Production designer Dennis Gassner is used to working on big films, with movies such as Bugsy, Road to Perdition, Big Fish, and Jarhead dotting his impressive resume. But Gassner admits that bringing to life the world of The Golden Compass ? the first of Philip Pullman?s His Dark Materials trilogy to make its way onto the big screen ? was a special challenge. On the London set of New Line?s The Golden Compass the 20+ year veteran of films led the online media through his part in the process of bringing to life The Golden Compass.

Putting Together the World of The Golden Compass: ?The question that I had for everybody was what is The Golden Compass? And to me, I deal in symbols, I'm the architect of the film. How do you get into a world like this which is a very unusual world, one that I haven't created and nobody has? So you start with that, something simple,? explained Gassner. ?The simplicity for me was actually the sphere which became the golden compass. The protagonist and the antagonist of our films, you need symbols, simply become that. The symbol for purity for Lyra and then the antithesis of that would be for me the oval, which is the extension or manifestation of that symbol. So it's nice to have a contrast, and you can start to build the world from there. That's how I started, very simply and very direct.

"I started with, obviously, Oxford, the parallel world of Oxford exists but in Jordan College which doesn't exist. What does that look like? There was a word that I came up with on a film called Waterworld which was again the same futuristic type of world, an alternate world, and that word is called cludging.

It's taking one element that exists and another element that exists and putting them together, combining into something else.?

Creating the Snow Scenes: How will the snowy setting of The Golden Compass differentiate itself from other fantasy films? ?Obviously color is really important but also the architecture of the snow is interesting,? answered Gassner. ?I've taken basically one crystal of snow and manifested it into a very large element. It's a fusion. I wanted a place where a meeting took place so the nature of snow and ice converge and create a massive shard, which gave a focal point to that world itself.?

The Design of London in The Golden Compass: ?London was particularly fun to do because you don't get to redesign London very often. I wanted to do that in an homage to Christopher Wren who redesigned London but never really got to realize it, except for St. Paul's and some churches. I've kind of taken the symbol of St. Paul's as the keystone and developed around that a more glass world.?

Deciding on what period of history to pull from in the design, as well as figuring out what to leave in and what could be left out, was a complicated process. ?Yes, it's very, very complicated. The time period was obviously something that came forward actually quite quickly to me. Sort of where are we placing this? This told me that story. I said, 'This will be the turn of the century to the '40s. We have that window of 40 years to say?' For costume, for props, everybody needed to have a window in time to deal with. But it's a broad window of time. We're dealing with a generality and that opened things up. It's much more fun for the audience to look at because it is a fantasy, even though we're basing it in a reality environment. We're saying, 'This is a real time, real place that you're in now.' But it gave me the scope to play with a lot of elements of time. And that accumulation is the exciting part about getting to do something like this.?

The choice of what sort of buildings to add to the set came down to what looked good. ?That's all - it's what looks good,? said Gassner. ?For me, it's the emotional content of the pieces. I react emotionally to material. 'Oh, that feels about the right size and the right shape and the right proportion because emotionally that should be happening at this point in the script.' The environment is just really the backdrop. Like any piece of architecture, any environment that we all go through, it's how it feels in space. A film envelopes you into an environment that the story works, and the characters in the story then manifest themselves as they do from the novel. That's why we're all doing this, because everybody enjoyed the book and we have to start somewhere, so we start with a good piece of material.

I remember when I first met Philip [Pullman, the author]. He reinforced exactly the thing that I talked about with Deborah. I said, 'What is The Golden Compass?' We went out to Oxford and we walked through some of the areas that he had imagined these scenes taking place, because that's exactly what he had done. He had wandered and thought of these ideas. He took us to a small museum of timepieces and I went in. He would show me, 'Well, this is an interesting piece and this is an interesting piece.' And I said, 'Yes, but here's something that's actually more interesting to me.' I looked up and on the shelf there was a concave mirror. It was encased in a beautiful piece of wood and I looked at it. I said, 'Philip, to me that's the most interesting thing in this room because I can see both of us in that.' He was kind of standing away from me. What it did, it brought both of us together. And I said, 'This is a really key element of the film for some reason.?

CGI versus Practical Effects: Gassner said there are more practical effects than CGI in The Golden Compass. ?Everything here is practical and extensions in CGI. When you have a long, long journey in how to make this movie, there's push and pull in all films so you say, 'What can we build physically? What does CGI have to take over?' But it's a practical element of dealing with the financials of the film. You divide it up, you have so much money and you say, 'Where is it going to go? What's the best use of it?'?

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New Line Cinema's The Golden Compass hits theaters on December 7, 2007.