The Amazing Tech Animating "Mufasa"

PLUS: Does Deadline Understand How Digital Distribution Works?

Author

Steve
December 10, 2024

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The Amazing Tech Animating Mufasa

Faithful readers might be aware I’m frequently enmeshed in what’s often referred to as “Film Twitter”: an assortment of online film critics and fans with some occasionally-peculiar opinions, like their love of M. Night Shyamalan’s latest film Trap or enjoyment of memes from Megalopolis.

Now when I say enmeshed, what I mean is enmeshed in reading Film Twitter. I am not posting on there. I absolutely do not have the time to argue with someone all day about whether Robert Eggers is a “midwit.”

Anyway, this long prologue is all about how Film Twitter actually led me to a very interesting Matt Zoller Seitz piece in Vulture about filmmaker Barry Jenkins directing Disney’s live-action Lion King prequel Mufasa. Jenkins practically admits it’s basically a money job he chose so that he could play with Disney’s technology toys and spend more time with his wife, filmmaker Lulu Wang.

Film Twitter is aghast that Jenkins would seemingly waste his time in such a way, and I basically agree a live-action Lion King prequel for a filmmaker of his talent and vision is about as necessary a time spend as my Aunt Joan’s upcoming parole hearing. But! The tech tools Jenkins got to use sound very cool:

The scene was set in a virtual space created by [production designer Mark] Friedberg and his art department using Unreal Engine, a 3-D image-creation system that’s used in multiplayer video games… that had been adapted by the special-effects company Industrial Light & Magic for use on effects-heavy films and TV series, including the 2019 Lion King, The Mandalorian, and Westworld. Jenkins & Co. explored Friedberg’s sets while wearing VR goggles. Meanwhile, Disney gave [cinematographer James] Laxton an Unreal VCam, a virtual camera that translates traditional cinematography into a virtual setting. Imagine a first-person video game except that you’re recording the environment rather than playing a game and that the equivalence between your movements in the physical world and your camera’s movements in the virtual grasslands are more responsive and precise.

Laxton learned to use the camera in his house. He could stroll through the virtual environment a step at a time or, with the push of a button, cover 100 meters in one step or even fly. “If you want to be a helicopter that’s circling something and you’re walking in a ten-foot circle,” says [visual effects supervisor Adam] Valdez, “you can decide that’s a 100-foot circle and stabilize the movements so you aren’t bouncing up and down as you walk.”

Within the virtual space, the filmmakers were able to incorporate serendipity into the production:

Jenkins’s mantra throughout the making of Mufasa was “Imperfection is your friend.” He and Laxton relished unforced touches that made the work feel more physical, such as a violent camera shake that happened when Laxton jumped to follow a lion leaping down a series of tree branches. They had to push back against the Disney reflex to make things immaculate.

Early on, Laxton stumbled while shooting another action scene: “There was this great moment where the lion kids are racing and the one kid catches up, and just because of where the camera is and where the kid is, he runs this puddle and the sun just catches it and everything goes bright white, like he runs through a flare,” Jenkins recalls. “It looks like the camera operator is on the back of a pickup truck that’s going 70 miles an hour through a muddy field and is really struggling to hold the focus.” Laxton and Jenkins loved the mistake because it sold the illusion that the audience was watching an actual event being recorded under pressure. When the footage animators removed the momentary loss of control, Jenkins says he asked that the mistake be put back in: “Don’t smooth the shit out. Right?”

The entire article is a very good look at a method of filmmaking that could be used to produce some interesting and groundbreaking work. Unfortunately, what I think Film Twitter’s denizens are responding to is its usage as just another way to pump out more nostalgia IP, while likely handcuffing a typically improvisational artist. Maybe one day it will be used for something we haven’t seen before!

Does Deadline Understand How Digital Distribution Works?

Listen, I am a regular Deadline reader, and they are a consistent source of things I write about in this newsletter. However, occasionally I’ll come across something silly they’ve published and so am compelled to correct it.

I’ve written in the past about the various ways movies end up with problems on their paths to the streaming services, from Lindsay Lohan demanding a revised Mean Girls musical to how Amazon offered a weirdly-subtitled version of The Royal Tenenbaums.

Obviously I would take interest in this story:

Lionsgate’s Lucy Hale comedy-mystery F*** Marry Kill hit digital store shelves and PVOD this past Friday, December 6 — then disappeared a few hours later. We heard all the noise from genre fans.

What went on here? Is Lionsgate’s AI to blame? No, not at all.

First of all, is this a joke about how Deadline’s readers don’t know what AI is or does? Is this the author not knowing? Why would Lionsgate’s generative AI licensing project control the release dates of movies?

Apparently, the R-rated Laura Murphy-directed title originally was scheduled for a December 6 drop, and fans were expecting it. But the release date changed a few weeks ago, and that message clearly didn’t get through to the PVOD platforms, hence the glitch.

Lionsgate isn’t burying or short-changing the movie, which is coming out via its theatrical day-and-date release label Lionsgate Premiere Releasing. The release-date change is an effort to align the movie with its international roll-out in March. We’re told that [at] a recent screening, the filmmaker announced to attendees that they could expect to see F*** Marry Kill in March.

“…that message clearly didn’t get through to the PVOD platforms” is sort of true. The tendency is to point the finger at the streamers in these circumstances, but the blame typically lies with the content owner and whichever vendor it uses to deliver the content to them. The streaming services have automated gates that determine whether a title is available to buy/rent/stream or not; if it becomes available on the original release date, it’s likely nobody on the content provider end ever updated the gate’s information to the new date. No AI needed for this kind of error. It’s very human!

In general I often find PVOD releases on the streamers to be pretty shoddy. This weekend I rented the Ralph Fiennes-starring Conclave on Amazon and all the film’s foreign language-translating subtitles were missing, available only within the caption file (where they shouldn’t be).

If you have PVOD content that you need delivered correctly, you should of course get in touch with my bosses!

Here’s a round-up of cool and interesting links about Hollywood and technology:

The weird and wild story of the original Super Mario Bros movie (link)

How online video games became a crucial place for connection. (link)

OpenAI officially releases Sora for video generation. (link)