The world of Narnia has, up until now, existed only in the imaginations of millions of readers. With his characters cast, director Adamson was faced with the massive, daunting task of bringing Narnia’s geographic world – from its wooded coves, magical lampposts and beaver lodges to the iced-over castle at Cair Paravel -- to palpable life so that one could believe with all their senses that they truly exist.

Before hammer was ever put to nail, before paint was put to brush, before saw was put to wood, Adamson pre-visualized more than half of THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE inside a computer. With this tremendous advantage, and armed with his intimate knowledge of Narnian history and lore, next began the physical work of creating Narnia’s famous locales as life-sized sets. Adamson sought out two unique talents to bring the physical reality of Narnia alive. He says: “I couldn't have done it without production designer Roger Ford, who created magnificent sets that exceeded everyone's expectations, and D.P., Don McAlpine, who did a wonderful job lighting the world of Narnia."

In early conversations with production designer Ford, Adamson explained his concept for the look of the film, which he hoped would match what he had seen in his mind’s eye as a child – an incredibly real and unsparing vision of a bleak WWII London turning into a doomed, wintry, fantastical Narnia and then, ultimately into an incredible burst of lush, magic-filled spring full of renewed life and hope. Ford knew that trying to capture the sheer inventiveness and wonderment of a child’s imagination would be a huge challenge. “I think the most difficult thing about creating a film that is also for children is that you have got to surprise them,” he says. “You've actually got to go further than their imagination goes, which is not an easy thing. At the same time, it's a dream project for a designer.”

THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE marked the second collaboration between Ford and Don McAlpine, who shot Ford's sets on P.J. Hogan's 2003 fantasy film, "Peter Pan." But this film was like nothing they had done before. McAlpine’s creativity was pushed to new edges as he tried to shoot a world covered in a glacial sheen of ice. "It was a series of experiments, and something totally new to me," the director of photography remarks. "Ultimately, I think it's something totally original that we tried. Ice has always been a problem in films. They've tried it in many movies, 'Vertical Limit' being one, but I think we took it one step closer to reality and created something that will be very visually exciting."

The Oscar®-nominated Ford ("Babe"), a veteran designer whose career dates back to the cult favorite, "Dr. Who,” designed and constructed almost three-dozen set pieces for the production – many of them influenced by the original pen-and-ink drawings created for C.S. Lewis’ 1950 novel by illustrator Pauline Baynes. Collaborating closely with one of the industry's finest art directors, Australian native Ian Gracie ("Moulin Rouge," Star Wars: Episode III"), Ford recruited a team of thirty for his art department and a construction crew surpassing 300 carpenters, painters and other craftsmen, the largest the designer had ever assembled in his 40-year career.

At New Zealand’s decommissioned Hobsonville Airbase, the designers transformed old airplane and helicopter hangars into sound stages that harbored such spectacular sets as the Stone Table, where Aslan appears to have been defeated; the White Witch's magnificent courtyard of creatures turned to stone; the bustling London train station, patterned after famous Paddington station, where the four Pevensie children are evacuated during the London blitzkrieg; and Cair Paravel, the great Narnian castle.

The design team also utilized Kelly Park, an old equestrian center north of Auckland, where Lucy, and the entire film company, took their first footsteps into the snowy Narnian landscape on a set the size of a rugby field. This massive set, which would eventually be transformed into nine different areas of Narnia, challenged Oscar®-nominated cinematographer Don McAlpine to come up with an innovative grid of some 250 space lights, hanging from the building's rafters, to illuminate the magical, imaginary land.

Conifer Grove, a woodsy campground neat Manukau Harbor, was chosen by the filmmakers for the White Witch's camp, where K.N.B.'s Berger and his troops transformed Kiwi extras into minotaurs, minoboars, cyclops and other creatures. Henderson Studios, home of the 1TV series "Hercules" and "Xena,” housed such spectacular builds as the interior of Mr. Tumnus' house; the beaver lodge; the White Witch's dungeon; an exterior set called "the frozen lake," where Ford's crew created a gimbal system of mini-icebergs which swayed and flowed under the weight of Lucy, Peter and Susan while fleeing the clutches of Maugrim’s wolf pack; the White Witch's Great Hall; and the wardrobe room, a dusty attic which houses the essential set piece of the book's title. Ford elaborates on some of his favorite designs:

The Lamppost
The lamppost that lies just on the other side of the wardrobe becomes the children’s introduction to Narnia. It was also one of Ford’s most beloved sets for its fairy-tale nature. "It was just magical,” the designer comments. “You come out of this wardrobe, it's snowing, it's cold, and you don't know where you are. Then, in the middle of the forest, there's this lamppost growing with great roots around the bottom of it. Not woody roots, but cast iron roots. It’s a very evocative introduction to Narnia.”

"We actually brought the lamppost in from the U.K.," Ford continues. "It's a casting of an original London lamppost. We cast several versions of it. We wanted it to be very authentic so we also got the proper gas fitting which appears in the film. To me, it's one of the most iconic images in the book. You have the faun with an umbrella in the snow, which was C. S. Lewis' first inspirational image for writing the book. And then you have the lamppost, which occurs very early in the story. As the children pass the lamppost, it's kind of an eternal light that leads them into Narnia. What we created was exactly how I imagined the lamppost in Narnia to be."

The Wardrobe
No ordinary piece of furniture, the carved wooden wardrobe the Pevensie children stumble upon in the professor’s house is actually an ancient doorway into a parallel universe. Another of the story’s most iconic images, the creation of the wardrobe was vital to the film’s design. "The wardrobe was a major project," Ford says. "It's probably the most important prop in the film. I mean, how many expectations of children are resting on what the wardrobe will look like? We knew it was a great responsibility.”

He continues: “First, we found a wardrobe that C.S. Lewis actually owned in a museum in the States. It's a big, oblong, square wardrobe with a carving on it, and quite dark – a Jacobean style wardrobe. So that gave us the idea that our wardrobe shouldn't be too Baroque or decorative. It should have a simplicity about it. Next Andrew very cleverly came to the conclusion that this wardrobe should have one large door. It's a portal after all, to another world. So ours has one entrance that the children find irresistible."

Ford also took inspiration from the sixth book in THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA, The Magician’s Nephew, which reveals that the wardrobe was originally made of apple wood, and attempted to replicate that dark, rich wood. “Knowing that C.S. Lewis' wardrobe was heavily carved, Andrew and I also wondered what authentic carvings to put on it,” Ford goes on. “So we came up with the idea of telling the story of The Magician's Nephew in the carvings. We used nine images from the book that are carved into the panels of the wardrobe, plus the lion's heads at the top. At the bottom, we've got the White Witch and her sister. So the whole of the wardrobe tells quite a nice story."

The Snowy Forests of Narnia
To further transform soundstages into the winter-cursed Narnian forest, Ford secured the talents of two Kiwi movie veterans -- Russell Hoffman, the head greensman who led a team of arborists and landscapers to create the forest of Narnia, and "snowman" Peter Cleveland, whose crew used eleven different materials to create the copious make-believe snow that adorns so many of the Narnian sets.

Hoffman's indoor landscapers planted over 225 trees on the production’s soundstages to match the forests of Eastern Europe. "I'm actually a staunch environmentalist," Hoffmann notes, "so the trees that we chose were all part of experimental crops that have been used for commercial purposes. They're not part of the New Zealand ecology or anything like that." While Hoffman's lumberjacks trucked the trees far-and-wide from around the country's north island, Cleveland reached out to the U.K. and the U.S. for two different types of artificial snow used to create Narnia's winter wonderland.

"We used air foam on the trees, which is the same material used in the construction industry to insulate houses," Cleveland explains. "Another type of product we used is a paper snow which comes from chopped up diapers. These were from Welsh diapers, and the foam product on the trees came from Tennessee. The bonus of that paper product was that we could eliminate footprints easily and return the set back to a smooth dressing for each new take."

The Beaver Lodge
Another of Ford's remarkable designs is the "beaver lodge," where Mr. and Mrs. Beaver give the Pevensie children refuge while reciting the history of Narnia. Director Adamson envisioned the beavers as rustic craftsmen, creating their home, furniture and tools from their surroundings, and trading with the local dwarves for other commodities. He wanted a very authentic, “beaverized” look, which required the designers to unexpectedly immerse themselves in beaver biology . . . and architecture.

Says Jules Cook, one of Ford’s key art directors who supervised the lodge set: "Much of the inspiration for the beavers' environment, both in the interior, shot on a soundstage at the Henderson Studios, and the exterior, filmed as part of a vast snowscape at Kelly Park, was taken from watching beavers in their natural habitat in the 1988 IMAX film 'Beavers.’ In a climactic scene in that film, a bear tears apart a beaver dam, and close examination of the destruction provided a strong basis for the scene in our film where a pack of the White Witch's wolves tears through the lodge looking for the Pevensies."

"Beaver dams generally let part of their river's water through the structure," Cook further explains, "and particular attention had to be paid to how a flow of water would freeze around the habitat." Chainsaws and Arbortec drill attachments were used to create a unique 'chewing' effect on the logs, and as beavers tend to strip the bark off branches, this was done as well. Set builder Pete MacKinnon estimates that he used over 4500 sticks, all "between finger thickness and leg thickness," to create the set. The lodge’s furniture is appropriately makeshift, with the Beavers' living area cluttered with miniature tools, fishing rods and collectibles, while Mrs. Beaver's "homey" touch is responsible for the spun textiles and homemade preserves. In a subtle flourish, Anglophiles may note Mr. Beaver's collection of Toby jugs, a series of beer mugs dating back to the 18th century, usually depicting various human characters. Of course, the careful eye may note an important difference -- Mr. Beaver's Toby jugs are beavers as well!

The White Witch’s World
Also forged at Henderson Studios were some of the film's most imaginative and striking sets – those that make up the White Witch’s world, including Great Ice Hall, the Witch’s dungeon, and the Witch's courtyard, each constructed to reflect a hauntingly glassy realm of snow an dice. The production used more than 7,000 gallons of resin and half a kilometer of fiberglass in the creation of this frozen-over world.

In the White Witches’ courtyard stand dozens of Narnian creatures – including griffins, bears, centaurs, panthers, giants and fauns -- each frozen into stone statues by the Witch. To create this eerie, accursed sculpture garden, Ford and Gracie had their teams hand-sculpt some 70 full-scale, life-size statues from Styrofoam molds designed by a team of ten global artists (from places including Beijing, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand) over a five-month period under the supervision of veteran Aussie movie craftsman John Searle ("Moulin Rouge," "Babe").

"We started by using a technique we hadn't tried before, using a computer to carve out all the profiles of these huge carvings,” Searle explains. "We then had each statue’s profile cut out of foam, generally twenty-five or fifty millimeter sheets of polystyrene glued together. From there, a sculptor carved them down to form, using sharp knives, sand paper and abrasives. We then had to cut the statue open and fill it with steel armature, so it could be screwed into the ground. But that was just the first phase! Then we had to coat each one to give it a finish that made it look real. For instance, the bear has a different texture from a lion. With the mythological creatures, a lot of them have armor, which was made by WETA, so we applied all those pieces as well. Finally, we gave it a seal coat of a urethane, then at last, it was onto the painters. It was quite a process."

The Queen’s Castle
Finally, the filmmakers turned to the creation of the queen’s castle, another major challenge to their creativity. "The queen's castle in the book is not described as being made of ice," Ford notes. "We made a very rash decision early on that we would make our castle out of ice. That all seemed very exciting at the time but then of course, came the problem for me of how to build a castle out of ice."

"We built these mammoth sets out of half-inch thick fiberglass," Ford describes. "Every piece had to be carved out of polystyrene. Then the polystyrene had to be covered in a layer of impermeable plastic, almost like Glad Wrap, so that the fiberglass didn't stick to it. Each piece was then fiberglassed with a gun, using fiberglass with color mixed in it, so we get this very slight blue look to it. Finally, we did a lot of research with Don McAlpine on the lighting. He did a fantastic job making this stuff look exactly like ice."

Though much of THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE was spun out of whole cloth on soundstages, a number of authentic locations were also utilized. The production spanned the globe, shooting in Poland, the Czech Republic, England and of course New Zealand – as well as the one place that has come to truly represent fairy-tale worlds: Andrew Adamson’s native New Zealand. After scouring the world for forests as lush and hills as green, Adamson ultimately chose New Zealand’s South Island to shoot the climactic battle for Narnia as Aslan’s army, now led by Peter, takes on the witch’s forces. He chose a location known as Flock Hill, because, he says, “it’s the most amazing place I’ve ever seen.” The company also used Elephant Rocks, a steep valley containing hundreds of unique rock formations popular with climbers, to film crucial scenes in Aslan's camp; and filmed the exteriors of Prof. Kirke's mansion at Auckland's Monte Cecilia Park, a Catholic refuge founded in 1913.

For the cast, New Zealand offered an ineffable sense of magic that further inspired them. “New Zealand was like entering Narnia,” says Tilda Swinton. “It was like walking into a storybook that was published in the '30s. There's something very spiritually about that land, with its huge sky, extraordinary mountains, and this sense of peace,. We were really fortunate to just spend time there."