hi i'm john favreau i'm the director of
the new disney's the lion king and this
is vanity fair's notes on a scene
[Music]
i had just finished working on the
jungle book for disney and i had learned
so much about uh visual effects and and
directing animation it occurred to me
that you know we could really do
something special with the movie the
lion king spoke to the people of disney
and pitch them on a vision of how we
could present this in a way that felt
more in the style of a documentary and
is essentially going to be like the
jungle book except let's pull out the
one human character and eliminate any
need for photography or lights or real
cameras and instead we photographed
everything in vr and animated all of the
performances with keyframe animation it
was a a bit daunting because so many
people have such a connection to the
original film and i knew that there were
certain areas that we had to stick very
closely to what was there already it was
different than jungle book because
people know jungle book but they don't
know jungle book they look like they
know lion king there's a whole
generation that grew up watching
lion king on a loop and it's an
emotional film and we tend to remember
emotional stories more than we remember
stories that don't have that element
what i tend to do is is prioritize
the scenes that i remember the most so
before i go back and watch the movie
again i make a list of everything i
remember from the movie
and with jungle book there's probably
about six things seven things i
remembered from watching it younger but
with lion king that list is is there's
pages long you know the circle of life
you remember all those shots you
remember the stampede you remember
certain jokes you remember hakuna matata
timon and pumbaa the trick is to make
people feel like they saw the old movie
when you show them a new one and if you
show them the shots and the moments that
they remember in lines of dialogue or
songs it kind of checks the boxes in
their mind and then you have actually a
lot of latitude to depart from it when
you get into areas that people don't
remember is clearly this particular
sequence is almost shot for shot though
here we have our cute little fella and
in the old movie up here on the forehead
there used to be like a fruit juice
creating a little mark on his head but
in nature that actual fruit is not
filled with
red paint and we chose to have pigment
that comes from roots and that's how we
have that little splash of color there
we really put a lot of attention into
the detail of the fur and much like a
documentary we chose to make it appear
long lens because with documentaries
often you can't get close enough to the
subject and so as you see here's here's
the subject in the foreground
and the background is all blurry on
shorter lens you can hold everything in
focus but here you have to choose and so
this is a a long lens shot so if you
remember in the original movie when
rafiki lifts up baby simba you have
you know sort of plenty standing on and
he stands up baby simba's here
he holds him up with his arms but
unfortunately the center of gravity uh
would not work in the way the anatomy is
on our baboon friend rafiki here in a
drawing it looks good but whenever we
pose rafiki that way it always looks
fake and physics is something that
everybody's an expert in whether they
realize it consciously or not it feels
wrong to them so this is one of those
where we want to make you think you see
exactly what was in the old movie but
actually the cut happens cleverly right
as
he gets lifted you get a little glimpse
of it up here but it's obscured by the
edge of the rock so you never actually
see that the center of gravity is off
and then a lot of attention is paid on
the framing so you get just enough to
see it and you're out of it
part of what makes the shot look so nice
and this is what's so good about having
somebody like caleb deschanel as your
cinematographer is the lighting and
backlight is something that works really
well you'll see it used in really
beautiful documentaries but also with
visual effects it's a great way to help
make something look photo real because
when something's backlit you kind of
read into the details you know what you
don't see your imagination fills in and
it feels more real than it is i also
want to point something out here you
know we were able to pay tribute to a
species that unfortunately during the
course of making this we found out went
extinct the northern white rhino and
hopefully having these images so
realistic and for kids to see it for the
first time they may develop a
relationship and feel a sense of
responsibility to help protect this and
the fact that technology can make it
look so photoreal it becomes harder and
harder to make a case that you need to
actually put
animals in danger when making movies
these are shots that are very
reminiscent of what was in the old
version of the film
you see the sun breaking through and the
sun hits baby simba and so you see the
light change that takes place again it's
a long lens and you see it on simba too
and part of what's so cool about working
with visual effects artists is they make
it so convincing by the way it interacts
with the fur
the rock face
and and because the light is kind of
side lit you don't get that flat
lighting you get kind of a side and back
light on rafiki which is slightly
cheated actually because you see it you
want it to be on the front of simba but
rafiki would really benefits from the
side light again when you have flat
front delight it kind of reveals
imperfections in in the cg characters
and backlight and side light is always
beautiful photographically whether
you're doing a documentary or a cg shot
lighting is a big part of what makes
this the effects convincing here
in order to keep it feeling a bit more
like a documentary and more like
something that was natural and to try to
fool people into thinking they were
seeing something that was live action we
had to communicate a lot of the emotion
by their their body movement you know
you could do anything you could have an
animal do anything if you're animating
it and oftentimes in
films like you know like madagascar
you exaggerate the movements the animals
are inspired by the animals but you you
exaggerate it for comedic effect in this
case we wanted to hold ourselves to the
standard of what you would do as though
this were a live-action shot that had to
fit into a live-action film and how you
would do that is you would just look at
all this great reference i know when
like they made bambi walt would bring in
animals for the animators to sketch but
now thanks to the internet you have
libraries and libraries of footage of
animals so you have all the reference
you you could ever want for example if
we wanted a bowling giraffe it would
start with pencil drawings to indicate
what the action should be and then we
would go through the library of
reference uh video and then we would
include thumbnails of ones that seem
like it might work within this and the
animators would then hand animate the
characters that we've designed to be as
photo real as possible so what we did is
we took natural movements that they
might do like bow their head
but we coordinated it in a way where it
looks like they're all doing it together
so individually these actions are very
natural and there's not a lot of
expression change on their face and here
you have that beautiful side light and
backlight that we talked about before to
help really sell it so hopefully it has
the aesthetic of real animals
[Music]
to get authenticity part of it was with
scouting after the initial scout we
would send crews in to take still
photographs for photogrammetry
photogrammetry is something that you do
to get
the specific textures of real rocks and
such so that you could take that and
texture map it onto the 3d geometric
assets that were used to create the 3d
set for us to scout in vr set cameras
and ultimately render in maya here we
come to another iconic moment from the
end of the sequence from the original
and so here we see sarabi and mufasa
we see the silhouette in the distance of
rafiki holding the baby we see it once
again backlit animals to make it look
beautiful we have a side lit
contoured
pride rock and something that i like to
do is i like to keep the skies very
simple because you have to get very
lucky to have a beautiful sky when
you're really photographing but in cg
you could put in whatever sky you want
often cg artists are tempted
to make the skies beautiful because why
not it costs the same amount it's just
as easy to do but i find when i watch a
movie with a lot of beautiful skies one
after the other i'm like that's too
lucky for real photography and to me
there's something beautiful about
naturalism and so this is one of the
prettier skies in the movie but you
could see that we
we showed a lot of restraint and didn't
put like billowing clouds it looks kind
of simple the sun is just scraping the
animals and and the grass to add some
some contour and some separation all of
this imagery is important but the most
important thing is the music because
that's what we really remember
we always knew we wanted to use the
original songs wherever we could we
wanted to re-record them also han zimmer
wanted an opportunity to really get in
there and finish it because the original
it was something where they had a
schedule and a budget there was a lot of
digital instruments in that in that
orchestra and here was an opportunity
for him to re-record it and to update it
to as they said to help match the new
visuals i think part of why lion king
still holds up is that the story is so
timeless and enduring and the myths are
so clear and the archetypes are so
specific stories that repeat themselves
with these same characters in these same
situations all the way back to ancient
egypt i think part of what makes it
timeless and part of what makes a disney
classic is combining the old stories
with the new technology and that
combination makes it memorable but also
is part of what i think walt disney
brought to
his style of storytelling trying to tell
stories that aren't just locked into our
time frame but but ones that have
endured over many generations but
presenting it with new tools at his time
he was dealing with things like
rotoscope and with locking
picture to sound for the first time in
steamboat willie audio animatronics in
disneyland so he was always looking for
the new tech to help breathe the magic
into these old stories it's that
combination of old and new
that i think has made not just lion king
but the entire disney library so
relevant