A young lion cub hears the legendary origin story of her grandfather in Director Barry Jenkins’ animated musical adventure, Mufasa: The Lion King.
In the prequel to The Lion King, Jenkins’ film tells the origin story of Mufasa, a cub lost and alone. After he encounters a sympathetic lion named Taka, the heir to a royal bloodline, their chance meeting sets in motion an expansive journey of a group of misfits searching for their destiny.
On December 21, after the DGA membership screening in Los Angeles, Jenkins discussed the making of Mufasa: The Lion King during a Q&A moderated by Director Ben Affleck (Air).
During the conversation, Jenkins shared why his 1st AD was so important to the making of an animated film.
“Pip [Shawn Pipkin-West] right here was my 1st AD on the movie. And we needed a 1st AD because we evolved to this point where the camera is almost in a spiritual relationship with the sort of movement with the characters. It creates this energy. But when you’re making an animated film there’s no live stimulus for the camera to move against. So, Pip went down to visit the people who make Avatar at Lightstorm Entertainment and some of them came up and embedded with us. The problem with The Lion King is lions have four legs where human beings have two so it’s not like Planet of the Apes where you can have an actor in a suit and right away that motion is translated to the character. We had to have animators come in because they could understand how to manipulate the suits, that it was a rough translation from two legs to four legs. But what that gave us was we could play any scene out loud on stage with Pip directing everyone like she would in the real world and the animators moving around. I’ve already directed the performance of the principal cast and voice, now I’m just purely the blocking, the physical performance of the scene with these animators. In 2D animation you’re drawing with your hand. In this case it felt like the animators were drawing with their whole bodies.”
Jenkins’ other directorial credits include the feature films Medicine for Melancholy and If Beale Street Could Talk; an episode of Dear White People and all episodes of the series, The Underground Railroad. He was nominated for a DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Theatrical Feature Film for his 2017 feature, Moonlight, which also won the Oscar for Best Picture. Jenkins has been a DGA member since 2016, has served as Third Vice President of the Guild and currently serves on the Western Directors Council and Independent Directors Committee.