- People and reviews are referring to “The Lion King” remake as “live-action.”
- It’s not.
- It’s a mix of live-action techniques, virtual reality, CGI, and photoreal digital imagery. Disney actually refers to the film as an “all-new medium.”
- Director Jon Favreau thinks people are mistaking it for live-action because “hopefully, it looks like a live-action film.”
- The remake’s impressive technology may usher in a new wave of immersive photoreal movies using similar technology that I’m dubbing 4Real.
- Visit INSIDER’s homepage for more stories.
The reviews for Disney’s “Lion King” remake are here and we need to get one thing straight.
“The Lion King” is not a live-action remake.
“People sometimes refer to it as live-action because, hopefully, it looks like a live-action film,” director Jon Favreau said Thursday on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”
And Favreau's right. The lions sound real and move around like a real lion pride, but they're all CGI.
It's all pretty impressive. You may even be fooled to believe you're watching a film set in the plains of Africa.
According to press notes from Disney, the production team spent two weeks in Africa to capture footage of animals and the savanna to make everything look as authentic as possible. The result is that the film often feels like you're inside a photoreal documentary.
So if it's not live-action, what am I looking at?
Foto: Nala, Simba, and Zazu look pretty realistic.sourceWalt Disney Studios
Everything you see while watching "The Lion King" remake is animated. In its production notes, Disney boasts that the film is an "all-new medium" that blends together live-action techniques with virtual reality, CG animation, and photoreal digital imagery.
"Every environment you see was completely generated by computers," Favreau told Kimmel. "Every perfromance was keyframe animated the same way that they did back in the time of 'Bambi,' except with the computers using it for lighting and for rendering, it creates this beautiful photoreal naturalism."
Favreau told Kimmel that everything in the movie is CGI except for one shot, which he didn't reveal.
During the production team's two-week visit to Africa they captured photo and video of animals and locations that inspired scenes in the movie. Masai Mara, Kenya, in the Serengeti National Park inspired the Pride Lands and the Sesriem Canyon in Namibia served as inspiration for the wildebeest stampede in the gorge where Simba gets trapped. Yellowstone National Park and Mono Lake, California, also served as inspiration for the Elephant Graveyard.
One-hundred-and-thirty animators brought 86 different animal species to life for the film. According to Disney, each photorealistic character took about nine months to fully develop and was built by using a mix of concept art, real-life references, and characters from the original movie. Paintings and 3D sculpts were made based off of images captured in Africa. When they were approved by Favreau and the production team, designs were 3D printed and then built into the computer.
From Disney:
"Once character designs were approved, artists from MPC built each character within the computer, paying close attention to anatomy, proper proportions, fur or feathers- applying textures and color, shading eyes and ensuring their movement was authentic to their real-life counterparts. New software tools were developed by MPC R&D's team of more than 200 software engineers to better simulate muscles, skin and fur."
The entire set of the 'Lion King' remake takes place in a virtual reality set
"The Lion King" wasn't simply acted out in studio booths. The actors were on a giant virtual set giving their voice performances.
"The other interesting thing that makes it look live-action, is we took all of those digital files, brought them into VR, and created this multi-player VR filmmaking game," Favreau told Kimmel of how the remake was made.
The production of the movie took place in an unmarked building in Playa Vista, California, which housed two screening rooms called the Simba and Nala theatres and a dozen different virtual reality stations. The production team was able to seamlessly coordinate in real time with the visual effects team, MPC Film, in London.
According to Disney, a world "spanning hundreds of miles" was created in the virtual reality world.
"All the crew put on headsets and they were able to walk around and look around the Pride Lands and watch the animated performances and set cameras inside VR," he added. "So it felt like we were making a live-action film inside virtual reality."
It's pretty clear this is not live-action. So why are people still calling it that?
Like Favreau said, many people are probably calling the film live-action because it kind of looks like a live-action movie. But beyond that, "The Lion King" is Disney's latest remake in a long line of classics that are being reimagined for a new generation.
Read more: Disney has 20 live-action movies of its animated classics planned - here they all are
The majority of these remakes are live-action or incorporate live-action in some way. It's easy for "Lion King" to get lumped in with the rest of Disney's reimaginings like "Aladdin," "Beauty and the Beast," and even "The Jungle Book."
So if it's not live-action, what should we call this? My vote: 4Real.
"The Lion King" is a mix of virtual reality, CG animation, and photoreal imagery. If this movie performs well at the box office, and it should ("The Jungle Book," using similar tech, grossed nearly $1 billion in 2016), we're going to see this technology used over and over again to bring movies to life.
If I were to give it a name, I'd call "The Lion King" an immersive photoreal movie. I'd even shorten that to a pho-real movie or 4Real movie if you need something catchier. It succeeds at the world-building of something like James Cameron's "Avatar," but without the need to wear those pesky 3D glasses.
"The Lion King" is in theaters Friday, July 19. You can read our review here.