American Cinematographer - May 2016 - 38

◗

Welcome to the Jungle

Top: Mowgli encounters Kaa (voiced by Scarlett Johansson). Bottom: Legato lines up the virtual camera.

this data had been refined and assembled into scenes, and Bill - with input
and interplay with and from the director, the editor and Rob - shot the
entire film in earnest, virtually with the
v-cam, to stay one step ahead of the
actual photography with Neel."
Based on his virtual-camera
experiences, Pope worked alongside
artists - tasked with adding rough
character animation to the art department's virtual sets - in Digital
Domain's Lab department, laying out
precisely where he wanted things placed
and directing the lighting for each shot.
38

May 2016

"The 'Lab,'" Balakrishnan notes,
"is a term that originated from the
Avatar days. It [consists] of a group of
technical artists who take the sets developed by the virtual art department -
VAD - and combine motion-capture
data as well as hand-keyed animation to
develop a master scene. This master
scene then gets delivered to the virtualcinematography stage, where the cinematographer can lay out 'cameras' in
this virtual environment."
This "collaborative and iterative
process," Balakrishnan continues, gave
Pope "the flexibility to experiment with
American Cinematographer

shots before committing to them on the
actual live-action set." Indeed, Pope
could lay out virtual dolly tracks, drive a
virtual crane, and operate a virtual camera
in the capture volume, and then have all
of those choices replicated in the virtualcamera layout.
"Bill would work with me for
quick animation changes, set adjustments
and dolly-track creation, and he would
work with Girish to pull focus, create
effects and dial in the look of each scene,"
Brennan adds. "His virtual-camera lens
package matched the one he would use
to photograph the real actor later. He was
free to pick up the [virtual] camera for
handheld or attach it to anything he
physically lugged into our volume, or that
virtually existed in the current master
scene. At the [Los Angeles Center
Studios set] for the live-action shoot, he
had a tracked SimulCam viewfinder
available to him, with content from these
master scenes. He could then shoot the
actor and the virtual animals and environment in context, and compose everything accordingly."
The virtual-camera environment
was particularly useful in allowing Pope
to test lighting as he would on a liveaction set; the cinematographer had at
his disposal a custom digital light kit that
included controls for things like key light,
fill and bounce light, flags, gobo patterns,
and soft boxes. As it had been on Avatar,
the virtual-camera workflow was
powered by Autodesk's MotionBuilder
software, but on Jungle Book it was further
linked to the Photon rendering engine.
According to Balakrishnan, the addition
of Photon enabled advanced rendering
capabilities for lighting; depth of field;
lens flares; motion blur; color grading;
and various dynamic effects, including
fire, rain, fog, water and smoke. All of this
meant that Pope and his team could see
even the subtlest virtual elements
rendered instantly.
"Before Jungle Book, out-of-thebox MotionBuilder alone lacked the
advanced rendering fidelity required to
make these aesthetic decisions for shots,"
Balakrishnan explains - while making it
clear that MotionBuilder is the industry-
American Cinematographer - May 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - May 2016
