Kellan Lutz Tarzan
Kellan Lutz Tarzan
Cast: Kellan Lutz, Spencer Locke, Anton Zetterholm, Les Bubb, Trevor St. John, Jaime Ray Newman, Mark Deklin, Brian Huskey
Director: Reinhard Klooss
Genre: Animation, Adventure, Action
Rated: PG
Running Time: 94 minutes
Synopsis: In a display of extraordinary beauty, a meteorite silently blazes through the endless sky. It penetrates the earth's atmosphere and smashes into the African jungle. In one fell swoop, all creatures on the planet are wiped out.
70 million years after the catastrophe, adventure-loving New York entrepreneur John Greystoke sets up camp with his family deep in the African jungle. He is determined to find the legendary meteorite, as he is convinced that the extra-terrestrial rock possesses special powers. He hopes that in the right hands, this alien rock could solve the world's energy problems.
While his son John Jr., known as 'JJ," explores the jungle and imagines himself as Tarzan, king of the jungle, Greystoke Sr. does not get very far with his expeditions. Reluctantly, he decides to leave Africa. However, his colleague, the idealistic anthropologist Porter, chooses to stay, and to keep the camp going in the land that he loves.
Greystoke takes off in a helicopter with his wife Alice and the young JJ on board. As soon as they turn to head home, a dense cloud clears away to give a view of a huge crater. Greystoke lands the helicopter in the crater. He regains his taste for adventure when he discovers the entrance to a cave carved out of a huge boulder. He makes his way through the passages, which lead to a kind of hall with walls laced with crystals. In the centre of the hall he finds a glistening stone – the 'heart" of the meteorite, which Greystoke had vainly sought for so long. As he chips off a piece, the meteorite and the surrounding volcano come to life.
The Greystokes just manage to take off again at the last second, but the helicopter becomes uncontrollable in the approaching storm, and crashes into the steep mountainside. Some inquisitive gorillas are intrigued and approach the wreckage. A female, Kala, discovers JJ – the only survivor – unconscious but otherwise unharmed. It just so happens that Kala has recently gone through something traumatic herself. Her small son fell to his death. The son's father, leader of the mountain gorilla troop, was unfairly killed in a fight for dominance. Kala takes 'Tarzan" – boy without fur – into her care and raises him as her own. It takes a while for the boy to get used to his new surroundings, but soon enough Tarzan is accepted into the clan as a new member of the gorilla family.
Years pass. Tarzan has long since forgotten his roots, and forgotten the terrible events of his childhood. Thanks to his daily challenges in the jungle, he has become a strong young man, who knows how to handle himself with great skill in even the most dangerous regions of the rainforest. He is fourteen years old when he discovers the beauty of nature during a venture outside of his usual territory. During this excursion he comes across the wreckage of the helicopter, lodged high in the treetops. For the first time since the awful accident, he also sees humans again – tourists being led through the jungle by Greystoke's old companion Porter.
While observing from a safe distance, Tarzan's attention is drawn to a pretty girl around the same age as his – Porter's bright daughter Jane, who lives in New York, but spends the summer with her father in Africa. When a mysterious animal attacks Jane, Tarzan hurries to her aid. The boy caringly looks after the unconscious girl and returns her to her father unharmed. This experience deeply affects Tarzan. The thought of who and what he is keeps nagging at him. When he finds an old photo of himself as a child with his parents in the helicopter wreckage, he suddenly remembers. He wants to know more about his heritage, but is also aware that his past may remain hidden forever.
Another five years go by. Tarzan is now 19 years old and a handsome and self-aware young man at that. He has left his gorilla family and built his own tree house above the ravine with huge waterfalls. He salvaged souvenirs of another life from the helicopter wreckage. One day during another expedition through the jungle, he goes straight back to his tree house to stop the evil gorilla Tublat, who has terrorised the gorilla family for years, from destroying his home. But during his rabid attacks, Tublat accidentally switches on the old radio receiver. The signal is traced by Greystoke Energies in New York. William Clayton, the scrupulous CEO who has been running the company since John Greystoke's death, immediately puts together an expedition to locate the source of the signal hoping to find the mineral resources that Greystoke had been so excited about. In order to disguise the true nature of the undertaking, Clayton persuades the eco-warrior Jane to accompany him. The expedition will show her that he wants to support the foundation that her father Jim Porter works for.
The arrival of the expedition does not escape Tarzan's notice. He is overjoyed to discover that Jane is there, too; who in turn felt compelled to find the boy from the jungle, since she never forgot about Tarzan. He secretly sneaks into her tent while Clayton is outside by the fire talking to Jane's father. Porter is convinced that Clayton is up to something, but Clayton shrugs it off and threatens that something could happen to Jane if Porter does not help him to find the meteorite.
The next morning Jane discovers Tarzan watching her from a bush. But before she can see who it is, he disappears skillfully on vines into the jungle. Whilst looking for Tarzan and furious with Clayton, whose true plans are now apparent, Jane gets lost in the impenetrable rainforest and gets herself into trouble once more. Tarzan rescues her when she falls off a cliff and nearly drowns in the swirls of a rapid jungle river.
Tarzan and Jane get to know each other for the first time. Tarzan shows her his home and gives her a piece of the luminescent meteorite he found in the helicopter wreckage. As the two spend time together, Jane realizes who Tarzan really is. But the pair is discovered by Clayton's men and come under fire. Tarzan flees with Jane to his gorilla family, where Kala and Tarzan's friends warmly welcome Jane. But they're not out of the woods yet: Tarzan has long been a thorn in the side of Tublat, the tyrannical leader of the gorilla clan. Whether Tarzan will manage to free his family from Tublat's grip whilst trying to stop the scrupulous Clayton can't be said. Tublat's strength and Clayton's greed make them unpredictable adversaries, who threaten the untouched paradise for which Tarzan feels increasingly responsible…
Tarzan
Release Date: September, 2014
Production Notes
About The History Of Tarzan And His Creator
Very few literary works in the last 100 years have had such an immense influence on children's imaginations all over the world as Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan®.
The very first articles entitled 'Tarzan of the Apes" were published in 1912 and 1913, along with a book the year after that. By 1939 there had been 23 sequels. In January 1929, the first Tarzan® comic appeared, illustrated by Hal Foster ('Prince Valiant"). Since then, an increasing number of masters of their genre have been inspired by the king of the jungle, including Burne Hogarth and the legendary Frank Frazetta.
The first screen adaptation appeared in 1918 with Elmo Lincoln playing the lead. Since then there have been around ninety further adaptations, including various TV series. As a result, Tarzan® matches 'Dracula" as one of the most adapted stories in history. Unforgettable examples of these are those with Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O'Sullivan, who appeared on the silver screen in 1932 as Tarzan and Jane. Between then and 1948, Weissmuller played the role of king of the jungle an additional twelve times. In Weissmuller's first film, the legendary Tarzan cry also made its premiere.
Lex Barker (five performances 1949-1953), Gordon Scott (six performances 1955-1960 – the first Tarzan in colour), and Ron Ely (TV series in the sixties) are the best-known names to have followed in Weissmuller's footsteps. New interpretations of the hero being raised by animals and bravely defending his world against all intruders put a new spin on the Tarzan story and have allowed it to survive for decades.
The 80s heralded the ideologically critical version, Greystroke - The Legend of Tarzan, Lord Of The Apes with Christopher Lambert in the lead. Furthermore, Disney's animation in 1999 resulted in a lively musical adaptation, the score for which inspired the first successful musical in 2008.
Edgar Rice Burroughs was born in 1875 in Chicago. When his first Tarzan novel was published in early 1913, no one expected him to become one of the most successful authors of the 20th century. But the success of Tarzan made Burroughs a wealthy man. He bought real estate outside of Los Angeles – an area today called Tarzana. The author, who had a fascination with the military until his death in 1950 in Encino, California, worked as a war correspondent between 1941 and 1944. With Tarzan, however, he had created a character that was immune to malevolence, scheming, illness and any other malicious by-product of our civilisation.
Henry M. Stanley's literary commentary 'Through the Dark Continent" (1878) Henry Rider Haggard's novel 'King Solomon's Mines' (1885) and 'She' (1886) are equally noteworthy as Rudyard Kipling's 'Jungle Book' (1894) or Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness (1902). Burroughs psychological study of a hero torn between two worlds, frequently reach the literary heights of the great French Romanticists. His talent for dramatic intensity acted as a model for the popular cinema of our generation.
Telling An Emotional Coming-Of-Age Story
The Origins of Tarzan®
Reinventing Tarzan® as a 3D CGI animation using elaborate motion capture technology over 100 years after its original inception by Edgar Rice Burroughs began with Animals United, the previous film from writer, producer and director Reinhard Klooss. During the final stage of production in what was then the most sophisticated German CGI film at the time, Reinhard Klooss went on a research trip to Africa. 'I was observing gorillas in Rwanda, Uganda, the Congo," Reinhard Klooss recalls. 'One gets extremely attached very quickly, since they're so mind- bogglingly emotional. It brought about a strong desire within me to make my experience into a film. Shortly afterwards Robert Kulzer, a colleague at Constantin Film, called me from L.A. and asked me whether we should make a Tarzan film – it'd be a great ape story."
Robert Kulzer had discovered a republication of Edgar Rice Burroughs' book. He'd read it and realised that the original Tarzan story, despite being made into countless adaptations, had never really been portrayed properly in a film. 'The struggle for survival, the amazing energy and belief in oneself and one's own species was bound to make a great adventure film," says Robert Kulzer.
It was at this time that the animation filming rights, previously owned by Disney, expired. They'd made a very successful film with the character as well as two sequels. Disney had probably done as much as they could with the character. 'While I was working hard to make the Tarzan story fit with my idea for a story about gorillas, Constantin took care of the rights holders with the Edgar Rice Burroughs Estate," Klooss explains. According to Martin Moszkowicz, 'We'd been interest in the Tarzan story for a while. When the rights were released, I spoke with the Edgar Rice Burroughs foundation who manage his legacy, and we were pretty quick to seal the deal and secure the rights with them. We were quite lucky, though, it has to be said. I think everyone was quite surprised – not just Disney but everyone else in Hollywood – that a German company got the go-ahead."
'There are very few stories that absolutely everyone knows, and Tarzan is one of them. Tarzan is a name that everyone on earth has heard at some point in their lives. There are tons of films, TV series and comics through which the story permeated. For that reason Tarzan is a real crown jewel. For that reason I'm really glad we were allowed to make this film," explains Martin Moszkowicz.
Reinhard Klooss studied the existing Tarzan films while considering the kind of story he wanted to tell, and where the focus of the plot would lie. But in the end he decided to go back to the original model by Edgar Rice Burroughs to find an approach that would correspond to his modern interpretation of 'Tarzan of the Apes". 'I actually went for a walk in the woods every day for two months, and then wrote the first draft in two weeks," says Reinhard Klooss. 'That turned out to be the finished film, although of course countless further drafts appeared over the following twelve months. Then we were already at the pre-production stage, working on character and set designs, new software applications and the highly complex production structure. During this period we were continually developing the story. The first edition contained hardly any dialogue, which allows one to concentrate on the essentials of the dramaturgical structure."
The main advantage was that the production's main hub was situated in the editing room. Editing for the film took 15 or 16 months in total to complete. 'It's great that with CGI productions one can set up the camera virtually after the motion capture filming. What's more, you can then control the camera angles even after filming, which is really crucial to the story."
Everything else, such as the question of which visual concept this approach best facilitated, came later. Reinhard Klooss sums it up as follows: 'We had to consider what we can, what we wanted to, and what we had to include. In the end, there are about 100 Tarzan films. But there has never been a version with such a strong emphasis on the young Tarzan and his gorilla family, the so-called coming-of-age part of our film. And what also occurred to me was that in order to convey the emotion as effectively as possible, we'd need an almost photorealistic approach, which in itself brought with it certain problems in implementation. A photorealistic approach is rather unusual for animation films. Around every corner lies the dreaded -Uncanny Valley' – the point at which the realism is more alienating to the audience than identifiable. There were plenty of these kind of technical, organisational and creative challenges that we had to grapple with. It was virgin territory for the production team, often with huge obstacles and unknown elements."
Avoiding Money Business
Further challenges in the film's conception
An important aspect was the portrayal of the ape world. 'It was important to us that the coming of age story was firmly anchored in this environment," explains Reinhard Klooss. 'Existing Tarzan films don't actually feature this ape world. For a long time we discussed whether this was the right way to go, but in the end decided in favour of it. In principle, I wanted to portray the apes as the -good guys', without getting drawn too much into -monkey business' in the process."
After solving the initial problems regarding the dramaturgy and technical implementation, it became increasingly clear that the most important source for the film could only be Edgar Rice Burroughs' original model. 'Tarzan is one of the great superhero stories, and for every superhero there needs to be a super villain," says Reinhard Klooss. 'We wanted to somehow connect the popcorn-cinema elements from the original text with the elements of the 19th century adventure novel, both of which can be found in Edgar Rice Burroughs' original template."
From very early on Reinhard Klooss was sure that the film should take place in the here and now. 'When one watches the old Tarzan films, one wonders how much of Edgar Rice Burroughs is actually included," he says. 'The appeal of the original novel – although it may sound like a paradox – is that lends itself much more to a modern setting. Our film takes the -spirit' of Edgar Rice Burroughs without becoming a slave to the text."
One of the recurring themes of every Tarzan film or novel is the conflict between the natural world on one side, and the threat of civilisation on the other. 'That was also an essential element of the story which we wanted to put a fresh spin on," describes Reinhard Klooss. 'The idea of a meteorite crashing into the earth and with a force that is simultaneously devastating and regenerative seemed to me like a fundamental theme which reflected the conflict between nature and civilisation perfectly in a modern Tarzan story. Meteorites have the potential to be hugely destructive – like nuclear power stations from space. In contrast, there would be no life on earth if it wasn't for meteorites, since life as we know it could not have evolved without the carbon compounds deep in our universe. Alongside the coming of age story and the gorilla family as its emotional hub, the metaphor of the meteorite acts as a third cornerstone for the modern adaptation of the Tarzan legend."
Shooting The Film Four Times
The technical implementation
Impy's Island was Reinhard Klooss' first foray into computer animation, which was the second German computer-animated film ever after Back To Gaya. Then came Impy's Wonderland, followed by Animals United – the first European stereoscopic film, which laid the foundation for the creative, organisational and technical methods used in
Tarzan. As with the previous CGI animations, Constantin Film realised the project with the Hannover animation studio Ambient Entertainment. For Tarzan's elaborate motion capture filming, the Frankfurt-based company Metricminds offered their services.
'Due to the complex structure of -Tarzan' one could say that the film was actually -shot' about four times," says Reinhard Klooss.
He continues: 'First of all we drew 5000 storyboards over the course of a year. At that point we had edited and added the sound once already. Then came the real motion capture film, which took three and a half months in the second biggest motion capture studio in the world, with the help of the crew from Metricminds in Hall 12 at Bavaria Film. At the same time we filmed the screenplay with actors, stuntmen and parcours artists on abstract theatrical backdrops, which corresponded to the 3D sets. We then recorded their movements with around seventy infrared cameras. In a third phase called motion editing that took 12 months to complete, a 50-man crew transferred the actors' recorded movements onto our 3D characters, adjusted the movements to the right scale and orchestrated the virtual camera movements. It was only after that stage that the key frame animation process could begin, where 120 animators, texturisers, lighting technicians and many other creative people in Hannover and Munich polished off the film's appearance and put together the sound design, dialogue and music."
Even in this regard, Tarzan is a quantum leap from its predecessors, since the processes were so interwoven with one another that the production time took two or three months longer than that of Animals United. 'Behind the entire operation there is a huge logistical undertaking, which will hopefully go unnoticed in the film itself, since the technical factors shouldn't detract from the overall entertainment value of the film," says Reinhard Klooss.
He continues: 'One of the reasons I'm so excited about animation is that it allows us to take German cinema appeal to a much wider audience. In the end it enables us to create films that aren't restricted by genre." Reinhard Klooss explains how he first got into animation: 'Even ten years ago you could already see computer-generated images becoming more and more common even in -real' films. Avatar, being the most prominent example in recent years, comes across as a -real' film, but around 80 percent of the film is CGI. This technology can now be seen in almost every big Hollywood blockbuster. So if you want to compete internationally, you should have some kind of skill with this technology – regardless of your budget. The most innovative platform for that purpose is animation, where new technologies are always being tried out, which can then be flipped into regular films. So for me, it wasn't just the fascination for the -anything goes' world of animation and the pleasure of working for a family audience, but it was also a rational decision to go into animation."
A Half-Naked Tarzan Isn't Easy
Problems with animation and their solutions
'It's certainly very odd for an animated film to have a naked central character – well, let's say almost naked, wearing only a loin cloth – walking through the film," says Reinhard Klooss. 'That creates a huge technical challenge. Under Tarzan's skin there's a muscular and skeletal instrument, which is supposed to imitate living creatures. It makes the whole thing much more realistic, but also unbelievably complex. Whenever a human character such as Tarzan wears little or no clothing, the biceps really have to look like biceps and not like bricks. But of course they're not -genuine' muscles, and the digital approaches to reality always produce unwanted and unpleasant surprises – and if the character isn't wearing trousers or a shirt, days' or weeks' work can be rendered useless. So, a half-naked, animated muscle man has his own special handling."
In order to create an emotive ape world, the -apes' should also be as realistic as possible. For this purpose, specially trained actors were used to portray Tarzan's ape family on the motion capture stage. A particular challenge was filming large groups of both gorilla- impersonators and human characters, since the infrared cameras could only handle up to five actors at a time.
'But the design team also faced a steep challenge in overcoming the -uncanny valley' problem. 'If you want to portray a human character realistically, then the audience will be able to identify the character more easily," explains Reinhard Klooss. 'However, there comes a point when the character is too realistic and can hardly be discerned from a real person any more. After this point, the viewer can no longer accept or identify with the character. The audience feels cheated all of a sudden, and since they know that it's a virtual character, they then see the lifelike figure as a strange, -undead' form. The result is a radical loss of empathy with the character. From the start, we tested the limits of this effect to make the character as realistic as possible, only to then homoeopathically add cartoon-like elements (such as the geometry of the eyes, facial features, skin texture etc)."
The amount of data to be processed during the production was immense. 'Of course," says Reinhard Klooss, 'That's partly due to the photorealistic concept, but also due to the film's scenery, deep in the African jungle. The nature of the jungle's appearance means that no one corner resembles any other. We wanted to make the jungle as intricate as possible, with flowers, ferns, moss, vines, giant trees, rivers, streams, ponds, rapids, waterfalls – in order to create a magically amplified adventure world."
A High Degree Of Physical Activity
The need for motion capture technology
'It became clear very quickly that we wanted to make a film using motion capture technology in order to portray the human characters as realistically as possible, and not just the movements, but also to capture the emotions of the actors," explains producer Robert Kulzer. 'We scrutinise the movements of the human characters more meticulously than other animals. If a lion in an animation film doesn't move one hundred percent appropriately, we don't mind – either out of cartoon-like absurdity or because we don't know exactly how a lion moves. But human figures are problematic in the world of CGI, because we analyse everything very closely and consider anomalies in their movements as deficit. For that reason human characters aren't as common in CGI films. And if they are, then they're predominantly portrayed as cartoony bad guys or comic sidekicks. Even then, motion capture data is commonly used – although in a limited form – for these characters, if only to give them a more -rounded' walk," explains Reinhard Klooss.
Despite the decision to give Tarzan's gorilla family a more central role in the film, the human characters play the lead roles. It was therefore more or less essential to use motion capture technology as a basis for the key frame animation of the characters. 'Our adaptation of the story mainly focuses on its emotional, adventurous and action-packed elements," says Reinhard Klooss. 'We wanted to create a high degree of physical activity and creditability. Therefore, although the motion capture process was extremely tedious, it was basically unavoidable. Even Tarzan's jungle gorilla friends shouldn't come across as comical sidekicks, rather as special characters with emotions and a high degree of physical coordination. That's why we decided to record all of the apes in the film using the motion capture technology. A good dozen actors grunted and bounced across our studio stage in mo-cap costumes for four weeks using ape-like props such as arm extensions, muscle and posterior padding – that was pretty surreal."
Small, Irregularities Reintroduced To The Animation
The high degree of realism, created by the motion capture technology, was slightly modified over the following twelve months to give Tarzan's movements superhero-like quality or to correct the apes' movements. 'Here and there we also reintroduced irregularities in order to avoid the -uncanny valley' effect, but without detracting from the physical power and elegance of the characters."
To avoid making -dead' characters, Reinhard Klooss and the Tarzan team decided against so-called -facial-capturing'. Instead, all human characters wore head cams to give the animators a reference of the actors' facial expressions. 'We recorded over 20,000 clips with our video cameras on set, which documented the movements of each actor, their gestures and facial expressions, so the animators could use this as a reference."
Taking The Story Seriously
The tonality of the film
'Animation films are usually just a firework display of jokes," explains Reinhard Klooss when referring to the decision to give Tarzan a certain humour, but predominantly to tell the story as an emotional and romantic action-adventure film. 'The original Tarzan story is anything but funny. Our film, unlike the original novel, has a good deal of humour, but differs from most animated films in that the focus lies on the spectacle of adventure."
The stipulation was always that the level of emotion had to be just right. Then it is no longer necessary to throw in a gag every other second to keep the audience interested. 'We tried to achieve the same as in the original text, to take it seriously and keep it as family-friendly as possible." Reinhard Klooss says in conclusion: 'Even after three years, no-one has got bored of it. It's complete chaos right up until the last day. I can hardly imagine anything more exciting in the film industry."
Facts And Figures
Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote over 30 Tarzan novels. Since then, almost 100 Tarzan films have been made. Tarzan® is therefore on a par with Count Dracula as one of the most frequently filmed stories in world literature.
The motion capture filming took place on the largest motion capture set in Europe, built by Constantin Film especially for the Tarzan film, with the help of Frankfurt-based company Metricminds in hall 12 of the Bavaria Studios. The actors, stuntmen and parcours artists were recorded with over 60 infrared cameras.
Tarzan is the first big German production to be mixed using Dolby Atmos. This new surround sound technology allowed the sound team to work with 128 channels, which they could then distribute to up to 64 different speakers in the cinema.
Every single image in the finished film is computer-generated. At approximately 88 minutes long (excluding the closing credits), the film includes around 127,000 individual images, and since it is a stereoscopic production, these were individually selected from around 253,500 frames in total.
The processing power of the computers used in the production comes to more than 35,000,000 MHz.
British-born Peter Elliott was responsible for the gorillas' choreography on the motion capture set. An expert in this area, he had already done the ape-choreography for classics such as Gorillas In The Mist and Greystroke - The Legend Of Tarzan. The actors underwent training for four weeks to learn how to move like apes.
Tarzan is the first CGI animation film in which the central character is a human, who is more or less completely naked from start to finish, apart from a loin cloth. As a result, the filmmakers had to be very conscious of the animation of the character's muscles.
For the recorded movements of the actors to be transformed into computer data, they wore full body suits during filming. The suits, which looked a bit like wetsuits, were covered with 68 tiny sensors or reference points that were picked up by the infrared cameras to record the movements.
Four different actors played Tarzan over the course of the production: Craig Garner and Aaron Kissiov played Tarzan as a child. The musical actor Anton Zetterholm, who played the part of Tarzan in the Hamburg Tarzan musical, took over the role of teenage Tarzan, and Hollywood star Kellan Lutz portrayed the grown up king of the jungle.
In order to study the behaviour of apes and the appearance of an authentic jungle, Reinhard Klooss traveled to the jungle triangle area of of Uganda, Rwanda and the Congo. He visited the Virunga Mountains, the rainforests of the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park and Rwenzori Mountains.
One could say that Tarzan was essentially filmed four times: firstly as a storyboard animation with around 5000 illustrations, then as a semi--real' film using motion capture technology to record the actors and stuntmen. Then the process of motion editing, where the recorded data was transferred onto the 3D characters, their movements were scaled, placed next to each other in virtual sets, as well as creating virtual camera movements, took almost a whole year to complete. Only after that stage could work begin on the classic key frame animation, which took another year to complete in itself.
The total production time for Tarzan from preparation to the finishing touches took almost three years. Around 350 professionals were involved in the production.
Tarzan
Release Date: September, 2014
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