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“When Martin did the adaptation, he really had the reveal of the war as though it’s almost like a mystery film,” Pistor points out. “We learn what Peter went through and why he’s alone and that he has these feelings of trying to find his sister. Working on the story this way gives you this whole other perspective and I think it just gives you the revelation that people may go through difficult things and grieve and to have compassion for them. Peter goes through the war and loses so much, but it makes him more compassionate for the elephant. We never considered not having the war there.”

Designing the Elephant in the Room

Rogers was especially careful with the visual development of the elephant. As a focal point of the film, there were a lot of notes to hit with look of the character.

“It was definitely a balance for us with the elephant in particular, because we wanted the elephant to feel the most physically real, in some ways, of all the characters in the world,”

- Producer Julia

says Rogers. “It’s come from somewhere else. It’s a shocking thing that has come to this town and it has brought back something to the place. It starts a whole journey, but we also wanted it to feel like it fit in the world.”

Rogers points out that there was this balance of not anthropomorphizing it too much and yet having moments where an emotional connection was emphasized. “We needed to feel the humanity of the elephant,” she explains. “We did a lot of reference work, and we had an elephant consultant. For the purposes of animation, we had to give a little bit more expressiveness and thought to the posing of the elephant and through facial design and particularly eyes.”

Rogers and the animation team worked to create a town where the characters lived that felt like a fable and had a timeless quality. While the elephant certainly looked extraordinary and out of place there, the town needed to come across as grounded and believable.

“I really wanted the animation to be physically grounded so that the moments of magic would play against that,” says Rogers. “There’s an element of magical realism, but the environment should feel like it could exist and that it’s a contrast to the magical elements.”

Produced during the pandemic, the film crew were spread out over multiple countries. Working by video conference built a sense of community while everyone was in lockdown.

“That was remarkable,” says Pistor. “The way that Netflix works was that we had our animation pipeline with Animal Logic [based in Sydney and Vancouver] and our visual development artists were in nine different countries. Our storyboard artists were in five different countries. Our editor was essentially editing from his kitchen. Zoom can be a really intimate space. If you just get past looking at your computer, it actually made it feel more of a team because everyone was on Zoom all at once. It wasn’t a hierarchical thing to choose who’s in the meeting. We were all there. We were all in it together. Making this movie was quite remarkable.”

The Magician’s Elephant premieres on Netflix on March 17.