Kangaroo
Directed by Kate Woods
Synopsis
Kangaroo is a family comedy and redemption tale about disgraced TV Host, Chris, and a young indigenous girl, Charlie, who work together to rescue and rehabilitate a group of orphaned joeys in a remote Northern Territory outback community. The film is inspired by the life of Chris ‘Brolga’ Barns, founder of The Kangaroo Sanctuary, in Alice Springs.
What we did
Stage23 co-founder Jonathan Hairman served as VFX supervisor on the feature film which included a team of 21 VFX artists bringing seamless CGI to creatures and remote environments across 12 weeks of production work. The Stage23 team were engaged early in the pre-production phase to assist with creative planning, budget and location a creature wrangling in Alice Springs.
Hundreds of hours of research on Kangaroo morphology and anatomy was central to rendering the photoreal, full CG replications of various sized and aged Kangaroos from joeys to the full grown central ‘roo character Roger. Key sequences included working with stunt co-ordinator Dean Gould on the intricate fight scenes between the fully grown ‘roo Roger and lead actor Ryan Corr, involving a stunt actor in a harness as a stand in for the fully CG realised Roger. Intense anatomical study on Kangaroos interactions and behaivour were also vital to the work to replicate naturalistic interactions between the creatures and their environment to create the seamless blend mixing real creatures with digital counterparts.