Why Barry Jenkins gave up his improvisational shooting style to spend four years makingMufasaon a soundstage.
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By October 2024, the photorealist animated project is nearing its pencils-down phase.
Hes feeling good about the progress, but self-assurance wont stop the reply guys.
But did he need to?
Jenkins is frank in conceding thatMufasawas work for hire.
The studio owned every aspect, from the screenplay and character designs to the songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Add to that list of challenges the fact that Jenkins had never directed a CGI-heavy film.
When I took this job, the idea was What does Barry Jenkins know about visual effects?
Why the hell would he do this movie?
In addition to Why would he be makingThe Lion King?
I think part of that I found very invigorating.
People make these things, you know, with computers.
So anybody should be able to do this.
Theres nothing physically that says I am incapable of doing this.
Then he spent the next few years figuring out ways to bring it back.
I wasnt allowed to read a script prior to being invited here.
I point to the ceiling overhead and ask when the movie lights were taken down.
I ask when the sets were torn down.
(Production ended in August 2023.)
No pieces of Pride Rock, no fiberglass miniature of a canyon.
A wall ofMufasaconcept art includes a first-person close-up of Rafiki seeming to make eye contact with the spectator.
Will future generations of cinephiles watchSatantangoand wonder why it reminds them of their childhood?
Probably not, but this is the first Disney animal picture to spark such a thought.
Long before Jenkins set foot in his Alameda Boulevard facility, he received Jeff Nathansons script from Disney.
He and Wang drove up the coast to wine country.
All the while, the script was sitting in the back of his head.
When he got home, he says, he remembered, Okay, shit, thats right!
I have to call my agents tomorrow and remind them that Im not going to do this project.
Thats when Wang asked, Are you afraid to read it?
(Amazon MGM Studios did not respond to a request for comment.)
After all that anxiety, the idea of doing an entirely digital movie didnt sound so bad.
In short: I needed to slow … the fuck …down.
We kind of kit-bashed it together.
Laxton learned to use the camera in his house.
Had any of us done a virtual film, a franchise film, a Disney film, a Disneylegacyfilm?
But isnt it kind of boring to do the same thing over and over again?
Filmmakers would scout locations this way and plan blocking as if they were moving through a real place.
Early on in his shoots, Jenkins found himself hampered by having no way to work spontaneously on set.
James was pointing the camera at literally nothing, says Romanski.
No people, nothing.
Jenkins would give instructions and feedback on what he saw in the real and virtual spaces.
The motion-capture stage was laid out with large grid lines with coordinates like A7 and G5, says Fotheringham.
This grid was then projected in the virtual world where everyone could see the performers as lions.
Think of a tartan blanket that is laid over pillows, Fotheringham says.
It will distort over the pillows, but the tartan grid remains.
Our virtual lions would follow this distorted grid similarly.
Valdez calls them the rapid-response team.
The resultant quadcapped imagery is nowhere good enough to show in a theater to paying customers.
Jenkins calls it the PS3 footage, and he was irritated when some of itleaked earlier this year.
Valdez says this part of the process takes about six weeks per scene, not including revisions and tweaks.
After that, there might still be more notes from Jenkins asking for a small change or adjustment.
A shot might go back to McMillon to be recut and then to the army to be further altered.
Any scene can be in any one of those different phases.
He is generous with praise, though he likes to bust chops.
Over the next three hours, Jenkins moves swiftly through all the footage presented to him.
Jenkinss mantra throughout the making ofMufasawas Imperfection is your friend.
They had to push back against the Disney reflex to make things immaculate.
We want just something that has texture, something that feels organic, he says.
But you ultimately dont want everything to feel like its been created byanyone.
You want it to feel like it naturally arose.
When I ask Jenkins to name the biggest skill set he picked up onMufasa, he deadpans, Math.
He admitted to craving control postThe Underground Railroad, and hed seemingly found it.
So were going to have to go back to embracing a much more limited tool set on that film.
I want to work the other way again, where I want to physically get everythingthere.
He cant do that in a studio.
You know, a Muppet movie done in this style would be awesome.Awesome.
Or, lets say, agreenbox.
Youre capturing their performances and then youre putting them all into virtual sets.
I can see how that could work.
