hi there I'm Andy Serkis the director of
Mowgli legend of the jungle and this is
the notes on a scene so we're going to
look at a scene which is the culmination
of an event in Mowgli's life called the
running which is a rite of passage trial
that he has to go through to prove
himself and to enable him to be
considered part of the pack he's never
gonna be able to run as fast as a wolf
on all fours so Baloo his teacher has
been teaching him to slide down trees to
jump from branch to branch to enable him
to get rid of a head start at this
moment in time it just about looks like
Mowgli is in the lead I'm gonna cross
the finishing line before all the other
wolves when suddenly something happens
when we headed into this movie I really
didn't want to use documentary-style
photo-real animals that that you would
never believe a voice would come out of
part of the design of the animals was to
license them so that you could actually
see facial expressions that made human
vowel sounds because these are animals
that represent humans I mean if you look
at Baloo's face here at the jaw line the
muzzle the the eye browser animals don't
really have eyebrows like that but these
are all designed to make them look more
more human although it feels like a bear
it's actually not that the shape of a
bear's face and and I purposefully
wanted all of the eyes of the animals to
look as human as possible so in fact
this is the character that I play so
Baloo as a character is he's very
grizzled he's got furrowed brows he's
covered in scars as a scar in his nose
there you know I have quite a four oh
four eyed brown I also made Baloo have a
slightly slack jaw so when I was acting
you must sort of let my draw chop on
this on this side a little bit so you
got you know he was talking like it sort
of drops out of the corner of his mouth
but you know he's got bitten ear
so you can see you can see that sort of
chewed up we wanted our animals to feel
real and to feel not that they were sort
of fluffy CG inventions but they were
textured real beasts that had that go
through survival and day to day level we
shot the whole film in two different
passes one the
section of the movie was with all our
a-list casts okay planchet edit it kind
of batch and Christian Bale and Rowan
chant who plays Mowgli it was all about
their performances really about their
facial capture performances and moving
around physically as they're creatures
and once we've done that we will then
move on to our jungle sets of which we
built at least in studio so all of these
trees all the vines all of the stuff in
the foreground here this is all real
foliage all the stuff down here then
then you find a point where you're
looking into the background and all the
stuff sort of from there all this this
is all CG set extension this actual shot
is what we would call a pickup or facial
ADR which means that for in fact I
actually shot this piece it must be two
years after principal photography to get
this look so in the ADR stage I just
have my head mounted camera with dots
all over my face and then I would be
able to watch on screen what's going on
and then I'd be able to trace Mobley's
eye line as he's running towards me
and that and that look that I gave in
this very very shot was actually
something that was captured two years
after the event so that's the great
thing about performance capture you can
keep adding little modules of
performance pick up beats you know speck
bits of storytelling as you as it is it
carries on here on screen we've got
Rowan chant who is a Mowgli in our
picture and extraordinary young actor
and the makeup department went to town
you can see everything again we wanted
him to not look too clean in other
versions of motive
Mowgli's story the the boy always seems
to look like he's sort of kind of just
strolling down through Central Park he
never seems to get dirty and we really
wanted him to feel grungy and dirty and
filthy
so here we have Christian who is at this
moment at this extraordinary moment of
losing himself and he really goes into
full Panther mode and Christine actually
did this left on top of him
and we captured all of Christina's
performance you can actually see
Christians face in this and and all of
this skin texturing and fur all of this
the detail that the the visual effects
team work on getting the the jaw to read
read Christian's draw the yellowing of
the teeth again to make the character
seem more believable these whiskers we
spent a long time getting these right so
they were so so in every single shot
they're lit slightly differently so they
don't become too distracting because
because because of the door opening and
closing so much yeah this wonderful sort
of tension in his brow that the
animators were bring to it whilst not
losing Christine but it yet yet really
seeing the full pant through so in a
shot like this I mean Rowan really he
has to go from like naught to 60 and
just just to get into this shot to
literally roll be flicked over land have
Bagheera land on him he's he's got it
he's got to emotionally be totally in
the scene and prepped so part of what I
used to do with him was so I used to say
to him before every single shot run
right we're gonna get into the zone now
and I'd make him do press ups
I met him focus we're gonna get ramped
up and then it would be a you know real
fast count three two one actually I
throw him into the scene
he would roll in and he'd be really
pumped for Keira
yeah
you let your guard down
I told you never let your guard down
well I think about the other roles that
I played using performance capture it's
it's difficult enough to take a humanoid
face and to transfer it and transpose
the performance on to say Gollum or
Caesar in Planet of the Apes but those
are much much more humanoid faces facial
structures they're not too different
from a human space but when you're
looking at trends transposing a
performance into with with it with a
muzzle like this that takes a lot of
work a lot of understanding about how to
have to make the emotion read in the
performance and actually
quintessentially get what I was I was
doing in this moment so what they're
looking at when they get the material is
is a data which is the 3d captured dots
in 360 degrees but they're also looking
at Whitney what we call witness cameras
which are lots of cameras placed around
the actors face so that you can really
read the performance and though and it
was their job then to absolutely
get this greater fidelity to to what I
was doing in the moment there for
instance a shot like this with his
physical of physicality a change of
physicality in a blocking move with the
camera again it was inspired by the
first performance capture phase when
Christian turned away and moved away and
tries to gather himself and so they
would look at the reference shot of the
witness camera footage and knowing
knowing what Christian was seeing what
Christian was doing and then we would
either have as a rehearsal we would have
a motion capture actor or in fact
sometimes we use two actors with it with
a with a spine so it'd be two actors one
playing the front legs and one literally
playing the black back legs on the end
of a sort of a flexible pole they would
have Bagheera's head that they could
move move around than steer so so we
that would enable us to get our framing
absolutely right
you let your guard down
I told you never let your guard down
[Music]
Roman
you know he's ten years old when he
started making this movie and 14 when he
finished so he obviously started off
with a slightly younger kind of facial
features and we were very worried over
the course of the four years with all of
the pickups that we did this actual shot
which we had to match in with the
previous shots and the sequence was
actually about a year and a half after
those previous shots and Rowan had
changed by now he had actually grown
this is now a shot against the blue
screen so this was all a CG environment
we didn't build that again this is this
is we had to replicate what would been
created a year and half before you'll
notice that there is a slight difference
he had grown his hair very long but he
had to come back and have false hair
extensions put in the makeup you'll
notice his slightly different we were
trying to match it as much as possible
but but when he stands up he's just that
little bit taller and that was because
where there's a different reaction to
that we wanted to get rather than what
used to happen actually went in the
first time we shot it was that he really
started shouting it at Ballou that you
know in terms of bit you know how he was
betrayed and so on and then Baloo has a
real go at him but we thought Baloo was
being ripped to heavy so he pulled that
back so he we needed to reshoot this but
you can tell this is a boy who's who's
going from the age of 10 to 14 and then
back to going back to the younger
version of Rowan which was back to when
he's sort of 10 going on 11
[Music]
we see mowgli take off and it's the
really--it's of pivotal point at the end
of the scene because he's n begins his
journey towards stepping over the line
becoming assimilated into the world of
mankind and then having to retract and
find his place so this is a huge turning
point our journey is really about a boy
who it feels other there are laws and
rules that are within the jungle that
hold a structure of the jungle together
and some of them he can he can bide by
some of them we can live with but some
of them he just can't because he's not
an animal of the jungle but when he
finally gets to the village he realizes
he neither can he fully live in the
world of man because their rules and
customs and laws don't apply to him
either so the whole film is really about
a search for his identity and how he can
be himself