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His idea was also to set up the feeling of God as a character, looking down on both these principal characters – Valjean and Javert.”

“He wanted to establish that the convicts are in the depths of despair, the worst place you could imagine. “It was Tom Hooper’s creative decision to establish this movie this way,” says visual effects supervisor Richard Bain, who came onto the project with Double Negative. Whilst that song certainly opens the stage musical, the ship staging was added by the director to create a sense of ‘theater’ in the cinema. Les Mis begins in 1815 where, in the port of Toulon, scores of chain gang convicts including Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) are seen dragging a storm-damaged man-of-war ship into a dry dock, while they sing ‘Look Down’, watched over by police inspector Javert (Russell Crowe). In addition, visual effects were used to flesh out scenes shot on stages and to re-create a photoreal version of early 19th century France.įxguide takes a look at how the effects, in particular, helped the director tell the musical story, including selling key transitions between time and place during the film as the action moves forward. Instead of highly-staged musical numbers, such as those seen for example in the successful film version of Chicago (2002), Les Mis was shot mostly hand-held by DOP Danny Cohen on locations in France and Britain, including on elaborate sets at Pinewood Studios and Greenwich.ģ. Performers wore microphones while an on-set pianist played directly into concealed ear-pieces.Ģ. First, Hooper had the actors sing each song live, rather than the usual process of lip sync’ing to pre-recorded vocal and orchestra tracks. The solution, from Hooper and the Les Mis filmmakers, was manifold:ġ. Final shot by Dneg.ī) there was an already established theatrical legacy from the stage version of Les Mis. Original plate for one of Dneg’s crowd extensions. When director Tom Hooper set out to make a new film version of the hugely popular musical Les Miserables, he faced one major hurdle: how could he tell the gritty story of French poverty, rebellion and love in a realistic way when: