American Cinematographer - May 2016 - 37

on a computer and what was not - to
remove the separation between visual
effects and cinematography."
For Pope, the process began when
he walked onto Digital Domain's 60'x30'
motion-capture stage in Los Angeles
with what he calls a "glorified iPad on a
tripod" in order to "actually go on a
virtual scout with Jon Favreau within
that [virtual] space." That "glorified
iPad" was in fact a custom carbon-fiber
rig that incorporated a high-resolution
OLED monitor connected to two
joysticks and an arrangement of motioncapture markers, which allowed the
device to be tracked throughout the
stage, thereby capturing all of Pope's
virtual-camera movements.
In turn, as Balakrishnan says, "the
virtual camera produced an image
rendered in real time on the computer -
through the virtual lens of the camera
and displayed on the monitor" via the
Photon engine. The system's interface,
including the joysticks, enabled Pope to
dolly, boom and change lenses on the fly;
he could also physically move the
virtual-camera rig - "OLED monitor,
joysticks, mo-cap markers, and carbonfiber body as a whole," says Brennan -
as if he were holding a real film camera.
Favreau could also employ an Oculus
Rift virtual-reality headset and Xbox
controller on the stage, placing him
within the volume - the space in which
the digital imagery is "shot" - alongside
the virtual characters and allowing him
to maneuver 360 degrees as he made
decisions about blocking and the placement of environmental elements.
Tracking markers on the VR headset
also enabled Favreau to walk through the
virtual environment as he moved about
the stage. Balakrishnan notes that
Favreau's preference of the Xbox
controller as his virtual interface was
influenced by his experience as a videogame enthusiast.
Pope explains, "We would move
through that space, and the art department and animators and I would all
watch it, discussing if we could move this
way, or work over here on this part of
[the virtual set]. So, basically, we carved

Top: Mowgli
floats down a
river with Baloo
(voiced by Bill
Murray). Bottom:
Pope and crew
work within the
virtual space.

out a space to set the scene, and then,
after the volumes were built, we would
go back to the mo-cap stage and block
out the scene, picking which angles we
liked and so on."
Such capabilities meant the filmmakers could build a detailed animatic,
which Legato describes as "a template
for every shot in the film." Through this
animatic, Pope could lay out shot
specifics, including the choice of camera
platform - Technocrane, dolly, handheld, Steadicam, etc. - whether the
shot would ultimately be captured with
live action or created entirely as CGI.
Brennan further describes the
workflow chronology: "The director
dictated size and scale changes way back
in preproduction in the main mo-cap
volume at Digital Domain. He wore
VR goggles or scouted with the virtual
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camera while an artist would scale characters up and down in real time on a
computer. A change might still happen
over the artist's shoulder or via notes,
but many decisions were made in this
context where 'feel' developed. When
we shot our previs pass on the movie -
still at Digital Domain mo-cap - we
did so with stuntmen in mo-cap suits
playing many of the movie's animals;
oftentimes two stuntmen were
combined into a single quadruped
animal. While these stuntmen
performed, along with [Neel] in a mocap suit, Bill and Rob would shoot
rough camera ideas during the live
takes, in the moment with the v-cam.
Finally, after shooting the entire movie
in this manner, we then moved to the
virtual-cinematography volume at Los
Angeles Center Studios, where all of
May 2016

37
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American Cinematographer - May 2016

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