The Jungle Book will be available to own on August 30, 2016 on Blu-rayand DVD, and on August 23rd for the Digital HD. In honor of the home release, I was part of an informal Q&A with Producer Brigham Taylor and Visual Effect Supervisor Rob Legato. What they shared made me appreciate The Jungle Book live-action film even more.
The Jungle Book w/ Brigham Taylor & Rob Legato Interview
Except for Mowgli and two other characters, almost everything in The Jungle Book is actually CG (computer graphics). Filmmakers had to mentally picture the finished shots so as to properly direct a scene or judge if it’s working. That takes real talent when all you see on set are blue screens or motion capture grids.
Photo credit: Disney
Here are some fun facts from our interview.
- Story development took about 6-8 months but full-on production took about 2-1/2 years.
- About 2,000 people worked on the film.
ROB: If we could count all the musicians, all the musicians in New Orleans, and everybody that was actually on the film at one point or another, it’s probably close to 2,000 people.
- Since Neel Sethi (Mowgli) never acted before, puppetry was used to help him create a believable performance.
ROB: He needs to experience it to make you believe that he’s seeing the animals speaking to him and it’s sort of an unrehearsed speech. He reacts to what they say and organically. So, I think that that decision was one of the best ones for this kid.
- Three of the most difficult scenes to film were when Mowgli had to say goodbye to his mother, the stampede, and at the watering hole near Peace Rock.
- With the technology available, almost anything filmmakers wanted to do in the movie was possible. They only had to be careful of not making the film too long.
BRIGHAM: The cool thing is there isn’t anything that we wanted to do that we couldn’t do technically… The only restrictions were self-imposed. We didn’t want the film to be too long.
- In deciding what to include in the bonus features, they started by filming everything behind-the-scenes and pull from that.
BRIGHAM: The trick is you try to capture everything. Seasoned filmmakers like we had on this film, Jon included, brought in a crew very early on because we felt this was going to be an interesting process and project. We were capturing stuff at every key point throughout so that we would have options and you kind of get it all.
We had a great interview with Brigham Taylor and Rob Legato. But, there’s so much more that went into the story creation and into the making of this film. Fortunately, audiences will get an inside look at the production of The Jungle Book in the upcoming home release. More on that coming up. Stay tuned! ?
The Jungle Book will be available to own on Aug 23 Digital HD & Aug 30 Blu-ray Combo Pack!
- Visit the official website: http://movies.disney.com/the-jungle-book-2016
- Like on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DisneyJungleBook
- Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheJungleBook
I was invited on an all-expense paid media trip as a guest of Disney in honor of the Pete’s Dragon movie. All opinions are my own.
See more:
Marvel’s Avengers | Avengers 2: Age of Ultron | Monsters University | Frozen | Big Hero 6 | D23 Expo 2015 | Finding Dory | Pete’s Dragon
