Eddie Redmayne, master of limbic mimicry

This fascinating article (complete with video), tells the role Eddie Redmayne played in creating the Manticore dance for his Newt Scamander character in Secrets of Dumbledore, and that of Callum Turner, playing his brother, Theseus. The view is from the perspective of the masterful technicians who make the magic happen in the final film. Excerpts from interview with visual effects supervisor Christian Manz:

“…obviously the biggest thing from the script was the limbic mimicry. That is, Newt’s posed walk, which would make the creatures benign. For that, we’d come up with some walks, and then show those to Eddie Redmayne in pre-production and he was like, ‘Oh yeah, they’re cool.’

“Then he went away, worked with his movement coach, Alex Reynolds, looking at what we had done. And then I got back lots of little videos of things. He’d say, ‘What do you think of these?’ And then we were like, ‘Oh, well maybe this one works,’ and then we’d animate. And then he went back and did some more and then brought Callum Turner as Theseus in, too.

“…It was a process, there were some very ‘Ministry of Silly Walks’ moments. Some were like, ‘Is it too bonkers?’ In the end, the characters had to work together and we wanted it to be funny. You could always hear David chuckling in the tent when Eddie suddenly throws a pose and holds it. The reason why it works as well is Eddie is incredibly committed to making that work. He cares about the character, cares about what we are doing and making it work together. And that makes it all believable. The final animation, led by Animation Supervisor Aulo Licinio in Framestore’s Montreal studio, was incredibly intricate and nuanced, which was the real icing on the cake.”

Eddie Redmayne gave the animation team direct feedback on how to perform limbic mimicry on Manticores - befores & afters

Of course, Eddie revealed at his traditional ”fan interview” about Secrets of Dumbledore that the dance had its real origins in his efforts to make his children laugh during their bathtime.

“…where does the manticore dance come from? My kids, when they have a bath, I stand outside the bathroom door and I just walk back-and-forth across the door doing weird dances because there’s nothing quite like a 3- and a 4-year-old cackle — like a proper belly laugh. 

“There’d be that ‘Walk Like an Egyptian’ thing, and that’s basically where the manticore dance came from. That’s the one they found actually the funniest.”