Yahoo Movies Dungeons & Dragons star on spellcasting approach
Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves actor Justice Smith has discussed his approach to spellcasting as the sorcerer Simon Aumar.
Ahead of the fantasy heist movie's arrival on the big screen this weekend, he told Digital Spy how directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein encouraged him to be heavily involved in developing all of his character's movements.
"They had paired me with this choreographer, and she had a lot of really great ideas. We kind of just worked together to figure out what the spells were going to look like," Smith began.
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"She wanted more fluid, slow gestures, but I thought something that was almost similar to dance – like staccato, concise movements – would work better. So we kind of fused our styles. And then I brought the whole sign language thing to her.
"Because I feel like if spellcasting were a thing, it would be a form of language. I wanted to ground it in something real," he explained.
The Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom star also confessed that he consciously avoided one specific way of performing spells, that has often been used in the past. He shared: "I knew I didn't want to just go like this [sticks out right hand]. Every time I see that in movies, I'm like, 'That's lazy.'
"When people who have magic powers in movies, or just powers in general [...] I feel like if magic were real, it wouldn't just be simple."
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According to Smith, each and every spell had to boast a physical uniqueness, just like the original Dungeons & Dragons game.
"Each spell will require either a material component or a roll component or some form of gesture. I wanted it to be as individual as it is in the game, through the movements.
"In the mirror, I would film myself doing it," he revealed. "I would watch myself on the Zoom call with the choreographer, because she was in England, and I was in Ireland.
"So I would watch myself on the Zoom call, to make sure I would do it right. And she would record what we came up with together. She would record them, so I could practise them again."
Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves hits cinemas this Friday (March 31).
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