InterBEE REVIEW2016

9/71

Jungle Created from Vast MaterialsMany animals and plants were photo-graphed in India as a reference for the CG work, based on an image board in order to create a jungle that doesn’t actually exist. Everything was photo-graphed carefully in detail – down to the leaves and the mosses. The jungle was then built by com-puter graphics artists based on those photographs. The forests, rivers and rocky areas tailored to the cuts that the filmmakers wanted to shoot become one giant set. This movie was made entirely with computer graphics – down to the twigs, leaves and pebbles underfoot. We asked Ms. Ferrara and Mr. Valdez about what hardships and ingenuity were involved in this production.Ms. Ferrara: “I was overwhelmed by the amount of work that needed doing at first. We had to make many CG sets. There was so much to do I was really overwhelmed at first but also excited by the idea. However, we were somehow able to reach the end as if by magic, and we are all very proud of the MPC teams work!” Mr. Valdez: “I thought it was very important to have a careful plan to make things look real. The depiction of the boy together with the animal char-acters in the jungle had to be very natu-ral. Therefore, we planned and prepared carefully. We needed a sense that the boy was in this world. It was very important to make sure the light-ing on the boy matched the lighting of the CG environments and animals, so when he looked at something and touched it or straddled an animal it looked real to the audience. Creating this sense of reality was the hardest thing we had to do. Therefore, it was important to carefully plan it all.” Post production took over a year and involved more than 800 computer graphics artists working at MPC in London and MPC Bangalore, India. Reference photography took place in 43 locations in India. Finally, 58 CG jungle sets were created called the master set. The total area of this set extended to 30 km2. Extremely photorealistic visuals were created by MPC’s VFX artists, based on the vast quantity of photogra-phy shot in India. Leaves, rocks, twigs and trees were all reproduced digitally and placed throughout the digital envi-ronments. Adding fine details (e.g. light and the subtle swaying of the plants) here produced a movie that depicted an overwhelming sense of reality. We spoke to Ms. Ferrara and Mr. Valdez about what they wanted to try and do next, after overcoming the challenges in this movie. Ms. Ferrara: “I want to make some-thing even more photorealistic than this movie in my next project. That is because I can see a number of chal-lenges I would like to work on when I look back at this movie. I want to make a movie that doesn’t make me think ‘if I had planned that out a little more’ when I look back at it.”Mr. Valdez: “I have taken various inspiration from the game industry this time. Extremely advanced technologies are used in games in which an entire world is created. I realized that this is quite difficult when we attempt to follow this method. I would like to make movies with persuasiveness using the technologies of games (e.g. real-time graphics) in the future. For example, I would like the lighting to have more of a scientific basis.” 11Technique of Making an Entire WorldMr. Adam ValdezVFX SupervisorMoving Picture CompanyMs. Audrey FerraraEnvironmental SupervisorMoving Picture Company