Disney's exotic animal ban forced 'Jungle Book' animators to get creative
LAS VEGAS -- A years-old Disney policy meant to restrict the use of exotic animals in its films is no doubt a good thing, but if you happen to be making a movie primarily starring exotic animals, it also makes things trickier. Just ask the visual effects team on the studio's stunning and technically groundbreaking The Jungle Book.
Sure, the Jon Favreau-helmed film may have been built digitally from the ground up -- famously the only thing not computer generated in the film is its human star Neel Sethi -- but making the animal stars come to life required a level of research that certainly would have been aided by some real-life references.
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"We're not allowed to actually shoot exotic animals that are kept in captivity for movies. You can do cats and dogs, but you can't do anything like a tiger or an elephant ... you can never get them in a trained environment," Rob Legato, a veteran visual effects artist who worked on Jungle Book, told a crowd at a panel during the National Association of Broadcast conference Tuesday.
The aforementioned policy outlines that Disney productions are, in general, not allowed to use exotic live animals outside of a zoo, sanctuary habitat or natural environment. It applies pretty much across the board -- television or film productions, photo shoots, any media broadcast, special events -- with only occasional exceptions, providing the said animal is not an ape or other large primate.
For the team on The Jungle Book, that meant no tigers or other animals on set, for reference, filming or otherwise.
But, Legato said, the Internet has a wealth of video footage and reference materials that aided the team in making the animals move and act authentically. The artists spent months combing through research in order to track behavioral and movement patterns they could mimic on screen.
"They found a reference for almost every shot," Legato said.
The key was in the details, he said -- and that applies across the film.
Legato recounted a story about a particular scene that wasn't quite working -- until a young artist on the team suggested they put drops of water on the "camera lens" -- to replicate what would have been captured had they shot the film in a wet and wild jungle -- instead of a warehouse off the 10 freeway in Los Angeles.
This was especially on display in footage shown to the crowd that depicted an early model of a scene at Peace Rock. The model was video game-esque, and contrasted with the final scene, every ripple in the water and every blink of a mammal's eye became even more apparent -- and impressive in hindsight.
"To add mistakes on purpose sounds crazy," he said, but it brought the scene to life. Every speck of dust floating in a beam of sun, every bee, every mosquito was the work of an artist and bringing authenticity to the movie.
"It's just constant reminders every so often that what you're seeing is real," he said.
Or, you know, "real."
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Sandra Gonzalez was a Senior Television Reporter at Mashable. A Texas native, she spent almost four years in New York City before leaving the land of superstorms for Los Angeles, where she was introduced to these terrifying things called "rolling earthquakes."Previously, she was with Entertainment Weekly, where she wrote about every show that could fit into her perfectly crafted TV schedule and anything ever touched by Shonda Rhimes.You can reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @theSandraG
