Behind the scenes of the gorilla

Filmed by China and South Korea, the film uses 100% 3D shooting techniques and CG post-processing, and the role of the gorilla is created through live-action motion capture technology, which is the first time in Korean film history.

The image of the orangutan in the film is made of extensive use of motion capture and CG technology. The film was originally scheduled to be filmed in 2011, but due to the filmmaker's underestimation of the production difficulties of the 3D part, the shooting plan was delayed for a while. Later, Kim Yong-hwa invited his senior brother, director Kang Dikyu, Kang Di-gyu, to be the producer to re-improve the script and make the film re-shoot.

The film is co-produced by Huayi Brothers and the Korean film company Showbox, with a total investment of 20 million US dollars, breaking the investment record of Sino-Korean co-productions. According to Wang Zhonglei, president of Huayi Brothers, 60% of the film's budget is spent on special effects production. The special effects production team recruited 300 Asian special effects talents, and after 4 years of preparation, the whole process was 3D real shooting, and the post-production time was up to 7 months.

There are more than 1,000 scenes of virtual gorillas appearing in the movie, which greatly exceeds the number of virtual character shots in similar Hollywood movies such as "King Kong" and "Rise of the Planet of the Apes". In order to process a large amount of virtual character data, the film production team independently developed the hair processing system Zelos Fur, which realizes the ultra-high efficiency of data processing at 1:100 for data input and output, and produces 10 times the footage with the budget of Hollywood movies1 10, creating the two gorillas "Lingling" and "Thunder" in the movie.

As the first virtual character created by pure CG on the Asian screen, the director and key members of the crew made a special trip to Ueno Zoo in Japan to learn about the living habits and demeanor of the gorillas, and 20 animators worked synchronously to observe the orangutan's every move from all angles, and spent another year simulating and rehearsing the animation to form a complete set of action references. The crew analyzed all the orangutans that could be found on the Internet**, and on this basis, they perfected MRGO's action modeling, and before the film officially started filming, the crew had already built a large and complete animation material.

In addition, two motion capture actors trained for more than a year before the start of filming, wearing gyroscope-embedded junction capture suits every day, learning and imitating the orangutan's every move, and in the end they laughed and said that they were "living the life of an orangutan", and the technician in charge of motion capture recorded all their movements in the computer, generating a set of data and integrating the results of the CG animators, giving MRGO a super vitality of fake reality.

Daming Gorilla is a 2013 Chinese-Korean co-production of 3D action comedy film, which is the first film in Korean film history to be shot in 3D, and it is also the first film to use live-action motion capture technology to create an orangutan character. This has the advantage of making the orangutan look more realistic and expressive, and it can also reduce the stress of post-production.