Jungle Beat: The Movie
| Jungle Beat: The Movie | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Brent Dawes |
| Screenplay by |
|
| Produced by |
|
| Starring |
|
| Cinematography | Charl James Collocott |
| Edited by |
|
| Music by | Andries Smit |
Production company | Sunrise Productions Sandcastle Studios |
| Distributed by | Timeless Films |
Release dates | |
Running time | 87 minutes[2] |
| Country | Mauritius South Africa |
| Language | English |
Jungle Beat: The Movie is a 2020 computer-animated film directed by Brent Dawes, based on the characters of the television series Jungle Beat.[3][4] It tells the story of a homesick alien who crash-lands his spaceship near the colorful African Jungle. His new animal friends need to get him back to his ship and teach him about friendship and fun before his Space-Conqueror father can take over the planet.
The film premiered at the 2020 Annecy International Animation Film Festival[5] and was released by Netflix on May 14, 2021.
Plot
One morning, the animals of the jungle wake up to discover that they can speak. They're even more amazed when they learn the reason why: there's an alien in the jungle. Little Fneep has come to conquer the earth and has brought some amazing technology with him, including a translation device that lets the animals talk for the first time.
Unfortunately for the intergalactic Scaldronian empire, Fneep is a terrible conqueror. He's homesick, he's crashed his ship, and he's no match for the antics of the jungle animals. Our heroes won't let a little alien conquest get in the way of a good time or a new friend. As the animals help him on his journey home, Fneep learns that friendship could be the greatest force in the universe. [6]
Cast
- David Menkin as Munki (speaking and vocal effects), a shy, playful, clever, naive, sassy and good-hearted monkey, and main protagonist, and as Rocky, a playful Southern white rhinoceros.
- Ina Marie Smith as Trunk, a female African bush elephant.
- Ed Kear as Fneep, an extraterrestrial creature from the species of "Scaldronian", who landed up in the jungle after he accidentally crashed his spacecraft.
- Gavin Peter as Tallbert, a reticulated giraffe.
- Adam Neill as Ribbert, an tree frog, who likes to eat objects, including Scaldronian weapons.
- John Guerrasio as Humph (speaking and vocal effects), a hedgehog.
- David Rintoul as Grogon, the evil captain of the Scaldronian empire, Fneep's father, and main antagonist.
- Emma Lungiswa De Vet as Ray, a firefly.
- Mattew Gair, Jason Pennycooke, Lynton Levengood and Claire Johnston as Wildebeests.
- Florrie Wilkinson as Baby Ostrich.
- Lucy Montgomery as Mama Ostrich (speaking and vocal effects).
- Brent Dawes as hugging Scaldronian.
- Ryno Ritter as Scaldronian crowd member.
Production
 |
The director Brant Dawes founded Sandcastle Studios in September 2017, during his trip to Forbach, a village located near the Circle Square Retail Park of the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius. As their first feature film, the studio partnered with Sunrise Studios. Production started in April 2018 and finished in March 2020, creating the first Mauritian-South African animated film.
“I wrote and made this movie so that anyone who watches it will enjoy it. It was important to me that as a father of four, I always try to find a movie that we can all watch. I’ve got a range of ages too, 5 to 15 years old, so finding a movie we can all watch, where a 5-year-old isn't too scared and the 15-year-old isn't bored, is tricky. This movie is definitely for a broad audience.”, according to director Brant Dawes.
The movie was animated using Autodesk Maya and rendered on Houdini's render farm GPU Mantra to create realistic hair on the animals and the aliens' "Glitter"-like slimy skin. Each animator used render farm machines with 96GB RAM-equipped Dell computers connected by Houdini grooming tools. For example, all the scenes set in the Scaldronian mothership provide thousands of moving complex effect sources, each reflecting back and forth off the background, the ship's lights and the characters' shadows. Each scene of the film took around 4 hours to be rendered and composed.
While most of the modelling, texture, animation and lighting was created in Mauritius, half of the entire production of the movie was produced in South Africa, with voices recorded in London, England, at Soho Square Studios and sound design, foley and final mix done in South Africa at Sunrise Productions in-house studios.
References
- ^ "How COVID-19 Changed Everything for Annecy Competition Feature 'Jungle Beat'". 15 June 2020. Archived from the original on 30 June 2020. Retrieved 3 July 2020.
- ^ "JUNGLE BEAT: THE MOVIE :British Board of Film Classification". www.bbfc.co.uk. British Board of Film Classification. Archived from the original on 2020-06-22. Retrieved 2020-06-27.
{{cite web}}:|archive-date=/|archive-url=timestamp mismatch; 2020-06-27 suggested (help) - ^ "From tots to teens, this is how kids' movies have changed to entice the entire family". Parent24. South Africa: News24. 2020-06-12. Archived from the original on 2020-06-22. Retrieved 2020-06-27.
- ^ Association, Press (2020-06-26). "Natasha Bedingfield: I'm actually quite pessimistic". Evening Express. Evening Express (Scotland). Archived from the original on 2020-06-22. Retrieved 2020-06-27.
{{cite web}}:|archive-date=/|archive-url=timestamp mismatch; 2020-06-27 suggested (help) - ^ "Feature Films in Competition: Jungle Beat: The Movie". www.annecy.org. Annecy, France: Annecy International Animated Film Festival. Archived from the original on 2020-06-22. Retrieved 2020-06-27.
{{cite web}}:|archive-date=/|archive-url=timestamp mismatch; 2020-06-27 suggested (help) - ^ "Jungle Beat: The Movie's Plot Summary on IMDB". IMDB. Retrieved 18 May 2021.
