Disney’sThe Jungle Bookis still dominating the conversation, asJon Favreau’s film has one of the best displays ever of photo realistic CGI. The entire production took place largely on stages in L.A. with the only live-action character,Neel Sethi’s Mowgli, interactions with green screen, puppets, and various other objects signifying the world around him. A new behind-the-scenes video pays tribute to this intricate movie-magic process by showing how the VFX brought to life the “Bare Necessities,” the Mowgli monkey toss, and much more.
“Because we had decided to use this completely virtual environment approach, we figured it’s an opportunity to take the best of the animation process and the best of motion capture and the best live action — you combine those things and you may do something nobody’s done before,” Favreau said in the video (viaMashable). He later added, “Every single shot requires hundreds of people and a tremendous amount of collaboration.”
Sethi told usthat the most difficult animal for him to work with on set was Baloo. We see a little bit of the behind-the-scenes magic in the video, but the actor said it took three people acting on the stage to realize the animal. See all of this come to life in the VFX breakdown below.
It all paid off.The Jungle Booktopped the box office multiple weeks and earned a sequel green light from Disney with Favreau andJustin Marksworking on the script. The voice cast of the film featured the likes ofIdris Elbaas Shere Khan,Ben Kingsleyas Bagheera,Bill Murrayas Baloo,Scarlett Johanssonas Black Widow, andLupita Nyong’oas Raksha, though it’s unclear who among them will return forThe Jungle Book 2. Rudyard Kipling wrote a number of stories of Mowgli and his animal companions, so there’s a lot of material to pull from.
