The most ambitious special effects ever undertaken by CBBC
The visual effects for the series were provided by Oscar and BAFTA winning effects house Milk and by an in house team led by Visual Effects Supervisor Sue Land. Sue’s career spans 34 years, the last 26 in visual effects including series six to nine on Doctor Who. Here she explains how they created some of the most ambitious special effects CBBC has ever seen.
Published: 11 December 2016
Magic is so central to the show how do you begin creating the special effects?
The starting point for the look of the magic was, as everything on The Worst Witch, the books by Jill Murphy. We also looked at other shows for inspiration. However, our overriding aim was to create a magical world which felt real. Magic is the norm on The Worst Witch. We wanted each witch, or in the case of the student witches, to develop their own styles. Their magical style is both script and character lead with the magic tailored to an individual’s particular gestures and personality.
There is lots of physical magic in the show, why was this important to the show and can you give some examples?
Visual effects always work best when combined with physical on set effects like smoke, wind, goo, explosions and lights. These give a point of focus for the cast and helps with timing too. The question I was most often asked by the cast was, "what will the magic look like?" So having something real for them to react to which was an approximation of the final effect was invaluable.
What was your biggest challenge and why?
Without a doubt the biggest challenge we had was how we were going to achieve the flying sequences. This was made slightly more complicated by the fact that in the books everyone rides a broom side saddle and it was something both Jill and production were very keen to preserve. Riding side saddle presents two unique problems, firstly one of balance and profile, as unlike a horse a broomstick is only five centimetres wide.
Turning to the right, or the side your legs are on, is much harder than turning to the left, both in terms of how tight a corner and the speed at which it can be done. The solution was to think of the flying as you would dressage. We had different broom stick rigs built to accommodate different flying requirements, each was fitted with a small seat and a foot rest for comfort and to help maintain a pleasing flying style.
Anyone who has read The Worst Witch books and enjoyed Jill’s lovely illustrations will also know that the cats ride on the back of the brooms. Initially we thought to solve this problem with animatronic cats but in the end we opted to use real cats filmed against green screen and added onto the brooms in post. It gave us more performance variety than we could have had with animatronic cats.
What was your most surprising/pleasing result?
It is hard to say but it is probably the shot in episode five where the broomstick display team hover then take off in formation, what I wouldn’t give to be able to do that!
How does this differ as working on a show such as Doctor Who? Do you have to adapt things because it is a younger audience?
On a show like Doctor Who all the effects have to be science led as the Doctor is a Time Lord not a magician. In the world of The Worst Witch all the effects are magical. Distilling the difference is very important. If a witch uses a transportation spell it can’t look like she is being beamed up Star Trek style. Since The Worst Witch books were written pretty much for the age of our audience and the scripts followed on we didn’t really have to adapt things too much. Our aim with the VFX was to create cool exciting effects that could be enjoyed by young and old alike.
