DRAMA | THE L ION K I NG
We had a call sheet. We had an AD. We had a DOP who worked wheels
brought the entire film into VR and let our live-action crew actually set up real camera equipment.” VFX Supervisor Rob Legato says the unique approach is groundbreaking. “People are studying animal reference and the animators breathing their life into these digital rigs. So, we’re taking an antiseptic digital medium and telling one of the most emotional stories that we have in our tradition using these tools. That dichotomy and underlying tension creates a lot of creative opportunities. This is as close to practical filmmaking as you get with an animated film.” Filmmakers kicked off production with a pre-visualisation (pre-viz) phase commonly used in animated filmmaking. Animation supervisor Andrew Jones and the team of artists created simplified animated sequences so that it could run in real time in VR. These early versions of environments and characters became part of the Unity gaming system. Favreau says, “Instead of watching it play on the computer screen, we could go into the environment and stand next to an animated lion.”
environment. We had food trucks pull up for the crew out front, or I would be cooking upstairs.” Producer Karen Gilchrist says that the production itself mirrored live-action filmmaking. “It very much felt like a traditional film,” she says. “We had a call sheet. We had an AD. We had a DOP who worked wheels. We had a dolly. We had a Steadicam. Even though the art and the production design were driven by a video- game engine, we had an art department and a script supervisor. We had video playback. Other than not having to wake up at five in the morning and drive to a new location or worry about the weather, it very much felt like a live-action set.” VIRTUAL PRODUCTION Everything that is being seen on screen was created in the computer, but it is anything but traditional animation. Favreau explains, “Where we departed from animation – beyond the photoreal look – was, at the point when you would normally operate the cameras in layout on a computer, we stopped the process and
ABOVE Optitrack cameras were used to help track the cinematographer’s moves
Like weight distribution, general animal behaviour, how much they flick their ears, how alive they seem in terms of each animal’s connection to the others, that kind of thing.” PRODUCTION STARTS Following the team’s extensive research trip, Favreau set up production of The Lion King inside an unmarked, purpose-built facility in Playa Vista, California, an area that has been recently nicknamed Silicon Beach for its gaming and high-tech industry. The facility was large enough to house everything under one roof, including a virtual-reality volume. With two state-of-the-art screening rooms, dubbed the Simba and Nala theatres, the Los Angeles team was able to interact in real time with the MPC Film team in London to collaborate on animation review and visual effects. Says Favreau, “On The Jungle Book , I was bouncing around to different facilities, and it was difficult. So, we concentrated everything and used the technology as a foundation to allow us the freedom to more efficiently use our time and be in closer contact with people that we collaborated with in other locations. That is also where we had our blackbox theatre to record our performances in the same room we used as our volume, where we scouted and shot the film. We had different VR systems and a dozen different VR stations around the bullpen. We wanted to make it feel more like a tech company than a movie studio, so we created a campus
BELOW The virtual camera system that replicates camera moves in virtual space
28 DEF I N I T ION | SEPTEMBER 20 1 9
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