Disney’s 2016 live action feature film The Jungle Book features the work of Drexel Alumnus:
Girish Balakrishnan (Class of 2013) — Virtual Production Lead/Photon TD: Digital Domain
To read more about the amazing work on this film, be sure to check out the article in the International Cinematographer’s Guild Magazine:
Pope (and sometimes Legato) would operate inside the “shark cage,” working with two Digital Domain technical directors, Girish Balakrishnan and John Brennan, who operated Photon and MotionBuilder, respectively, under the direction of April Warren, Digital Domain’s virtual production LAB supervisor on site, and with the help of Ryan Beagan as Pipleine Supervisor. A virtual production editor would live-cut the sequence and review with Pope in real-time. The “physical virtual camera” was a carbon fiber aluminum custom housing with tracking features, to allow its position and orientation to be tracked by a mini mocap system. On either side were custom proportional joystick inputs, each with four or five buttons, and an 8-inch OLED field monitor that allowed Pope to view what his “camera” sees in the virtual environment.
