In a time when CGI budgets are larger and extra noticeable than ever, there’s been some debate about precisely methods to get them to TV exhibits. The character of tv doesn’t actually permit for a similar money and time that visible results require, however as TV turns into increasingly more of an arms race, firms are definitely prepared to strive incorporating as a lot as they’ll. Which is all to set the stage for The Sandman on Netflix, which featured an actual speaking raven.

Not likely (sorry for those who’re studying it right here, however ravens don’t communicate human). But it surely did characteristic a raven voiced by an actor on set, and performed, in scenes, by an actual raven — one thing Tom Sturridge, who performs Dream, discovered pleasant.

“An actual raven!” Sturridge exclaims to Polygon. “And a really tall man with a pumpkin on his head [playing Mervyn Pumpkinhead, voiced by Mark Hamill].”

Although there have been so many different causes he needed to be a part of Sandman, the selection to have sensible manufacturing wherever potential — even when coping with an precise chook — caught out to him.

Picture: Netflix

“There’s a hazard with these sorts of productions, that it turns into a sort of CGI orgy. And there’s a lot of the intention with that is all the time to make all the pieces sensible that you possibly can,” Sturridge says. “The creatures in Hell had been all actors in prosthetics, so you possibly can really feel their breath. And it makes such a distinction when so usually you’re anticipated to make such leaps in your imaginations as an actor as a result of a lot of it isn’t there.”

That’s to not knock different exhibits which are extra reliant on VFX, and even the components of Sandman that use CGI to assist translate the scope of the comics. However with The Sandman, Sturridge hopes that the sensible results did extra than simply improve his personal expertise of the present.

“The factor about desires is that you simply don’t know you’re inside them, they really feel actual. So it’s essential that in all of those fantastical environments, it appears like you possibly can contact it. And we may — we may contact it, we may really feel it,” Sturridge says. “The leaps had been tiny, and it simply makes it a lot simpler that manner.”

Further reporting by Tasha Robinson.