is above and beyond what has ever been done before.
..and the challenges of writing the screenplay.
I want to be 100% true to the original.
I am a fan of these books,
and I want people who are a fan of these books
to feel pleased with this adaptation.
What we're bringing to the screen
is a faithful adaptation of the books people love,
but it's just plus, it's just more.
Buckle up as we delve into Making His Dark Materials.
First published over 20 years ago,
His Dark Materials has spawned a dedicated fan base,
which unsurprisingly includes myself...
Lyra, I promised once to do everything I could to protect you
from anyone who might do you harm.
..and some of our key cast.
His Dark Materials is one of my favourite book series of all time.
I read it with my wife when she was still my girlfriend.
We had just started dating and it was one of those trilogies
we read together. And it's such a beautiful coming of age story,
it's such a beautiful world, it's so smart, it's so full.
I've read it three times, I think.
I've listened to the audiobook twice,
I've listened to the BBC radio adaptation twice.
I'm a massive fan.
Philip has created such a unique world and such a complicated world.
Which means it's... definitely has to be, like, dramatised in some way,
but it's very hard to do.
And you feel utterly magnificent.
Taking on these much-loved characters
was filled with mixed emotions.
They told me, "We're doing a series on His Dark Materials."
which I believe is what the material deserves, it's such a rich world,
so I was in from that dinner onward.
I had to do a musical number and get into a bar fight
on the first and second days of filming respectively.
Those are two dreams for an actor.
GLASS SHATTERS
When I heard that they were going to turn it into a TV series,
I got very excited as a fan.
There's never really been a part in it
that I've thought I should play.
I've never really seen myself as Lord Asriel.
Came in, walked into the read-through and was like,
"Right! I'm Lord Asriel!,"
smashing it and really enjoying it.
And I've been loving it.
That was clumsy, wasn't it?
It most certainly was nerve-racking.
I was like, "My God, so many people who have read the books
"and love Lyra." So it's very, very nerve-racking thinking
that you've got to live up to everyone's role model.
Funny, the character was so exciting and interesting and bold
and colourful and so many things to explore with her.
That really excited me, but, yes, there's a huge fan base,
and she has a huge following and people love her
and despise her in equal measure.
Bringing this iconic tale to television may seem
like an obvious decision, but it was actually a long time in the making.
I read the books when they came out in the late 1990s.
And I really felt that this material was something I wanted to make.
I would, every now and again, reach out to Philip's agent,
then to New Line, and keep pitching
for why I felt these books should be adapted for television.
I mean, to say I circled like a shark
makes me sound more aggressive.
I think I probably just waited on the porch
like a really loyal and faithful puppy.
There have been various attempts to make adaptations of this story
in all sorts of different media.
I was always attracted to the idea of long-form television,
as we now call it,
because it does give the opportunity to tell a long story in full.
It's a wonderful illustration of the skill and the talent
and the dedication we now have in the British TV world.
I'm very privileged to have seen my story taken over by Bad Wolf
and made into such a spectacular piece of work.
With Philip Pullman's blessing,
it was time to get this project set in motion.
First up, who would pen this ambitious tale?
When it was announced that we had the rights to His Dark Materials,
Jack put his hand in the air really early on
and just said that he really wanted to do it,
and what's more, he really wanted to write all of the eight episodes.
Most shows of this scale, you've got a writers' room,
you got a lot of people breaking the episodes.
We're, like, on the Aaron Sorkin model.
Jack Thorne is, like, writing every script.
The task I always set myself is to follow a truth of the books
so you can't always put everything in the same order,
but fundamentally, you are still going in the same direction.
It's hard and you often find yourself in a cul-de-sac
because you've made a series of decisions
which have taken you too far away.
It's kind of difficult in a much more passive form of entertainment
like TV or film where you are sitting, being fed.
You only get to see what we show you,
and you don't have time to let your imagination ruminate and,
or a sentence really kind of roll around in your mouth
or in your mind.
You're on to the next thing,
and if you don't keep up, you've lost it, you know?
One bonus of having a living author is that you can pick them up
and you can shake them
to find all the story that falls out.
So going, "There's a gap here, Philip, so what happened here?"
You know, "Who's this person? Where did they start from?"
All those questions.
Um, but there's also the big general questions you ask, which is,
"What would you change?"
The word itself, adapt... The story has to be adapted
to suit the nature of the medium into which it is going.
It's the same thing for television,
same thing for movies, same thing for radio.
It's inevitable. I wasn't, um, going to be insistent
that every single item in the story had to be exactly presented
as it was on the page.
Whilst Jack got to grips with this rich adventure,
the art department was tackling the alternate universe
that is Lyra's world.
The design department is extraordinary.
I mean, just extraordinary.
The scale and the level of detail is so incredible.
Lyra goes through so many different forms of existence and worlds,
so it's a huge job.
It just shows the amount of respect, I think,
that people have for the project,
that producers have gathered together
this incredibly talented group of creatives.
You get the chance to have real-life, grown-up playgrounds
to inhabit and populate the world of make-believe.
And that just adds such joy.
Asriel's lab has so many little things, they are so detailed.
It's like they have every single switch.
It actually really helps, acting-wise.
To understand how to build the beginning,
I wanted to really understand all three books
and the story that Philip had told across those three.
I worked out from, um, from a kind of, like, an emotional perspective,
Philip was using nostalgia, using memories,
using kind of his own childhood nostalgia, maybe,
so I used that ideology, but tried to move it forward
so that newer audience could find some common ground,
with the way we were telling this story.
One of the biggest problems with this story is how crazy
and fantastical and amazing and kind of vast it is.
And ultimately, it's a very complex thing to put in front of the screen
and I think the presumption might be that you would
do it all against blue screens.
It's way more enjoyable to try and really feel the environment,
I think, to try and put in camera as many of the real-world elements
and ground this whole place, this world, in reality as much as we can.
You know, each area and each space
has been quite carefully curated to tell the story.
I love the airships, they're really fun.
And we've had three different kinds of airships,
so we had one that was like a tube, you know a London tube,
one that's like a sort of private jet, and one that's a military one.
So I mean, they're amazing, I could spend all day in those.
I absolutely love the set of my boat.
Everybody walks onto that set and really wishes they could live there.
On every shelf, in every cupboard, every cushion,
I cannot tell you just the extraordinary,
microscopic attention to detail.
I will give you that.
I've just been doing a lot of scenes in the frozen wastes of the North
and you walk onto set and it's actually pretty stunning.
And the light is incredible,
you are lit by our Northern Lights a lot of the time,
so it's like being in a brilliant psychedelic disco. Sometimes.
In a kind of frozen north sort of way.
This theme of bespoke design
would need to be threaded into everything, including the costumes.
I think every costume on this show
is incredibly thought about and impressive.
It's kind of a free for all because it's this alternative world.
The clothes you wear determine the way people see you.
It's interesting, the style of the show and the sort of period,
because it's kind of not set in a particular period.
Again, we have that freedom to explore, it could be '40s,
but we push the boundaries of that and modernise it slightly.
I like it. e your colour.
That era where you're never without a shirt and a tie, you know,
even if you're not wearing a suit, you've got a shirt and a tie.
And this might be one of the only times
you don't see his shirt and tie.
From my point of view, the books give me
all the guidance that I need.
I'm always going back to the books to find out
what Pullman has said about different characters
and what Pullman has said about the world.
There has to be a logic within Lyra's world.
We've dressed people in non-definable clothing.
It's trying to mix up things that exist
and create a look that you believe, but is timeless.
There's different technologies in Lyra's world.
They travel by zeppelin
so there would be certain things, fabrics and technology,
that wouldn't exist in Lyra's world,
so that then will influence how people dress.
The costumes are really interesting.
There's something slightly military to him, even though he's a,
he's been a theologian and he is a scientist.
He's also an adventurer and explorer,
I think we've reflected that really well.
I loved the first costume of all of them.
But then I got my beautiful fur coat,
which is a bit of a pain when you're doing location
and it's boiling hot in September,
but it's great for when you're at the studio and it's freezing.
Do you trust me?
Caroline is an incredible designer and we had good fun, actually,
because the Gyptians are so cool.
You'll see, when you see all of the extras and everything,
we were like, "We are so cool!"
Um, so we do, we have a great old time with our costumes.
With the Gyptians, their clothing has to be practical,
and there's a sense of history with the Gyptians,
so their clothing should look like it's been passed down.
So it's all mended, it's broken down.
The Gyptians have a harmony, a real harmony with their daemons,
and so they celebrate that with their jewellery
and, um, some of the patterns I've put into their clothing
and their knitwear.
I don't think anybody could really say what Lee Scoresby,
what his look was going to be.
And I had this sort of quite strong idea
taking in more of the fact that he's an aviator
and he's in this balloon,
give him the kind of Texan-ish vibe from the book.
Yeah, man, I have never dressed more badass in my life.
I've worn blouses on stage, I've worn guayaberas on stage,
but, like, going full steampunk cowboy is,
is very much my aesthetic. I'm very much enjoying it.
I've had these most, I mean, glorious costumes.
I mean, the best thing about this job is, you know,
that she's going to look good.
You know, she wears heels in the Arctic.
I mean, everything's been made for me as well,
so it's a real pleasure to have these things designed and made.
I love my big Arctic outfit.
I had a very clear idea of how I saw Mrs Coulter.
She had to have a beautiful, but really practical coat.
I'm really, really pleased with it. I think she looks fantastic in it.
The costumes aren't the only part of a character's persona,
there are also their daemons to think about.
Bringing these to life was an immense challenge.
We went through hundreds of iterations
of how we could do the daemons.
And in the end we went back to Philip's version.
There's so many things that are impossible to do on screen
that he sets us the challenge to do.
They have to be CGI. I mean, that was really clear,
full-on, furry critters, CGI, photo-real.
Those daemon animals have to give a performance.
They are representing something
of what the character is thinking or feeling.
No, Lyra, don't! The retiring room is expressly forbidden.
Making photo-real, nuanced visual effects creations as creatures
or characters is kind of our bread and butter, it's what we do.
The worry was the volume.
A show like this, you know, it has what is, what is undeniably
a high level of visual effects as its baseline
because it is very much part of the pulse of the show.
Probably one of the hardest creatures that we've had to create
is the Golden Monkey because that is a character that,
first of all, and it's no small feat,
has to play alongside Ruth Wilson.
And we have to support her performance.
Sometimes we have to be part of her performance
and sometimes we just have to get out of the way
whilst still having a monkey on screen.
And we have to do all that with something that doesn't talk,
so we have to do all that with various, with body language
and just nuanced facial expressions.
We have these daemons, which adds a whole other dimension
to what this, what Philip Pullman's world is about,
that are with you all the time.
So to put that on screen is quite difficult.
And in the end they decided that on the day,
we would have a series of puppets that would help us,
but also the camera team and also the CGI guys on the other side
to work out what our daemons were doing.
So we had to build representations of those things
that would give the actors an understanding
of the space that they filled and the weight that they might be
and the interactions that they had with them,
without it being too overly present.
The directors also wanted some emotional sense of this thing,
because it's not good enough just to have a ball on a stick,
you know, you need something to respond to.
HESTER SIGHS Here we go again.
Friendly place.
And working with Framestore, we knew they had to fill the space, almost.
They had to be smaller than the final thing
because they could move and affect people, objects,
props, bits of scenery.
Having a reference for performance or timing or rhythm in a scene
is really, really helpful.
For example, Brian, who played the Golden Monkey exclusively,
who pretty much became Ruth Wilson's own daemon, he was incredible.
You know, he would pick up on the rhythm of a scene really,
really beautifully and start picking up
the nuance of what the monkey would do and why and where.
And although we sometimes changed the position,
there was kind of like an energy on camera
that he put into it that really, really helped us.
And even though over time in the edit,
the emotion of a scene may change or the timing of a scene may change,
it's always really good to have the initial sort of on set instinct
of a puppeteer and a director with a puppeteer.
So they were pivotal for us being able to get through the show.
A puppet would be used in a pass to say,
"Well, it's over here and this is what it's going to do."
It may scurry up, it may be sitting still.
But we have an emotional accuracy in where it is, at the right time,
and get the beats that are part of the story.
Lyra, the gift the Master gave you.
They're so amazing, they really do help because if not you're like,
"Where's Pan?" But then you do the pass,
and you're like, "This clears everything."
And it's so fun working with them
because the people who do it are really nice also.
Did I keep any? I, I, I... I got an ermine.
I love my puppet!
Yeah, I love, I love Brian, I love my puppet.
I'm like, "Brian, where are you?"
Every time I do a scene I'm like, "Brian!"
Coming in as Golden Monkey performer,
it was very exciting because they said,
"All right, we've got Ruth Wilson,
"we want you to work with her as the Golden Monkey.
"You are going to be one concise unit,
"so you need to be able to work together."
Which means Ruth and I got a rehearsal room
for a week and a half straight, pretty much.
She's never worked with VFX, in this capacity,
so having something that is there that is also not there.
So it was very exciting just to create that world with her.
He was giving me some monkey moves, because he walks like a mon...
Well, you know, he sort of animates like a monkey,
so he would help me work out anything I want to bring
into Mrs Coulter in terms of body language.
We worked out a very important
psychological relationship between the two.
To make sure that all the daemons were
as accurate and realistic as possible,
the production team had an expert on hand.
So I worked with the creature department building the puppets
so we would get them, I would get them sort of reference,
um, sizes and measurements and colours
and we'd say, "This is what it should look like."
Another property is, we, um,
when they first started, they would often come into my office
and kind of look at the footage that we'd got
so they could get a feel for how the animals moved.
The monkey, as well, with Brian was another one
that was obviously a big, big character
that we wanted to get as much emotion into as possible.
Because it doesn't speak,
so the only development of that character comes from movement.
MONKEY SHOUTS
One of the best things, in my eyes as a biologist, from the books,
is that Philip Pullman did such a good job
of casting the animals for the daemons.
Some of the more solitary characters
like Lord Asriel has a snow leopard,
and you just think, you know,
that snow leopards as a kind of species in real life,
you know, they're kind of mysterious,
they're kind of very enigmatic and charismatic,
they survive by themselves in very harsh environments,
and you think, "Well, actually, that's what Lord Asriel is."
LEOPARD GROWLS We actually worked together.
You're working with another actor in a lot of ways.
And I love Stelmaria
and I love the fact that we can work symbiotically as a duo
because everybody in Lyra's world works as a duo.
So even just walking into a room we were like,
"Who walks in first, me or Stel?"
You know, and it's like, I think it's a dangerous situation.
I think Stel might go first
as her senses are more in tune than mine,
so she'd maybe run in, scope it, and I come in after her.
Do you know what I mean? And that's quite...
Just decisions like that are really interesting to me.
Lyuba, soul, companion and protector of my son.
That was really, really useful
just because it constantly reminded us of their presence.
Just to have a tangible nature of something,
just for its height, for the way it might move,
for the size of it, you know, or the weight of it.
You know, if you've got a bird on your arm,
then it's very important to storytell
that there is some weight behind that.
It informs everything,
it's sort of the missing actors in the scene at any given time.
It's really wonderful, and the puppeteers here
are so incredible that, you know,
as soon as Hester's in their hands, she comes to life.
Especially with children around,
it's important that those puppets were there, I think.
It doesn't take very long
for a child to attach something to a puppet, you know.
And watching that has been really good fun.
They're vital to the piece,
and without that, it wouldn't be the show it is.
Yes, we are in a world full of make-believe and magic,
but it helps to have a little magical assistance, shall we say.
HE LAUGHS
The daemons weren't the only magical component to this story.
There was one particular prop that was integral to the show.
What is it? ethiometer.
If you read Philip's description,
it embodies the description of Lyra's alethiometer,
but it's practically, it's just has a different form to it.
And that also fits more, I think,
with the mid-century sense of timelessness that we were going for
than perhaps something that feels more elaborate.
I loved the alethiometer, it's brilliant, it's really heavy.
I actually had, like, the shoulder bag from Mrs Coulter's episode,
it kept on breaking because of the weight of it.
But it's amazing. It has literally all of the drawings.
You can, like, move the needles.
This is another bit of a design journey
because of what it means to the audience, what it means to the book.
And with the alethiometer, there wasn't really
a conscious decision to make it not round,
cos it is kind of round as it were,
but there was a kind of feeling I had that
I didn't really want it to look like a Victorian pocket watch.
Ironically, actually, I was trying to find something that probably
was not inside the mind of the fans,
ie, round, for a start, because I wanted to explore other shapes
and feelings and sizes.
It wasn't to be controversial, it was actually just,
um, trying to not push the audience away
because they'd go, "Well, I'm not interested in
"a Victorian pocket watch," you know? Just...
I wanted it to, like, look special.
I break everything, but I did not break the alethiometer,
because Props were like, "If you break the alethiometer,
"that is very expensive."
I think our alethiometer is really special.
Um, and it's special in its own way and I hope people will like it.
From designing the little details to construction on a grand scale,
production really did impress with their Nordic fishing town.
Trollesund in particular has been my favourite
because you really are transported to a small, gritty,
hard-bitten, dangerous outpost somewhere far, far away.
Go see the witches' consul, get whatever help you can
and then we leave here as fast as possible.
And they've got half a dead whale and the blubber machine,
and it's just all so real and visceral.
Just blows my mind.
It's exactly what you want when you're fulfilling a fantasy world
that so many people have imagined in their own minds.
I was looking at a window
and there was, like, lentils or something,
but it had a label about how much these were.
Now, that was never, ever going to be featured,
all those jars and bottles and things,
but someone had taken the time to do all that,
and that's what gives it...
You think it doesn't matter,
you think, "Well, nobody's going to see that."
But actually, it does matter.
Building this entire town wasn't an ostentatious affair.
There was actually a pragmatic thought process behind it.
Dan May and I were very closely working together, as we do.
He saw it as a kind of weak spot. We know it's going to be expensive,
we know it's going to be a huge undertaking to do it authentically,
do it well
when actually, the cost of the bear and the daemons
and things like that are going to be extraordinary
and if you then put environmental work in every shot,
you've got real problems.
It was an amazing feat, it was literally a whole town
with interiors, exteriors, a dock, roofs and it was for one episode.
We literally squeezed every bit of that town out for that episode,
and I think it's very exciting.
Dan May and I, we'd work together
because I'd want him to try and work out
the gap between the VFX and live action world with me, you know.
It's what we do, him and I have worked together for years.
By the time Trollesund came round in pre-production,
we already had, um,
done a lot of concept art for Joel and what we thought it would be.
And then from that, we generated a bunch of buildings and things
and you can orientate them around into various different layouts.
We had to basically find this location that really didn't exist.
We found this quarry, so part of the process was to scan and plan
that environment out so that we could do some 3D storyboarding
and some more complicated pre-vis sequences involving the bear.
Um, so two big sequences we did were
the bear armour retrieval sequence.
If it was a normal chase scene with humans,
you'd shoot it very, very phonetically and cutty
and you'd have a lot of different shots in it
and you'd kind of, you'd fly the camera round the place.
And what we saw in the pre-vis
was actually by slowing it down and seeing the sort of
scale and geography of this enormous beast rampaging through town.
So because of the pre-vis,
I actually ended up shooting it
a lot, a lot simpler than I would have without the pre-vis,
which means you save an enormous amount of time,
you save an enormous amount of money on VFX.
So it's an expensive process, pre-vis, but it's, without question,
does... you know, absolutely, definitely saves you time
and is a really, really supportive thing,
both from a production level, but also creatively as well.
Iorek is key to this story
and like the daemons, he needed to be represented on set.
Performing this role was a novel experience for Joe.
Iorek Byrnison, can we talk with you?
I know the people you are seeking.
I've done characters and voiceovers work
and motion capture before,
but obviously I've never done puppeteering,
which was... It's a challenge.
I mean, if you've never done it before, it's quite challenging.
When you play a character like this,
you'll have to know how they move before you know how they act,
like, before you start acting. And so it was very important for me
to understand the weight of him, you know,
I can't move my feet the way that a polar bear moves his front paws.
And so was important to understand all of that technically
before we started filming it,
but also very important for the other actors, I think, and me
to, um, to have in those scenes
because it just helps the whole atmosphere of
having a giant creature next to you.
The reference dots, um, as glamorous as they are,
you, yeah, you kind of forget about it,
it becomes part of the costume, really.
So when I have the camera in front of my face
it captures all of the movements that I have
and they use the dots as references to drive the animation.
But it's so rewarding because it's so liberating.
You know, you get to... It's very theatrical in a sense
that you get to play this larger-than-life character.
And I love playing larger-than-life characters
because it means that you have to use your creativity
and your imagination to, to realistically produce
something that people can relate to.
I am not for sale.
Whilst Joe dedicated himself to performing lorek,
there was still a technical issue to deal with.
How would Dafne ride this enormous bear?
We didn't want to just have a digital version of Lyra, you know,
galloping along on a digital polar bear, so we had to build something.
We didn't want it to be mechanical,
because the repetition of a mechanical device,
a clockwork sort of device, is always visible.
The best option for this is to have a rig that is puppeteered.
One of our rigs was a child carrier with the shoulders
and neck of the bear set on top of it
that in the sort of motion of the puppeteer underneath,
it would seem like Lyra was riding a bear.
I enjoy the riding.
There's, like, this really weird, like, mechanic riding rig
which also has, like, puppeteers underneath it,
but still, it's mechanic. It's really heavy for them.
It was so bouncy when we did the test that they had to, like,
strap me onto it because I was, like, jumping that much.
It was like, boing, boing, boing.
Pragmatic problem-solving wasn't exclusive to lorek.
A huge amount of thought went into adapting our queen witch,
Serafina Pekkala.
We tried lots of different things with, with the make up
and the hair initially to figure out who, who really she is
and what we want to bring to her.
Because obviously, the look of Serafina
is different from the description in the book,
and I'm sure a lot of people will be wondering why
we've decided to go with, with the short hair,
and one of the reasons behind that was, so,
in the book she flies on a broomstick,
and we wanted to make her really powerful.
And the idea that she flies, that this is her cloud-pine,
and that she flies using wind thermals and currents,
which is going to be incredibly cool and quick and fast
and if you're doing that and you've got long, flowing hair,
it's going to be distracting and inhibiting for her.
So we wanted to make her strong and powerful and not a...
Without any vanity whatsoever, so we kept the hair short and fixed.
And, um, and the make up, this,
was how we denoted that she is a queen,
rather than the very delicate flowers.
That's the whole other journey that I've been on,
to learn about visual effects.
For example, the witches in the book are described as
wrapped in ribbons of black silk.
So ribbons of silk flying all over the place
would have been a nightmare,
but I was still trying to cling to the fact
that it's fabric that's wrapped round the body.
We had to make a costume that would look, um, of the Earth,
of the forest. Like she had just wrapped rags around her,
but also be sturdy enough for her to fly,
for me to have a harness underneath my costume.
I've done a little bit of wire work before this job,
but, um, but nothing quite as extensive as this.
Most fun I think I've ever had on set.
It's incredible, you actually feel like you're flying.
I am here to help.
It's just remarkable, the journey from a bow and arrow
to tiny, tiny little daggers
and the idea behind that being just very short, sharp lethal weapons.
It's such a brilliant idea and just feeds into your character more.
With such high expectations,
how are our cast and crew feeling
about being a part of this adaptation?
It is an honour, and it is a tremendous honour
to be given the opportunity to adapt books this beautiful.
I hope we do it well. Cos if we don't, I'll be gutted as a fan.
To get that tone right,
and to give the fans what they want is quite a daunting challenge.
Have this extraordinary fondness for the, the ideas in this project.
We are trying to be as true to the books as we can.
You can so easily get it wrong,
and I'm desperately, desperately trying not to.
I'm thrilled to be here and play Lee Scoresby,
and be the American on set.
With series one wrapped up and Lyra off on the next part of her journey,
there'll be a whole new adventure for everyone in series two.