Listen: Jon Favreau on Maximizing VFX While Minimizing Disruption

Entertainment and Technology Summit in Los Angeles. And while there's plenty to say about his career as an actor, producer, and writer, in this conversation, we focused on his work as a director, specifically his innovations and visual effects, from The Lion King to his upcoming Disney Plus series The Mandalorian, the latest from the Star Wars franchise. Here's an edited

recording of our conversation. We're going to talk today at the Entertainment and Tech Summit about, as I said, really pioneering work you've done in recent years with regard to visual effects. UM, you know, think back to uh we saw. I think when you directed The Jungle Book. I think it was what you did with motion capture. You were just kind of starting to really play with the tools

of the trade. But you took it to a whole new level this year with Lion King, and we'll talk a bit about that animation and of course uh you've got upcoming on Disney, plus the new Star Wars series and the Loureans. Right, so let's start there. Because you were at D twenty three, the big Disney fan convention just a few weeks ago, introducing that. What was it like to get out in front of really the super fans with something you've been sort of white hiding close

to the vest for a while. It's I've had an interesting relationship with the fans part of how the industry has has changed, whether it was Comic Con or D twenty three or now Star Wars celebration. It's a really interesting, wonderful opportunity for on the one hand, to present your message almost like a political grassroots kind of way, like going to your fan base and saying, here's what we're

up to. And because of social media, that that resonates outward and I think a lot of the successive Iron Man could be attributed to that core group that echoed out from Comic Con. But it's also a wonderful opportunity to actually get a relationship within the case of those those uh events. I think at the twenty three there's like seven people in the audience, so you get this wave of energy back at you and at your cast and then the people who are working on the project.

Generally you show that about a year or only the first look, and so it really puts wind in your sales and he gets the whole team to get excited that we're working on something, as you said, in a vacuum. But but you get this really uh sincere authentic feedback directly from the people, and that energy is something that

really carries you forward. Is there a pressure though, that comes with not just serving a fan base that has very high expectations, but you're you know, this is Star Wars and this is also the really going to be the big show for a new streaming service and Disney Plus. Are there are like additional pressures that come with all that. I mean, there's always I don't look down, so it doesn't that doesn't like I don't know how far up

the tight rope is. I know that if you engage with the people around you and if you can delight if you're a fan, and you could delight yourself, and then you have a core group of people who are really invested in the outcome, whether it's people on your team and your family or or the first layer of

audience that is highly engaged. I think the lesson from Marvel was start with that group and and work your way out, as opposed to trying to average things down and make it appealing to the least common denominator denominator of your audience. I think in this very vocal this time of very vocal audiences, you see that they're very reactive to material. Used to be, you know, if you marketed a movie, well, you could get a big weekend

out of it, even if the movie wasn't great. Nowadays you could see those numbers dip because everybody's talking to one another on social media, so the audience is becoming a big part of the conversation. And so I think it's incumbent upon us, and I think it's always good to do so anyway, to just make sure that you respect the audience and engage with them, and then they'll if you've done a good job, they'll they'll help signal boost you and and and and take it to the

next level. It's not unlike politics in many ways, oddly the way that you have to engage because it's it's many tiered, but the first tier has to be the people who are already there. Well, looking ahead at the Mandalorian, you know, I think people now come to expect a John Favreau project is going to have it's they're gonna have the visual wow of The Jungle Book, the Lion King.

What in the Mandalorians do you think people will impressed with and explain sort of the technology that you're using to deliver that visual pop. Well, I think that that that you know, you always have to talk about technology with its marriage to storytelling at least that's the nexus point that that I think is is the crux of the whole thing, because whether it's a story you're telling on the screen or a story you're telling through selling

this new technology and presenting it to people. As Steve Jobs would, our our entryway into new technologies and innovations is always the story that we're telling through that innovation. And in the case of what I do, it's very a very clean version of it because you're actually telling a story to people. It's not just a story in marketing or not just a story in publicity, but it's a story that they're going to see depicted, and the technology is something that has to serve that story and

interact with it, inspire it. So in the case of Star Wars, and each of these is a different puzzle, you know. With with Lyon King, we had a different set of parameters and used a different set of technologies than we do for Star Wars. For Star Wars, the parameters were, how do you make it feel like Star Wars? How do you how can I tell a story set in this particular time which is for those of you know, Star Wars after Return of the Jedi, after the Empire falls,

what's this gritty world? I was always interested in what inspired George Lucas originally, which were samurai films and westerns, and how do I find a time period and a waited to pick that in a in a manner and a scale that is evocative of the material and the

stories that inspired George originally. And so part of what we're doing too, you know, we have to work within the parameters of what the streaming services and so in many ways it follows the structure of a television show in that you don't have endless post production, you don't have endless budget, and it's really was served by the scale of the original, which isn't the big, huge blockbuster movies that that we see on the big screen all

the time. The original Star Wars were a bit more intimate and character driven, and so we are using technology that's makes best use of that scale. And part of what we're exploring is is using game engine real time rendering, because with all the compositing that we're doing, we could either do it in camera using video walls. Were were the first production to actually take advantage of innovations that

have been taking place. In this case, we're working with I l M and with Epic Unreal Engine, with Magnopus, a lot of people that I've worked with before on other projects, and we try to create a new way to use this real time rendering where you can actually do in camera effects on video walls with camera tracking

and parallax. Uh that want to work for for Lying King Bequesse, that's jungles and animals and fur here it's hard surfaces, spaceships, planets, you know, uh sand So it has to do with what the capabilities of the technology are. But underlying, you know, we used a game engine to make Lion King. We use Unity and we work with MPC and so what I'm finding is that by taking advantage of all these innovations and working and collaborating with

all these different companies. UH, it's great for the project because you get all of this new learning and all of this enthusiasm to try to be innovative, and and it ends up serving the audience well because it's is beautiful um end product that they wouldn't have otherwise gotten. And then the companies that collaborate with are happy because whatever we innovate there, they then branch off and innovate further.

And so just coming from those two projects, MPC has a virtual camera suite that they do we worked with, Epic now has built into their new system, UH, a filmmaking system that takes advantage of parallax and camera position that they're going to be launching. I l M has stagecraft that they've refined, which is something that started with George all the way back and and I believe the Prequels that is also an in camera way to do real time render. And Magnopus as a company that's branched

off and is innovative in that space as well. So all of these companies that that we work with then can bring this culture, which is basically storyteller and creative, friendly use of technology in a way that takes advantage of the traditions of cinema and not disrupting them completely, and then hopefully that echoes out and creates further innovation as other filmmakers collaborate and work with that technology. And that collaboration I think was key to this new organization

or initiative that you've developed called Golem Creation. Yeah. Yeah, talk a bit about what you were tempted to do with this new entity. Well, I found I thought I was being drawn to all sorts of disparate projects because if you look at my list of things I'm working on, I have a stop motion Christmas special that I'm working on with the guys who I did stop motion for Elf,

the Kyota Brothers. I have a VR project with a company called Weaver called Gnomes and Goblins that we've been working on for for for I think five years, getting ready to launch a bigger product of that, Mandalorian, which is using in camera effects and real time render, Lion King, which is basically creating a multiplayer v our filmmaking game that we created the whole movie in, and then short

form pieces. So there's there's this whole weird array, and I realized that all of them have something in common that they're all about the nextus point of innovative technologies and developing new technologies to serve storytelling and the filmmaking community, and whether it's innovating based on new production techniques that we're developing or innovating based on technology associated with new

platforms and distribution. There is a way for filmmaking and technology to continue the dance that they've been in for hundred years that have created uh breakthroughs for both. And at this point in my career, I created Golem Golem Creations because it seems to be more of a catch all for the technological side of filmmaking as opposed to having a production company where we're pouring over scripts and trying to find new things to develop and trying to scale.

The company is very small, and it's all about collaborating with other companies and other filmmakers and and creating content myself. That is exciting because it's not just telling a story, but it's also innovating and shaping the course of the way the industry moves. I mean, it's interesting when you're saying that you're working on projects that the implications of which really have these reverberations for the rest of the industries,

certainly because disruption is often and can be negative. But but there's an opportunity with each innovation. And I think that it's always been seen is a zero sum game.

And for a long time, you used to work with your crew on a movie that were like the production designers and the cinematographers, and then you'd have the visual effects supervisor and they would kind of be fighting the zero sum game and it odds with one another, and slowly I found people from both sides of the aisle that were excited by the opportunities that the other presented.

And then you when you start to realize that that collaborating not only helps the innovations be more effective, but it also allows for us to preserve the skill set and push it forward. Of you know, work with calab Deschanel. Kale Deschanel, amazing cinematographer, never did an effects driven movie in his life. We hired him to do Lion King.

We built a tool set by which he could operate cameras, set lights, have dolly track, have a whole live action crew around him and basically take what would have been a completely animated movie and bring in the human element to help set cameras in the layout phase. So if you visited this that of the Lion King, there would have been if you came in the beginning I was working with animators, it would have looked like a Pixar movie. We did layout, we did character animation, everything was in

their animatic storyboards. But if you came during our production period, you would have seen an a D team, Dolly Grips, a crane um, Caleb Deschanel on the wheels. You would have seen a script supervisor, full crew running with the cadence of a real production. Now, if that was left to its own devices, it would have been the people who were coding all of this new technology would have been setting the lights, moving the cameras, doing what you

do in pre vis. But you benefit from having the skill set of these people who have spent their entire lives developing this art and this craft. And so what happens is the people from the film world start learning about the technology, start requesting things like, Hey, I would you know I wish I could have an analog focus pulling knob so that my camera assistant could could control when we rack focus, and so he brings in a piece of equipment. They take the weekend and code that

next thing. You know, there's a tool that pulls focus with a focus puller, as opposed to somebody just changing parameters with a keyboard. At the same time, he's teaching them how to light, because you light a video game different than you light a movie. And so now you have this wealth of experience that's being passed down from Caleb to the people who are setting lights at the

boxes on the perimeter of the stage. And also as a director, I can now interact with this whole creative chain of command that I'm used to from my whole career. And we could scout together in VR so that I don't have to stand over somebody's shoulder and tell them where I want the Dolly track and what I want

the shot to be. We could walk around and look around and say, hey, this is a good background, this is a good angle, and you have this iterative creative process that preserves the way I came up as a director.

And now that that film has been successful, we've created a paradigm where if other people say, how did Lion came it, They're going to be inheriting that whole infrastructure as opposed to using that same technology, it could have looked like a video game design studio, which is totally different. Disruption doesn't have to be so disruptive when you plan according What I also thought could be disruptive, though, was the very technology that you employed in The Lion King,

where you've got photo realistic animation. I'm sitting there watching this incredible picture, thinking is this the beginning of a slippery slope or even a movie populated entirely by humans could be created in an animated sense using these technologies. Look, I think the implications go much further than that. Like a movie, whether it's an animated human or not animated human, is I'm worried about a you know, deep fake, I'm worried about I'm worried about a news flash, not a

movie as much. But I think that part of what's interesting about this is is it shows us where the technology is and it requires human vigilance, and you know, there's always that's That's That's also the story of the Golem, which is, you know, the golem can could rampage the countryside or could protect the village. We have to make sure that we engage with technology in a way that serves humanity, and the best way to do it is

to is to be mindful, collaborative and aware. Um. What I like to do as far as just answering your your question about the implications in the film industry is to infuse you know, these are just tools. Lion King is the most handmade movie I've ever worked on. Every frame was poured over by artists, the actors. We we filmed the actors for reference, to get their performances, to get improv overlapping. At the end of the day, the

animators interpolate that performance into animals. But there will be at some point the ability to completely track people in and have a digital version of it. I would contend that part of what we the biggest thing we connect with as humans as other human behavior, and so a computer is not generating it from scratch. They're simply making

it look better and more convincing. But at its core, if you didn't have Billy Eichner and Seth Rogan improving and coming back and banging around, I don't think that that would have been an entertaining the team on I Pumba would not have been entertaining characters. By the same token, every environment that's been designed to hold a mirror up to nature that wasn't just created by a computer, that

was created by hundreds of artists. And so you have this collaboration where people are having to create every single aspect of it. You don't inherit anything by going out into into nature and setting a camera. You have to create everything that you photograph. So I think that it is good to be cautious and understand what the implications

of technology represent. But I think that there is a way to have it, uh boost the opportunities of creativity because your imagination is no longer fettered in the same way by the shortcomings of of what you can achieve in film. So I think that it's there. There are two sides to that coin, and and that's that's honestly why I want to focus on this so much now because I feel I'm in a in a in a

unique position to help inform that conversation. I think it's an important conversation and do you but you know, to take it where too deep fake territory? Are you even thinking about that level in terms of what society can protect with that kind of footage. Well, it's the same people innovating for all these things, and so technology when you understand what AI is doing and how things are how how there's machine learning and I'm glad that they

have deep fake videos on on on YouTube. I want people to understand it in a way where it's not so charged, so they could say, oh, wow, that's what that's what technology is capable of. And we all know more as law, it's just going to get more, And so we have to ask some questions of ourselves as a society and as a culture of how do we I don't think the Ostrich method of sticking your head in the ground is going to save you know, anybody

from from the challenges of the future. I think that we have to have um we have to engage with it in a way that is thoughtful and in a way that takes into consideration where we think things are going. And but does that imply that you could possibly like it seems to me that technology does what technology does, So are there really any safeguards an industry or an internet company could put on this to control the situation.

I think you have to explain. I'm not an expert in this area, so I can only speculate as you would. But what I would say is that focusing your attention on things that are potentially problematic is a good is a good step. And I think that when people are unaware or ignore the trends that are happening is when

you get caught off balance. And what gives me, what's encouraging to me, is that the people who are behind all of this, it's just it's people and and and and and there are a lot of people who share common values and I and I don't think it's for a lack of concern or a lack of being motivated

to make the world a better place moving forward. Uh, But I think that, you know, there's sort of this balancing act that we have to find where where where you're not ringing an alarm belt and freaking everybody out just to get their attention. You know, you don't want the car alarm going off all the time, otherwise you can't hear the car alarm anymore. But by the same token, you don't want to be um optimistic without having uh, just trusting that things are going to work out in

a positive way. I think the you know, the challenge of our time is to find a way to to to benefit from all the wonderful aspects that technology has to offer. And I think that if you look at trends over time, it's a net gain like we we have even in just our lifetime seen just by any measure of of you know, the the positive positive limitation of you know, the elimination of suffering, the health benefits, life expectancy, people being pulled up out of poverty like

technology can help. There's there's no argument that technology can be a net gain. The question is how do we how do we protect against unintended consequences and innovation And that's and that's the story of every fable surround ending innovations and technology. There's always the Sorcerer's Apprentice story of the mops getting too many buckets of water. You know, that's what it is, that's Frankenstein. That's the goal of So I think the trick is how do you how

do you engage with it? You know, it's what do they say with first lesson in surfing, you don't turn your back to the water. You don't turn your back to the sea, have a healthy respect for these about what's going on. Uh, but let's get like minded people to engage with it in a way where we maximize the upside and and minimize the downside. You got on this innovation track by working in virtual reality, and you

talked about getting back to the Gnomes and Goblins. Uh. Is the virtual reality market where you think it needs to be in terms of you know, pouring your energies in a VR project. Yeah, well, I don't know how to time the market like that's not the way. I don't know that. I would have thought that v would have had more consumer adoption earlier based on the early developments that I saw in early development kits for like the Vibe and the experience I had when I first

put it on. There are challenges in the adoption in the in the in the consumer marketplace that you know, if you look at the curve, it's just a slower curve.

I know that technology is not going away. With all of this great consumer facing hardware that came out and everything that I learned working on Nomes and Goblins that allowed us to create these platforms in a more industrial capacity to make Lion King and to make the Mandalorian and you know, based on what the shortcomings were with the systems that we used on Jungle Book, which we're essentially inheriting from Jim Cameron Avatar. From Avatar, so you

had motion. A lot of the same people were working on both those movies as motion capture, it's motion builder, it's it's a very specific market for a set of tools that are expensive and there's not a lot of incentive for innovation. All of a sudden, all these game

engines pop on the scene. I'm working of that pick on the first season the Mandalorian, and they they have Fortnite like they have they have revenue streams that are um you know, that are very robust, and so that allows for a much more you know, uh, enthusiastic engagement when it comes to R and D. Same thing with Unity, you know, working with them on on The Lion King, and they have you know, they're in gaming, so you're not dealing with people who are just dealing with a

handful of filmmakers who are doing motion capture. Now we're having all this great hardware and VR hardware and and and opted tracks, all these things that you could buy you know, off the shelf as a consumer. And that was the big breakthrough in video made game video cards that allowed for a refresh rate that was fast enough to drive a full stage of video walls for the Star Wars project. That wouldn't have been possible five years ago.

So it's seeing what those breakthroughs are. You could use them for storytelling uh and and how to again allow be aware of what's coming up and finding ways to see how all those things can interact uh and and distribution models are changing too in audience habits, and I think that you know, that's also you know, the positive side of um you know, all these these breakthroughs because you can make very specific programming. I've been trying to

make a stop motion Christmas special since Elf. The business model wasn't there now all of a sudden, you know, because of Netflix, I can or I could do a cooking show, like there's nothing technical about a cooking show. I love cooking with Roy Choy. We there's an audience for that on that platform because you could seek out exactly what you want now and so you have narrow casting too, and so I think it creates a much richer environment for storytellers, and the barriers of entry are

just dropping dramatically. I worked with Donald Glover. He started off basically creating his own stories on on YouTube and that slowly evolved into a very dynamic, impressive career of being in a writer's room doing stand up music. But it all came from the the lowering of the barrier ventrly the gate the disappearance of gatekeepers. So you're gonna have this democratization of creativity that that technology also has

has been offering us. Um it sounds like you're at the bleeding edge of of a pretty big trend in terms of and I think it's somewhat democratization fueled lots of new tools improving what you're able to do on a screen. So is what you're is what you're doing, paving the way, you think, for sort of this new generation to come and and make movies in a way that is very different than was done ten years ago.

I think that would be overstating it. I think what the goal here is to just say make a decision saying, hey, let's engage with this, Let's see what the opportunities are here, Let's see how we could not how we could preserve what's good about how we came up and and and pay honor to the traditions that that we came up

through um in filmmaking. And let's invite like minded people to collaborate together, because ultimately it's going to be the human factor that that shapes our path into the future. And and it's the people who are innovating in these areas and creating these new tools or showing us how to use them that's going to determine what we inherit and what the future holds. And you know, uh, I

think that it's part of my responsibility. Two, I've been I've been lucky enough to have a wonderful career telling stories and having innovations that other people have developed for me to enjoy, and for me to then pass some of that onto the next generation, and for me to help preserve what those who came before me are concerned about.

I think there's some thing that's very fulfilling in that for me, and hopefully in getting like minded people who are cautiously optimistic about the future to come together and be at the forefront of those innovations. Makes gives me comfort in in the uncertainty that always you always face whenever you're at a at a point of you know, of transition. It sounds like a good note to end on. John, Thanks for coming in and talking about it. To thank you,

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