Free And For Me

 

Going to see The Lion King with my 24-year- old daughter was very nostalgic.  The original Lion was released the same year she was born and was a staple in our home and has now become a classic.  Seeing this movie was a big deal for we did not have to watch the Lion King clips to be excited about this movie.  We knew it was going to be a big deal for everyone.

As I sat next to her in the theater I was reminded of the emotional little girl that loved The Lion King.   I yearned for the clock to turn back to 1990’s.   The days when we spent most of our time together.

With a lot of the 90’s movies returning to theaters, this is a millennial’s dream.  As a millennial parent, I jump at the chance to invite my daughter to be my guest when seeing a Lion King remake or sequel of any movie she loved as a child.

It is interesting to see the changes that have been made.

My biggest fascination with The Lion King was the animation.   It was so life-like.  Kind of like Lion King in real life.

 

Lion King Virtual Production

Everything that will ultimately be seen on screen was created on the computer, but it is anything but traditional animation. Says Lion King Director, Jon Favreau, “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 brought the entire film into VR and let our live-action crew actually set up real camera equipment.”

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-visualization (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. Says Favreau, “Instead of watching it play on the computer screen, we could go into the environment and stand next to an animated lion.”

According to the director, the virtual production employed in “The Lion King” is anextension of what they did on “The Jungle Book.” Favreau and his team were able to don VR headsets and walk around within the virtual set, setting up shots, choreographing movements, and adjusting lighting, characters and set pieces in real time before sending the version of each scene to editorial.

Says Favreau, “With ‘The Lion King,’ we are literally putting filmmakers inside the monitor, using a set of proprietary tools interfaced with the HTC Vive virtual reality [VR] system and Unity game engine.”

Ben Grossman works with Magnopus, a company that helped bring technologies, hardware and software together to create a platform for the game-engine-based virtual reality filmmaking multiplayer game. “Since the advent of digital effects, filmmakers have struggled to bring those visuals to the stage to see the complete image in context,”
says Grossman. “‘Avatar’ brought a small window to the stage, allowing the filmmakers to peek inside the world they were creating. ‘The Lion King’ turns that on its head by putting the filmmakers—and the gear they have used for decades—completely inside the world they are building for the film.” A world spanning hundreds of miles was constructed in the game engine. “Physical devices are custom built, and traditional cinema gear was modified to allow filmmakers to ‘touch’ their equipment—cameras, cranes, dollies—while in VR to let them use the skills they’ve built up for decades on live-action sets,” adds Grossman. “They don’t have to point at a computer monitor over an operator’s shoulder anymore—the most sophisticated next-gen technology is approachable to any filmmaker who’s ever been on a traditional set.”

According to Favreau, the idea behind incorporating live-action language into the film was to convince audiences that what they’re seeing is authentic. “My generation—people who grew up with video games—is very sensitive to photography and shots that look like they’re entirely digital,” he says. “You can sense the difference between a
visual effect that was added to a real live-action plate and one that was built entirely in a computer. How do you make it look like it was filmed? The way shots are designed when they’re digital are much more efficiently done. The camera move is planned ahead of time. The cut points, the edit points, the performance, the camera moves—all
that stuff is meticulous and perfect. But that perfection leads to a feeling that it’s artificial. Not every generation of filmmaker is sensitive to this. I find my peer group has the same standard where we want it to feel like something that was photographed, so instead of designing a camera move as you would in pre-viz on a computer, we lay dolly
track down in the virtual environment.

“And so, even though the sensor is the size of a hockey puck, we built it onto a real dolly and a real dolly track,” continues Favreau. “And we have a real dolly grip pushing it that is then interacting with Caleb, our cinematographer, who is working real wheels that encode that data and move the camera in virtual space. There are a lot of little idiosyncrasies that occur that you would never have the wherewithal to include in a digital shot. That goes for the crane work. It also goes for flying shots.”

Favreau was the designated virtual helicopter operator on the crew. “We also developed new rigs for something that emulates a Steadicam and something that emulates a handheld by having the proper weighting and balance on this equipment,” says Favreau.

Says Legato, “In real photography, the cinematographer can tell which cameraman operates a shot while you’re into the nuance of watching dailies. We want to inherit all of those happy accidents, all of those human idiosyncrasies. How do you infuse emotion and humanity? Well, that comes from the humanity of the people operating the
equipment.”

Although Deschanel had never shot a film created totally within the computer, his live-action experience was exactly what the project required. “My experience in photography is capturing images of real things happening,” he says. “In a way, my job is to preserve the reality of what normally goes on in front of the camera—to understand what light
does and how the camera behaves.

“When you’re filming wild animals, obviously you have no idea what they’re going to do,” Deschanel continues. “In order to preserve that reality for the animals that we created within the computer, we wanted to create that feeling that the camera operator is surprised at what they’re doing. The performance is different than what might have been
expected, and that creates a wonderful jolt of excitement and understanding of the character.”

According to Deschanel, the trip to Africa both garnered footage that would later help artists create authentic characters, and helped guide camera movement that would mirror the real world, too. “There were times when I was following an animal and it would fool me. I’d make mistakes. Those elements later became part of the structure of
how we made the movie.”

Says Favreau, “Generally, with the higher tech films, they would use motion capture for the performances and then work the cameras with essentially digital tools because that gives you maximum freedom. But we didn’t capture the performances because it’s all animals and is key-framed. We captured the camera movement. We’re putting all of our
work into capturing the camera data and showing that the virtual camera is being driven by humans while allowing the naturalism of the performances to come from the artistry of the animators.”

The data obtained during the virtual production was utilized by the animation team. Scenes and recordings were exported to editorial as video files, and to visual effects as data files that gave clear direction to the visual effects crews around the world who crafted the film’s photoreal aesthetic. Preserving the invisible hand of the filmmakers
throughout maintained the film’s live-action style.

Lion King Animation

Once the camera shoot was completed and the voice performances recorded, the production shifted to the animation phase. For animation supervisor Andrew Jones, it was all about improving upon the past. “In terms of realism, I think this is a big step forward,” he says. “We achieved a certain level that I was quite happy within ‘The Jungle Book’—but we wanted to push it even further in ‘The Lion King.’ We wanted the animals more believable. We wanted to take a really beautiful story that everybody already loves and tell it in a new, unique way. It feels a bit more documentary style because you’re not anticipating everything the characters are going to do or possibly
could do.”

MPC Film is a worldwide visual effects house charged with spearheading the visual effects for “The Lion King.” MPC’s VFX supervisor Adam Valdez says he took his children to see the 1994 version and was excited to bring it to a new generation. “The language of the time they’re growing up, the sophistication they’re getting used to in terms of the look of things—all of this means that old stories can be revived and made accessible for a modern audience. If you think of it from a technological point of view, we are now able to create really sophisticated, lifelike animals.

“Jon’s whole magic trick is taking human beings’ fascination with the natural world and representing it in a very straightforward way, but crafted for narrative,” Valdez continues. “I don’t know that it could be done with this degree of realism before now that allows an audience member to just believe as much as they do. It really does make a difference in your perception of the story and how you read and engage with it.”

Valdez reiterates that filmmakers didn’t change the story, but instead changed the toolset. “The original ‘The Lion King’ pivots very deftly between drama and comedy and color and mood,” says Valdez. “There’s something about that visual treatment that allows for that. When you go photorealistic, there’s not as much agility to switch gears. So, while we lose some of the original tools, we replace them with others.”

A team of 130 animators from 30 different nations helped bring the animals of “The Lion King” to life. Each character—which took about nine months to fully develop—was derived from concept art, real-life references and the archetypal characters from theoriginal film. “Translating an animated character into a photorealistic creature required a full rethink,” says production designer James Chinlund. “Digging deep into research and our experiences scouting [in Africa] was always the kickoff. Jon [Favreau] and the team would land on a group of key images that captured the feeling we were pursuing, and that would launch our character illustrators. They would produce both paintings and 3D sculpts of our characters, which went through rounds of reviews with Jon and the team.
Then, when we got close to final, we would output a 3D print of the character for last looks using our in-house 3D printer.”

Once character designs were approved, artists from MPC built each character within the computer, paying close attention to anatomy, proper proportions, fur or feathers—applying textures and color, shading eyes and ensuring their movement was authentic to their real-life counterparts. New software tools were developed by MPC R&D’s team of more than 200 software engineers to better simulate muscles, skin, and fur.

While building and animating authentic characters could be grounded in reality, making them speak and sing could not. “We tried to tilt their heads down so we are not staring directly into the mouth,” says Jones. “At the same time, we did our best to make sure that we were not adding attributes in terms of how each animal can physically move
their mouths. So, every kind of muscle control we have around the mouth makes them move in the ways they can really move their mouths. We found lip-synch through that approach—moving mouths into shapes that, for instance, a cat can really do, and trying to have the right kinds of sounds coming out to match those shapes.” According to Jones, artists also worked to time the characters’ breathing with their dialogue. “We had the belly muscles and diaphragm tighten so that you feel like the animal is forcing air out his mouth as he is talking, timed with particular syllables.

“With female lions, whose necks we can actually see because they do not have manes,” Jones continues, “we added particular esophagus and neck movements to help sell the fact that they are talking, with tongue and larynx moving.”

In all, the London-based MPC Film’s VFX artists brought 86 different species to life for “The Lion King”—from the film’s iconic characters like Simba, Nala, Rafiki, Mufasa, Pumbaa and Timon, Scar and the hyenas—to the smallest creatures on the savanna.

I loved everything about the new Lion King movie, especially the lifelike animation.

 

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NEW LION KING movie release date is July 19th!