Adventure, Fantasy
Synopsis
Siblings (Freddie Highmore, Sarah Bolger) learn that magical creatures are behind the strange occurrences at their great-great-uncle's rundown estate.
Cast: Freddie Highmore, Sarah Bolger, Mary-Louise Parker, David Strathairn, Nick Nolte, Joan Plowright, Seth Rogen, Martin Short
Producer(s): Nickelodeon Movies
Crew: Director - Mark Waters, Original Music - James Horner, Screenwriter - Karey Kirkpatrick, Screenwriter - David Berenbaum, Screenwriter - John Sayles, Producer - Karey Kirkpatrick, Producer - Mark Canton, Producer - Larry Franco, Producer - Ellen Goldsmith-Vein, Executive Producer - Julia Pistor, Executive Producer - Tony DiTerlizzi, Executive Producer - Holly Black, Cinematographer - Caleb Deschanel, Film Editor - Michael Kahn, Production Design - James Bissell, Costume Designer - Joanna Johnston, Costume Designer - Odette Gadoury
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Release Date: 02/14/2008
Running Time: 97 minutes
OFFICIAL SITE
| PG | Parental Guidance Suggested |
Production Notes:
- Notes provided by Paramount Pictures. -
Don't trust what you think you see. . . From the beloved best-selling series of books comes "The Spiderwick Chronicles," a fantasy adventure that reveals the rest of the world around us.
Peculiar things start to happen the moment the Grace family (Jared, his twin brother Simon, sister Mallory and their mom) leave New York and move into the secluded old house owned by their great-great-uncle, Arthur Spiderwick.
Unable to explain the strange disappearances and accidents that seem to be happening on a daily basis, the siblings investigate what's really going on and uncover the extraordinary truth of the Spiderwick estate and the creatures that inhabit it.
Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies Present A Kennedy/Marshall And A Mark Canton Production A Mark Waters Film "The Spiderwick Chronicles" starring Freddie Highmore, Mary-Louise Parker, Nick Nolte with Joan Plowright and David Strathairn and the voices of Seth Rogen and Martin Short. The film is directed by Mark Waters from a screenplay by Karey Kirkpatrick and David Berenbaum and John Sayles, based on the books by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black. The film is produced by Mark Canton, Larry Franco, Ellen Goldsmith-Vein and Karey Kirkpatrick. The executive producers are Julia Pistor, Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black. The director of photography is Caleb Deschanel, ASC. The production designer is James Bissell. The editor is Michael Kahn, A.C.E. The costumes are designed by Joanna Johnston. The music is by James Horner. The special visual effects are by Industrial Light & Magic. The visual effects are by Tippett Studio. This film has been rated PG for scary creature action and violence, peril and some thematic elements.
ABOUT THE FILM
"The Spiderwick Chronicles" is an extraordinary fantasy adventure, filled with creatures from an unseen world. When the Grace family comes face to face with these magical, and sometimes scary creatures, they must not only test themselves but overcome their family conflicts as well.
The story revolves around the three Grace children -Jared and his twin brother, Simon (both played by Freddie Highmore), and their older sister, Mallory (Sarah Bolger) -and their recently separated mother, Helen (Mary-Louise Parker).
The family moves into the isolated, dilapidated Spiderwick Estate, the former home of their great, great uncle, Arthur Spiderwick (David Strathairn) and great-aunt Lucinda (Joan Plowright). While the kids resent the move, they each begin to adjust in their own way -- Simon, the more studious twin, examining the unusual home, Mallory practicing her fencing, Helen getting a new job in a nearby town.
Jared, though, begins to notice unusual things happening around the magical house, and begins to investigate. Ignoring the warning of a house "brownie," Thimbletack (Martin Short), an enchanted creature who lives in the walls of the manor, he comes upon a strange and potentially dangerous book written by Uncle Arthur, Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You. Once opened, the book reveals -- and unleashes -- a world surrounding the Spiderwick Estate inhabited by some odd, wonderful -and scary -- beings: a wily but friendly hobgoblin named Hogsqueal (Seth Rogen), a pack of dangerous goblins and the beautiful and mysterious fairies and sprites. Only those who look through a magical "seeing stone" or have a slovenly hobgoblin spit in their eye -- the gooey fate of each of the children -- can see these creatures.
But it is the crafty, evil ogre, Mulgarath (Nick Nolte), who poses the most ominous threat. The children begin to realize that the Field Guide is not merely a work of their uncle's imagination, but the key to all the fabulous beings they encounter, offering unbelievable power to anyone who understands its secrets. And Mulgarath will stop at nothing to get his hands on it!
Filled with rich fantasy, emotion, suspense and action, the film chronicles the Grace children's desperate attempts to protect the Field Guide and ensure it doesn't fall into the wrong hands, while drawing on -- and building -- their own strengths, with the help of some extraordinary creatures from the Unseen World.
ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
Director Mark Waters was drawn to the uniquely imaginative elements of Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black's The Spiderwick Chronicles, particularly since they are played out in the context of a time and place audiences could relate to -- today's America. "I've always loved movies in the fantasy genre, and when I read these books I saw the opportunity to do something that hadn't been done before -- a movie that dealt with adventure, fantasy and incredibly interesting creatures, but wasn't set in a far-off land with British wizards or Gothic orphans, or just some kind of strange, unrecognizable lead actors."
Instead, Waters says, the film features kid-characters audiences can easily identify with. "They just seem to have been plunked down in an extremely extraordinary situation when the Grace family moves into this family estate they inherited and are slowly introduced to those creatures through a Field Guide. Here was an opportunity to make a movie that everyone could relate to immediately, and relate to just the fact that these kind of crazy, strange creatures could be around us at any time."
One of the reasons the children in the story are identifiable, he says, is that they struggle with problems shared by many families today. "But the enchanted and often perilous journey they embark upon allows them to discover and draw on strengths they never knew they had -- as individuals, and, more importantly, as a family."
Jared Grace, played by Freddie Highmore, is at a crisis point in his life, and it is through this extraordinary adventure that he comes to terms with his feelings about his parents' separation, Waters explains. "Jared has been deeply affected by the divorce; he's very angry and rebellious and doesn't hide his bitterness, especially in his interaction with his mother and siblings. But in the end, this incredible journey, which ends up with him basically saving his family, results in him healing himself, too."
Helen Grace, played by Mary-Louise Parker, has just broken up with her husband and moves into the old family estate, a dark, dilapidated Victorian house named for her great uncle, Arthur Spiderwick. Nobody is happy about it, but she does have an ally in her daughter, Mallory, played by Sarah Bolger. "Mallory is kind of like a mini-mom. She also has the clearest sense of why the divorce took place, but doesn't initially share this with her brothers -- she is very protective of them, even though they drive her crazy, particularly Jared," says Waters.
Simon Grace -who is also played by Freddie Highmore -is the nerdier of the two, but his quiet determination and attention to detail become great assets when the family is in danger. "More importantly, they overcome their differences and work together and, in the process, learn to love and appreciate each other," Waters sums up. "The fantasy world ultimately allows them to more clearly see and understand their own reality."
The adventure begins when Jared comes across Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You. What Arthur Spiderwick (David Strathairn), the man who built the estate, didn't realize when he wrote the manual was that the secrets he revealed about the hidden faerie world could act as a "how-to manual" and be dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands. So when Jared comes across this book that's been hidden in the house for some 60 or 70 years, he literally opens a Pandora's box.
At first, he's excited by the odd and altogether wondrous creatures Uncle Arthur wrote about. Then it dawns on him and his siblings that this secret world exists in their own house -- which explains some of the odd things that have been happening around them. That scampering sound in the wall is actually an imp known as a brownie. And, according to the Field Guide, when brownies get angry, they become boggarts, who can only be placated, the Guide tells them, by feeding them honey, which they guzzle to satisfaction. It soon becomes clear that everything in the book -- from talk of brownies and ogres -- is actually their reality and not just the ramblings of their uncle's vivid imagination.
The various creatures the children come upon in the film range in size from the nine-inch brownie, Thimbletack (voiced by Martin Short) to the ten-foot fearsome ogre Mulgarath (played by Nick Nolte). "Then there are all the creatures in between," Waters explains, "like the goblins, little sprites and hobgoblins, such as Hogsqueal, who becomes the children's ally -- that is, when he isn't distracted by birds, which he likes to eat." Hogsqueal is voiced, with great humor -and lots of inappropriate noises -by Seth Rogen.
The Spiderwick Chronicles began as a popular series of books by co-creators Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black. There has long been interest in bringing the stories to the screen and DiTerlizzi and Black wanted to entrust their creation to capable hands. Ultimately, they saw Mark Canton as the perfect producer for the film. And Kathleen Kennedy, to DiTerlizzi and Black's delight, soon joined him.
"A lot of friends and fans who had read the books and seen the art, thought this story would make a cool movie," recalls DiTerlizzi. "It was a dream of mine as well, but a lot of books get optioned to be developed into films...so Holly and I held out hope that it might actually happen. "What we really loved about the filmmakers' approach was that they seemed to love and respect the characters, creatures and world that define The Spiderwick Chronicles. Our heroes don't have any special powers and don't live in a land far, far away. They have to rely on their wits, and each other, to get out of the extraordinary, and often dangerous, situations they find themselves in when they enter the world of the fey."
The duo was inspired by the classics like Grimm's Fairy Tales. "There was always a clever Jack to outwit the giant, or a resourceful princess who had to do something ingenious to escape the goblin's castle," Di Terlizzi continues. "The idea is that knowledge is power, and how they use it (in this case, how the kids use Arthur's Field Guide), is the crux of the plot. Mark Waters really embraced that idea and ran with it."
"When the first books were finished and people approached us about optioning them, I had a sense that they might become a movie but I'm not practiced in believing anything good will ever happen to me," laughs Black. "So I was stunned and thrilled when Mark Waters and Mark Canton got involved and later, the incredible cast. When I saw the sets, it was like walking into the book. The whole thing was incredible."
Producer and co-writer Karey Kirkpatrick says that when he was first approached to help adapt the Spiderwick books into a screenplay, he immediately read the books to his children to gauge their reaction. "They were enthralled by the books and by the possibility that I might be involved with them in some way. I, like them, was really taken by the notion that the things we are unable to see -- or choose not to see -- are actually there all around us. That's thematically what I started connecting with
-- something with a lot of fantasy elements, but with a human story at the center of it, which relates to the special world around it. I was drawn to the kids in the middle of this broken family and how the whole situation ultimately helped to bring them together," Kirkpatrick says.
It is precisely this unique balance of fantasy and reality that separates "The Spiderwick Chronicles" from other fantasy adventure films, according to producer Canton. It is darker, scarier and much more grounded in the real world. "The idea here was to have a real world where inexplicable and often frightening things happen. What grounds it and makes it resonate is that we are dealing with a real family with real problems, and through this adventure they are able to find the magic inside themselves."
The story rings true to how many dysfunctional families cope in times of strife, he says, by making an effort to work together to get through the tough patches. "We wanted to make a movie that is honest to the language of the teenagers and the adults in the story, and honest to the problems teenagers have with one other and with their parents."
Canton offers that his fellow producers, who include Kirkpatrick, Larry Franco and Ellen Goldsmith-Vein, put together a superlative crew. "When you're on set and amongst the legends and the Oscar® winners from all areas, it's hard not to be blown away." Canton is referring to the dream-team of ILM visual effects supervisor Pablo Helman, creature supervisor Phil Tippett of Tippett Studio, and special effects supervisor Michael Lantieri, who handled on-set effects. Add to that director of photography Caleb Deschanel, composer James Horner, editor Michael Kahn and production designer Jim Bissell, all of whom contribute to the enchanting feel of the movie.
"Also, Mark Waters and the casting folks did a fantastic job in assembling a very eclectic, wonderful cast," Canton says. "When I first saw Freddie Highmore's work I knew I wanted to work with him. You feel he's older than his chronological age, but at the same time he's still very much a kid. And he had a big challenge here, in that he plays both Jared and Simon (which was also a very courageous way for Mark Waters to direct the movie). Of course, Sarah Bolger was so brilliant in Jim Sheridan's `In America.' Like Freddie, Sarah's a natural, but yet an experienced actress. And Mary-Louise Parker is just great and so brilliantly conveys this young divorced mother's hopes and fears and overriding love for her kids. Joan Plowright is such an amazingly accomplished actress. And you don't find actors much better than David Strathairn."
While Waters, who previously specialized in hilarious contemporary comedies, would seem an offbeat choice for the material, Canton deliberately chose him to direct because he was uniquely capable of grounding all the fantasy elements in a palpable reality. "The idea I had for `Spiderwick' was to have a real world in which amazing things happened. Mark is the perfect director because of his understanding of the dynamics between sisters and brothers, mothers and children and of contemporary family life."
Canton is referring to Waters' previous hit comedies such as "Mean Girls" and "Freaky Friday." "I thought `Mean Girls' was a very honest look at the teenage world and he particularly got the teen vernacular. The speech and the attitude of those young women felt very real to me. The key to this story was to have a family of characters we all related to and, through their adventure, have them find the magic inside themselves." Canton noted a similar approach by Waters to the mother-daughter comedy "Freaky Friday," in which the two female characters exchange bodies and, through that, come to terms with their own lives and with each other. "He has a way of conveying this without talking down to his audience. He was ideally suited to making a movie that is honest to the language and feelings of teenagers and their parents. Mark connected with the subject and understood how to convey it."
THE SPIDERWICK ESTATE AS A CHARACTER
The Spiderwick Estate is virtually a complete character itself in the movie. What at first seems to be a musty, secluded old mansion in bad need of repair, slowly opens up to reveal a fascinating and mysterious history. Odd creatures lurk in the walls; even odder ones are trying to get in to steal the Field Guide, the lifelong research of the home's original owner, Arthur Spiderwick -- who lived there with his young daughter, Lucinda, and then vanished and is presumed dead. So many pivotal events in the film unfold there (both in the distant past and the present) that production designer Jim Bissell had to design it in such a way that audiences were able to appreciate the way it once looked and what remains special about it to this day.
"Arthur Spiderwick built the estate in the early decades of the 20th century," Bissell explains. "He came from an old New England family and studied to be a naturalist. In the course of his work, he discovered an unseen world he'd read about when studying European myths but didn't realize also existed in the United States. This led him to embark upon his studies, which culminated in his masterwork, Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You (The Field Guide). So his estate is unique in that it reflects his old-time New England values and, at the same time, has a tower built atop the house, which Arthur used as an observation post for keeping an eye on the forest around him -- the goblins, fairies and other creatures. He also kept a secret study where he documented his findings and observations," Bissell explains.
Bissell referenced the work of designer William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement of the late 1800s, known for their emphasis on organic motifs, for his design inspiration, as well as the Spiderwick books themselves. "The books are fantastic. I was familiar with them because my kids love them, and that's what drew me to the project in the first place. Tony's illustrations, his pencil drawings, his pen and inks, are just fabulous. So when I was designing the film, I kept them on the wall to inspire me. They always had relevant information for me," Bissell says.
The house had to reflect Arthur Spiderwick's interest in the enchanted world, requiring a fairly isolated location in the Montreal, Canada area, where the film was shot. "We found a beautiful glade in a park called Cap-Saint-Jacques, and there was a little shack there, probably built in the 1950s. The city and the park graciously let us tear it down and build our house there," he describes.
The company built a shell of the house, though an elaborate one. "It was four stories with a tower -a full 360 degree structure surrounded by woods, which also worked in the film. We also built the ground floor, including the foyer, the parlor and library and the staircase to the second floor. And we constructed bits of the second and third story windows for POV shots, as well as the interior tower, so that the kids could run in and out, and so the scenes that directly related to the outside could be filmed on location."
On soundstages, the company replicated the ground floor for all of the complicated effects shots in which Mulgarath crashes through the house and the goblins mount their final assault. "We also built a second floor where the kids' bedrooms are and created the goblin glade, with a grotesque oak tree where we first see Mulgarath," Bissell explains.
To Bissell, "The Spiderwick Chronicles" is fundamentally a film about discovery, he says. "It's about city kids discovering nature, discovering their families and the heritage of their families -- the people who preceded them and their own immediate family, for better or worse, and the transition that kids go through between their wild imaginations and into the world that they never knew -- a world of logic, of reason, of danger, but of magic, too! All those elements came into play in creating the Spiderwick Estate."
Two of the biggest challenges for Bissell were the seasons and the weather. Filming from late summer all the way through the fall into early winter created some potential continuity issues. "So we built 60 trees between 20 and 30 feet high that had varying degrees of foliage and color. When we began filming in late summer, when the trees were leafy and green, we added some trees with colorful autumn foliage, and by late autumn we added some green trees to maintain a continuous look."
Bissell also wanted the Spiderwick estate to look like it had been there for years and years, he says. "But we knew we'd have a crew of 80 people or more on it every day, tromping around, moving equipment and setting up camera shots. If it rained, the place would turn into a mud hole. As it turns out, we did have lots of rain, and even though we laid down a lot of decomposed granite to make sure we had good drainage, and whenever possible also put flagstone on the ground and covered it with leaves so that we'd have a solid surface, it still got to be quite a mire. But we added a series of grass and moss tufts that were easy to replace on a daily basis and covered them with leaves so that audiences won't notice what a quagmire it actually was."
THE FIELD GUIDE & THE "SEEING STONE"
If the house is a character and the film's key set, then The Field Guide has to be its main prop. Property Master Claire Alary points out that "The Field Guide is the most important prop in the film, because it constantly informs the story and is the reason why all of the chaos in the story begins. Jared finds this book in a chest in the study and he starts looking through it and realizes that it is all about the fantastical world around him, and concurrently begins to realize that it's the source of all the family's problems in the house." Once Jared opens the book -- despite warnings from Thimbletack -- the problems only multiply.
Following production designer James Bissell's overall design plan, the art department created The Field Guide, using diaries and journals from the early part of the 20th century as models. They also looked at handwriting samples, and even evolved a font that they used for Arthur Spiderwick's own handwriting.
"The Field Guide is more of a product of Arthur Spiderwick, a man who is a naturalist, who studied the unseen world over the span of about 15 to 20 years and documented the enchanted world around him. He transcribed all of his notes into a book that he had hoped would illuminate this world he knew existed to the world at large. When audiences get a glimpse of The Field Guide, hopefully they will sense the presence of Arthur Spiderwick and the almost two decades he spent working on it," Alary says.
The enchanted realm Arthur Spiderwick uncovers is an unseen world whose creatures are only discernible to the human eye with the help of magical aids. So, the other unique prop in the film is the "seeing stone," a magical hollow rock that, with the use of various lenses, allows the viewer to see the otherwise invisible, enchanted world.
"We've all come across stones on the ground that have little holes in them. And when you look through them, you tend to see things somewhat differently. It's almost magical, and sometimes what you see through them gives you a somewhat different perception of reality," muses Bissell. "Arthur Spiderwick, who was very mechanically inclined, built a holder for the "seeing stone" and he designed several different lenses that allowed the viewer to see various types of enchanted creatures like sprites and ogres. These special lenses were extraordinary, particularly given the period in which Arthur Spiderwick lived. Meinert Hansen, one of our art department illustrators, helped design them and local craftsmen beautifully executed his concepts."
THE UNSEEN WORLD
The unique characters -- goblins, hobgoblins, brownies, boggarts and ogres -- fascinated the filmmakers. Some were sweet and charming, while others gave them the chills. "When the movie starts it's a little bit like a ghost story," says Kirkpatrick. "There is something or someone in the house with the Grace family and it's telling them in an `Amityville Horror' sense to get out."
Jared finally meets this somebody -- Thimbletack, the house brownie. According to existing faerie lore, house brownies live in the walls of the house and collect shiny things. "He appears, disappears and lives in the walls. He appears when he wants to be seen and disappears when he doesn't," Kirkpatrick explains. Brownies are somewhat mischievous as well. "They play tricks on people. It's like that sock you can't find -- all those things where you say, `I swear I put that down . . .` The idea is that brownies take those and hide them in the walls."
Brownies are also known to be very loyal to their masters, in Thimbletack's case Arthur Spiderwick. "Spiderwick gave him one mission before he left, which is, `Protect the book.' And that's his whole life."
They also have one nasty trait: when they get angry they turn into boggarts which is their ugly side -and it doesn't take much. Thimbletack is like a pot that's about to boil at any moment. "He's constantly trying to contain his rage," explains ILM visual effects supervisor Tim Alexander. "We did things like put a big green boil popping out of his head, which he'll try to push back in because he doesn't want to turn into a boggart."
"What's nice about this is that it's sort of representative of Jared when he gets angry," Kirkpatrick notes. "He has similar anger issues; in essence he becomes a boggart in his own right, which is how he is behaving when we first meet him."
The Grace kids' nemesis in the film is the evil ogre, Mulgarath, who, like Thimbletack, has one goal -- in this case, "Get the book." "He and Thimbletack are complete opposites," explains ILM visual effects supervisor Pablo Helman. "They share the same mixture of human nature, but Mulgarath is far more complex. He is not the typical bad guy; in faerie tales, it's not black and white -- it's more about grays."
"We started with a Lucifer/fallen angel kind of myth," says Kirkpatrick. "Mulgarath is actually a cursed being," skillfully portrayed by actor Nick Nolte. "He's a guy who wants to be more powerful than he is, and he's reduced to living surrounded by goblins, who are kind of idiots. If he could get the secrets in the book, he could be the most powerful creature of the Unseen World, and he would use it for evil."
Mulgarath is crafty and manipulative, employing, as needed, a shape-shifting ability at will to prey on the weaknesses of humans, appearing in various clever guises. Surrounding him is an army of goblins, which Kirkpatrick describes as "really the bottom of the food chain of the faerie world. Sort of like dim-witted dogs that follow the ogre and do whatever he tells them to do."
The goblins are led by Redcap, a Bull Goblin. "He's the majordomo to Mulgarath," says Tippett. "Like the sergeant-at-arms goblin. The only problem is, he's a coward in the presence of his boss, Mulgarath."
Another creature that lives in the woods, who befriends the Grace children, is Hogsqueal. "He's a hobgoblin, not a goblin," reminds Tippett. "He doesn't like to be called a goblin -- they're beneath him."
Hogsqueal is on a quest for vengeance -- Mulgarath has killed his entire family, and he's willing to work with the children because he wants to do something about it.
The only problem is he's a coward. "He's totally fueled by vengeance, but he's a little guy whose ideas about his own abilities are inflated," explains Kirkpatrick. "His approach is always, `I have these big ideas, but I'll get you to do all the dirty work. I'll just be over here.'"
He's not the tidiest creature. "With him, there's earwax, there's butt scratches, and, uh...snot," says Tippett. It is Hogsqueal's "spit in the eye" that gives the recipients the ability to see the inhabitants of the Unseen World, a facility they'd most certainly wish they'd been able to acquire some other way. "Once a hobgoblin spits in your eye, you have `the sight,'" explains Kirkpatrick. "It allows you to see the Unseen World without the use of a "seeing stone." The creatures can no longer make themselves invisible to you."
Hogsqueal also has an unusual craving for birds. "He is so easily distracted in the presence of birds that his stomach can totally override his quest for vengeance at any moment," Kirkpatrick continues. Fortunately, Hogsqueal's character defect becomes an asset by the movie's end.
Two other creatures that the Grace children happen upon are the most characteristic of the Unseen World -- the benevolent and beautiful sprites and sylphs. The sprites exist in the faerie world in a variety of forms -- water sprites, who can cloak themselves on the surface of the water, hummingbird-like sprites and, most prevalent in "The Spiderwick Chronicles," flower sprites.
Flower sprites hide themselves in flowers, in this case, in order to guard the aged Aunt Lucinda. "They bring her food, which are little berries," Kirkpatrick explains. "And once you eat the food that the sprites bring you, you'll never crave human food again. They've been keeping her alive, and quietly whispering her secrets about her father. She's surrounded by them, and they protect her."
Likewise, the sylph, who live in a beautiful faerie glade, have been protecting Arthur Spiderwick himself. The sylph appear as the fluff of dandelion seeds, long ago swarming in the millions to carry Spiderwick away to the safety of the glade, continuing to surround him to this day. "They're the protectors of the faerie world," says co-producer Tom Peitzman. The sylphs cause those they protect to lose all awareness of time. "They make you forget where you are and all your pressing business," notes Helman. "Arthur's been in the glade for years, just studying everything around him, and he's forgotten life."
What further makes the sprites and sylph magical is their ability to be seen or not seen, something which sometimes depends on who's doing the looking. "If you look really closely at the seeds of a dandelion, you might see a little face, whose eyes are shrouded a little bit, but with a little face and a mouth," describes Peitzman. "The same thing goes for the sprites." The creatures can choose to be seen or not seen, with their tiny faces visible on the stem of a flower at will. Adds ILM's Tim Alexander: "The audience is left with the feeling, `Maybe after the movie's over, I could go outside and go over to a flower bed, and maybe I'd find one of these. Maybe I just haven't noticed them yet.'"
"SPIDERWICK'S" YOUNG STARS -- AND SOME ADULT ONES
Freddie Highmore and Sarah Bolger are actually quite close in age to the teenagers they play in the film. But they are different from the Grace siblings in one significant way. While the story takes place in New England, neither Highmore nor Bolger is American. Highmore is British and Bolger hails from Ireland.
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