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White Lion released on 19 February |
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Almost twenty years in the making, White Lion is the brainchild of executive producer Rodney Fuhr, owner of the Johannesburg Lion Park.whose dream has always been to make a feature film with real lions. Back in the 1980s, Rodney envisaged filming a tawny lion grow from a cub to adulthood. When lion wrangler Kevin Richardson came onboard as producer, Rodney put up the independent funding to transform the dream to reality. Despite filming with real lions, White Lion isn’t a documentary: it’s a fictional account of Letsatsi, a rare white lion, who embarks upon a perilous journey of survival. The film stars John Kani, Jamie Bartlett, AJ Van der Merwe, and Thabo Malema, although the real stars are the lions. Rodney’s original concept was about a tawny lion, which are pretty common in South Africa, but he changed his mind. Kevin explains, “As the original story was about a tawny lion, I had all my little tawnies of all age-groups lined-up, and then we got the call saying, ‘Hang on a moment. What would you say if we cast the main hero as a white lion!’ It made sense, but it also made my life a nightmare. We only had a few white lions at the Lion Park and our main hero white lion, an adult male, is probably the only completely workable one in the country. We actually had to source two lions to portray the teenage period of Letsatsi’s life. The lions we finally used were ‘Bruce’ and ‘Bravo,’ who were aged just fourteen-months at the time.” Director Michael Swan says Rodney’s parameters were stringent and incredibly difficult to achieve. “We had to represent authentic wild lion behavior and the challenge was to tell the story entirely through the action of the lions. It isn’t The Lion King. No lips move and we aren’t relying on animatronics, puppets, or visual effects.” The director had the dual role of cinematographer on the set, which he says was “relatively painless. "We were filming with two, sometimes three cameras, so were able to capture a variety of angles throughout the shoot. We also repeated things until we got them right; it was as simple as that. Animals won’t do exactly the same thing more than once, so we had to carefully plan our edit and ensure that the way we covered the action with our cameras enabled us to capture the material needed to sell the story. To an extent it was laborious, but also very rewarding.” The filmmakers shot on a high definition digital format using Sony 750P HDCams, which were bought by the production. “We opted for that instead of 35mm,” explains Michael, “because we were shooting an enormous amount of footage – up to five hours per day. Translating that to film would have been enormously expensive, so we saved money there, which gave us the freedom to concentrate on capturing the material needed without worrying about the cost of stock.” During the course of production, 24 white lions and 24 tawny lions were used. The film was shot on location at The Kingdom of the White Lion, an enterprise 50 miles outside of the city of Johannesburg, along the Crocodile River, established especially for this film. Shooting came to a grinding halt in 2006 when vital footage was stolen from the producers. “Crime can’t keep us down but we are adamant filmmakers. It set us back and we had to rethink a lot of things but we actually managed to film the same stuff again,” Kevin told Eyewitness News. White Lion will be released nationwide on 19 February 2010. The film has already earned three SAFTA Award nominations: Michael Swan for Best Cinematographer; Phillip Miller for Best Music Composition; and Ivan Millborrow for Best Sound Designer. Sally Fink | |||
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