Written by Andie Kaiser
In the lead-up to his much-anticipated adaptation hitting North American cinemas, I had the opportunity to speak with Ben Gregor about his inspirations, favourite memories from set, and the joy of working in nature.
Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity.
W SPOTLIGHT: Thanks so much for taking the time! I’ve seen the film; it’s great. It’s such a joy to watch, and I’m assuming [it] must have been such a joy to film as well. Are there any memories that are your favourite from the whole process?
BEN GREGOR: I think, you know, we mucked around a lot; it was a really fun set family. It was quite hard to say goodbye to the family section when we did, because there was Andrew Garfield as Tim and Claire Foy as Polly. They really just played so nicely; they're so funny together.
And the kids were really vibing, and they would come up with really crazy ideas all the time, like, "Let's have a water fight; we want to be wild." Uncontrolled stuff you don't normally film, because it's too hard, technically, to dry off everyone's clothes and put all their hair back. But we just did it in one take, and if you get it, you get it; if you don't, you don't. There was a kind of wildness to that I really loved.
But then when you're up with the tree gang, going through all the lands, like the Land of Goodies, Land of Birthdays, and off to Dame Snap’s… that is also crazy. Every single time, it was quite hard to say goodbye to whatever we were doing, but really exciting to do the next bit. It was definitely the best 12 weeks I've ever spent filming anything.
W SPOTLIGHT: That's awesome, yeah. And I thought that it was so nice to see the real world, our world, be almost as colorful and scenic as some of the magical things. It didn't paint our world as boring in any way. Was that important to you as you were developing the story?
GREGOR: Very much so. I had this idea of something called "Blytopia," which is like a Blyton utopia. And I wanted everything to be part of that, because the spirit of Enid Blyton is so many different things, but to me it was quite wholesome in terms of food and cake and stuff you could touch. And [it’s] natural, but also with a zany, crazy imagination, a soaring imagination. So, both of those things needed to fit consistently and have a "look," and I think our DOP Zac [Nicholson] was amazing at filming the family stuff with as much interest and compassion as a lot of the lands.
But also, when we're doing the family stuff, we didn't have to shoot for any VFX, really. So we could just light it and make it look and feel beautiful, whereas some of the other lands we were more like, "Oh, we better be careful of this or that," and we're moving blue screens around, or whatever it is. So in a way, we were more free to do proper in-camera filming with the farm, so we really loved that. And the landscape, we shot the Windsor Great Park, the Surrey Hills; these are beautiful, untouched parts of the United Kingdom, and it was just amazing to make it all look beautiful.
W SPOTLIGHT: Yeah, it definitely comes across very well; it’s so gorgeous.
GREGOR: A lot of people want to move to the country after they watch it; they start using Rightmove to look at what kind of house they could get.
W SPOTLIGHT: Absolutely! And you mentioned the VFX; if I'm correct, I believe you’ve said that you did your own VFX for the film, as opposed to outsourcing that. How did that impact the experience for your whole team?
GREGOR: We wanted to work in a stop-motion kind of workflow, where VFX and design and set-building are all happening very early on [and] informing exactly how we do things. We were too ambitious to be able to outsource it to traditional houses. We had some great partners helping us do the shots; we had so many, but the core work was done by us in-house, in a kind of abandoned old building above a subway station… we had all kinds of old salvaged things. It was a bit like the barn in there. The VFX artists were so part of our team, and they were so involved in the creative process of making the shots. Normally, they are sitting on their own, in a post-house or at their homes. They're rarely just so at the heart of the process, and they absolutely loved it.
I made them a VFX song, a review song, so whenever we were looking and checking shots, we'd blast out this thrash metal song. It was just fun to treat them like a loved part of the production.
W SPOTLIGHT: That’s great. Do you have a favourite visual or scene that you were able to craft?
GREGOR: Yeah, I do have a favourite shot… It’s a big wide shot of the tree as Fran is climbing, just before she goes into the tree. We had a lot of amazing grip work, and the operating was amazing. So, more ambitious shots than I would ever do in my life. They would go, like, "Let's do these massive wide shots," and [get] these amazing Technocranes working. It just comes up, and the camera tilts down, and you can see down [to] the danger below her, and these birds go around her, and this big music’s going. We recorded the music in Vienna with a real orchestra, and it’s just this amazing physical moment where it looks dangerous and massive. That makes you kind of love the main character, Fran, because it’s scary, so she’s so brave, and you admire her. But also [you’re] just excited for how big and awesome the tree is, and it’s just my favourite shot in the film.
W SPOTLIGHT: That’s great. I believe I saw you joke in an interview that the backwards land is kind of like Tenet (2020) for six-year-olds. Were there any other movies that you felt inspired by as you were creating this adaptation, or did you stray away from that?
GREGOR: So many. I mean, The Wizard of Oz (1939) is a big one for me, you know that moment of wonder when it goes from black and white to colour. I wanted the lands to sort of feel like that, like, "Woah," they wallop you with this world of colour. The Land of Goodies is a little bit Wizard of Oz-like… [Mr.] Oom Boom Boom is a little bit like the Wizard.
I think some of the big, big films… Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), when Andrew [Garfield], Tim, is doing the tractor, [it] makes me think of that. You know, tinkering with a beloved old machine in the beautiful countryside. The line between a madman and [an] English person in a shed is very thin line. (Laughs). English people in sheds have invented quite a lot of amazing things over the years, but there have also been a lot of mad people who just go to the shed and just come up with some futile plan. But if you look at, like, da Vinci’s drawings, some of it is just crazy, but it’s also so predicting the future. So I love the idea that, like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, it’s almost just insane what they’re trying to do, but it’s also kind of brilliant.
W SPOTLIGHT: That’s awesome. The last question I’ll ask is just what you’re hoping people take away from the film, whether that be children watching it for the first time, or adults returning to this world?
GREGOR: I think that I would love people to take away from Magic Faraway Tree a sense that wonder and adventure are just around us all the time. Get into nature, spend time with the people that you love, don’t plan too much, turn the phones off. Go and get lost somewhere together, and just let things happen, because that will be the most amazing stuff that ever happens in your life.
W SPOTLIGHT: Perfect. Well, thank you so much for your time, and best of luck with everything on the film.
GREGOR: Thank you, thank you very much.
The Magic Faraway Tree will be available to watch in theatres on August 21.
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