DEFINITION September 2019

THE L ION K I NG | DRAMA

Everything we do is about how you mimic reality, photography and real light

IMAGES Young Simba in The Lion King: all stills © Disney

they had. The movie was also delivered in IMAX and in stereo so there were more dimensions to organise. It was creatively and technically challenging.” The mainstream press has tried commonplace. But Newman thinks that the striving for this level of reality opens new doors to the movie making industry. “Everything we do is about how you mimic reality, photography and real light. We decided to have a film crew bring their knowledge of reality to the fore, if you like. Caleb Deschanel was our DOP and even though he was on a virtual stage with to encapsulate what the movie is, and photorealistic is a term that is

VR goggles and a virtual camera with a monitor on it being tracked in real time, he could have easily done near impossible camera moves because he could, he had no constraints as he didn’t need to figure out how to make a crane big enough or a platform that was high enough so he could shoot where he wanted to. “But he wouldn’t do it for the sake of it and always grounded himself in reality; as in, if you couldn’t have achieved that shot in real life, you shouldn’t do it in the virtual world. What we’re trying to achieve here is something that makes you think you’re looking at a real photograph. That’s often a pitfall with visual effects and computer animation; it’s too easy to do the impossible. Things become overworked very quickly, there’s a concept that ‘more is better’ but something that director Jon Favreau was often reminding us about is that actually when you look at real photography, sometimes it is boring, sometimes you haven’t got the perfect sky, sometimes the light isn’t ideal on the day but you just have to shoot. If you’re running out of light you have to increase your ASA perhaps as you have a window to capture something, especially when you’re on location. “In CG there’s this beautification pass that happens and immediately you get taken out of the experience and it potentially breaks your reality. I think what’s special about this movie is that yes, there’s a lot of design and compositional considerations on a shot-by-shot basis; we certainly made sure that when you’re looking at the images they look pleasing. We didn’t want people

SEPTEMBER 20 1 9 | DEF I N I T ION 23

Powered by