PRE-PRODUCTION & PLANNING

The Lion King Virtual Production System is a multiplayer real-time collaborative platform that uses VR to put filmmakers inside their computer-generated films with live-action capabilities.

Why we took the filmmakers to Africa virtually

As visual effects and computer-generated images grow to represent more and more of the final picture, traditional filmmakers find themselves losing touch with the creation of their films. Jon Favreau gave us the mandate to do anything necessary to make The Lion King feel like a live action film. Though the imagery itself could look photo-real through modern visual effects, the creative process and the “presence of the film crew” needed to be evident. This was a big challenge that had to be solved.

Traditionally in visual effects work, The Director, Cinematographer, and other department heads find themselves giving notes while looking “over the shoulder” of a technical operator. The direction they give can take days weeks or even months to be addressed, and the accuracy and quality of those revisions are subject to the creative interpretation of the artists and technicians at the desk, who might not have received the direction first-hand.

The filmmakers lose the ability to be ‘hands on’ during the creative process and they lose the ability to react instinctively to the environment, and to the performances of other crew members, as they do on a live action set.

To solve this, we knew we needed to put the filmmakers back inside their movies, and put the traditional tools of cinema back in their hands. By building the world of the film in a real-time game engine we could put the filmmakers inside that world through virtual reality, and by connecting interfaces to their traditional live action cinematography equipment, we could give them and the crew an experience similar to live action filmmaking. Instead of standing over someone’s shoulder looking at a monitor, we could put them “inside the monitor.” This approach could be used by the Director, Assistant Director, and all members of the camera department, art department, animation, and visual effects, and would even allow traditional live action crew, like grips and gaffers, to contribute their expertise.