Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1151096
www.postmagazine.com 17 POST JULY/AUG 2019 summer movies Creating the Performances Jones had already faced down the issue of lip sync on realistic animals for Jungle Book, and many on the crew also knew Favreau's preferenc- es from working on the previous film. "Obviously, we don't want the animals' lips to flap," Jones says. "Jon wanted the lips to never move unnaturally. He didn't want to see pho- nemes and pucker shapes that lions could not do. He said it's better to have people look at the eyes and take in the performance than to have them stare at distracting lips." That meant the animators had to create a dia- logue performance without using mouth shapes. "We discovered we could do a lot with artic- ulation," Jones says. "If you get the muzzle right and the corners of the mouth moving at the right time, you buy that it's real. Some actors don't even move their lips much." Two animation supervisors, Gabriele Zucchelli and Stephen Enticott, and six lead animators working under them, each managing a seven-ani- mator team, created the performances in London, Bangalore, and LA. Each lead was assigned one or two main characters to help develop the rig and walk cycles that animators would use as a guide. For reference, the animators had live-action footage shot in Kenya and at Animal Kingdom. They also filmed some voice actors delivering dialogue. But not for lip sync. "We wanted to see the spontaneity between Seth Rogan [Pumbaa] and Billy Eichner [Timon]," Jones says. "We didn't block the movement, but we could find the feelings between the warthog and meerkat. We could see moments of eye con- tact, and the comedic timing between them." More generally, animators would look at the ac- tors delivering dialogue and then try to find clips with animals having the same attitude. "We even looked at slow motion," Jones says. "Jon wanted his film to feel as real as a BBC docu- mentary, but with animals that talk. A lot of times, the BBC doesn't shoot in realtime. They often shoot animals walking slower, and we get used to that. It gives the lions weight and presence. And, that was also especially important for the hyenas. They're constantly looking around, ready to dart at a moment's notice, but we needed the opposite for most of them. We needed the queen to feel strong. We also slowed down Rafiki, the mandrill. Mandrills are small and tend to move fast." New Tools In addition to new tools developed for the virtual production, the technical teams at MPC created and improved tools for post production — in par- ticular, a hair shader. "We looked at the available fur shaders but de- cided to develop our own using the new technolo- gy in RenderMan," Newman says. "We researched Approximately 1,250 MPC artists worked on the film. Each of the six lead animators managed a team that focused on one or two main characters. MPC developed its own technology for hair creation.