When Adam Valdez of VFX studio MPC won the Oscar for Achievement in Visual Effects for The Jungle Book at the 89th Academy Awards, the entire team in Bengaluru were seen celebrating the studio’s stunning and innovative work on the Disney movie.
Valdez accepted the award on behalf of the team comprising more than 800 artistes, production and technologists based in Bengaluru, London and Los Angeles, who worked on the project for two years.
Valdez said on the night, “This is a very proud day for me and my crew at MPC. Taking part in making a great film is a rare gift.” The company met these challenges by marshaling its resources with the parent company Technicolor.
Biren Ghose, executive director, MPC Bengaluru shares how the team in the city worked its magic in the making of this movie. The nature of this industry is such where the fingerprints of individuals disappear as the movie comes magically to life.
Biren acknowledges the hard work of the local team saying, “Over 300 artistes worked on this film during the course of its production. A very significant portion of the film’s production was done in Bengaluru. Jon Favreau (director) had a larger than life vision for a project that had to in fact look like real life! This necessitated taking CG artistry to a unique level where the incredible concept art created by our international team needed to be translated into visual effects shots across our many departments. It would be unfair to single out names from so many artistes but each one of them worked really hard. They interpolate and shape raw data into living breathing performances.”
This is the second Oscar awarded to MPC for Visual Effects, having won for their contribution to the VFX of Life of Pi in 2013, as well as receiving nine previous nominations.
What is the edge they have over others? “We are focussed on shots and believe in building a direct line to a director’s creative vision and adding value to it. Our forte lies in winning concept art and visual development,” shares Biren.
Recalling some of the challenging moments working behind the scenes, Biren adds, “There were interesting goalposts across various stages of the production; creating 100’s of unique animals or creating 100’s of sets and subsets and an endless array of plants and trees required an army of specialists to fastidiously ‘replicate reality’. On the technology side, compositing and finalising over a 150,000 frames is equal to an effort that is often the task of producing more than a few films! The Jungle Book is a bellwether for the next generation of CG animation and Visual Effects.”
