Growing a GMO pig from page to screen as Netflix moves into movies in a big way
The giant genetically modified pig of Bong Joon-ho’s “Okja” is eight-feet tall, 13-feet long and would, if real, weigh six tons. It looks most like a hippo, but it has big floppy dog ears and moves a little like an elephant.
It’s a hybrid creature for a hybrid movie. Like the South Korean director’s previous films (“Snowpiercer,” “The Host”), “Okja” is a mishmash of genres: magical fantasy and grotesque political satire. It’s a cross between Spielberg and slaughterhouse.
Since its debut at the Cannes Film Festival, “Okja” has been thrust into debates over Netflix’s impact on traditional movie-going. Most large movie theatre chains in North America and Bong’s native South Korea have refused to screen a film that will simultaneously hit Netflix’s streaming service on June 28.
But on screens large or small, the animal named Okja is
a wonder to behold. She snorts and slobbers, does running bellyflops into lakes and shoots poop like a low-calibre machine gun. Up until now, Netflix original films have been largely lower budget affairs or documentaries. The giant pig of “Okja” is Netflix’s first specialeffect marvel.
The largely English-language, international film, made for $50 million US, boasts a cast of Tilda Swinton, Jake Gyllenhaal and Paul Dano. But the heart of it is a young Korean girl named Mija (An Seo Hyun) and her loyal pig companion. After 10 years raising Okja, the corporation that created these “super pigs” wants them back.
While in Seoul in 2011, Bong’s eye caught an animal on the street with a melancholy look. The image stuck with him. “The very beginning was from the image of the animal,” says Bong. “The face of the animal looked quite sad in my imagination. Sad and shy and a little bit in pain. So I was thinking of why? What’s the reason she has such a sad face? What’s the origin and destiny of that animal? Naturally, those industry things come in.”
Bong began sketching the animal that would become Okja. When he first mentioned the film to Swinton (they were driving to the airport after the Seoul première of “Snowpiercer”) he merely showed her a pencil drawing of the animal.
To flesh out his own sketches, Bong turned to Jang Hee-chul, the conceptual artist who designed the monster of the director’s 2007 thriller “The Host.” Bong calls Jang, whose monster for “The Host” looked like a bottom-feeding fish but with legs, “a young genius.”
He’s no less effusive about visual effects supervisor Erik-Jan De Boer, the Oscar-winning animator who crafted the tiger Richard Parker in Ang Lee’s “Life of Pi.”
“He’s crazy about animals,” says Bong. “He goes into the butcher shop and he studies the cuts and the crevices of animal parts. Others usually just look at the outer exterior, but Erik conceived Okja with not just the skin but the arteries, the blood, the fat and the bone structure.”
They first met in late 2014. Bong showed him the concept work but didn’t yet have a script ready. “That was a pretty interesting meeting, being shown that crazy design and having no idea where the story was going to go,” says De Boer.
De Boer quickly began riffling through YouTube videos to study different animal behaviours, but some of his research was more hands on. Swinton’s springer spaniel Rosie (one of her four) was an inspiration. A beagle also largely informed Okja’s ears and hangdog look.
“For ears, we looked at canines and elephants. For the skin, we looked at hippos and manatees and also elephants a little bit. For behaviour and some of the intelligence and connection with the owner, we looked again at canines and Labradors and beagles, especially,” said De Boer. “It’s a hybrid of references we used to make this hybrid of an animal.”
Bong was particularly fond of a YouTube video about a hippo named Jessica living in a house. They also photographed hippos to get a more sinewy skin. Pigs, ironically, were less of an influence because of Okja’s size.
“There’s a lot of people nowadays who think they’re buying one of those little mini-piglets and they end up with a huge animal walking around their house,” said De Boer. “There’s a ton of online footage where you see a lot of interesting interactions and behavioural stuff. We definitely keyed off of that.”
As much as computer-generated effects have advanced in recent years, placing a CGI character amid live-action scenes is still arduous and expensive to do.
It changes a film’s entire production pipeline and affects every lighting decision.
“We didn’t have one of those shots, we had hundreds of those,” said De Boer. “Almost in every shot, we had somebody putting their hands on Okja. In some cases we had six people touching Okja and we had to legitimatize all of it.”
But the seamlessness and tactile feel of Okja is also what sets it above many others. During filming, they used a foam puppet rig to stand in for Okja — sometimes the whole animal, sometimes just part of it. It was controlled by VFX animation director Stephen Clee, who typically puppeteered the head, himself. Clee stayed connected by radio with De Boer.
It all made for a fairly outlandish looking shoot, from National Parks in Korea to Wall Street in New York.
“We were running around with these foam pieces and everyone’s looking at you wondering what the hell is going on,” said De Boer. “It was spectacular filmmaking.”