In 2015, while managing projects at an art gallery in New York (i.e., mainly working at a computer all day), he started itching to do something with his hands again. That was right around the time famed artist Roxy Paine premiered Carcass, his fast-food restaurant made entirely of birch wood, including all the fryers, computers and everything else you’d find in a McDonalds or Burger King. Then there’s Paine’s Checkpoint piece: a life-size, wooden diorama of a TSA checkpoint.

Inspired by Paine’s installations, Kaths decided to try woodworking himself, combining it with music for a unique take. The first one was a wooden version of a guitar pedal connected to cords, which looked like they were coming straight from the wall. From there, Kaths let his imagination take over, creating fantastical machines only loosely based on real-life models. “The pieces I make reference real things,” he explained, like pianos and keyboards, but with a twist. For example, one keyboard looks like a Fender Rhodes or Wurlitzer — until you notice a few important details, namely that the sharp and flat keys aren’t in the right places. Kaths said he wants musicians, carpenters and other experts as well as laypeople to notice the differences.

So what kind of machines does one use to make wooden machines?

Kaths said he originally tried to chisel the wood to look like plugs and other electronics, then realized his work about work didn’t need to be that laborious. Now he’s hacked together a less painful process. He creates the plugs, knobs and other detail work using a router on a micro lathe he built after watching a YouTube video. He uses an XY plotter from Makeblock fitted with a laser engraver to design and burn knob-level markings, design indicator marks and other patterns on to his sculptures to make them look more like real-life music equipment and other types of machines. Kaths also experiments with the XY plotter as more of an instrument of artistic expression, using the laser to create “paintings” by strategically burning paper and gesso (a white paint mixture designed to prep a surface).

Makeblock sells the plotter as if it were a children’s toy, but he had to put it together himself and learn G-code to use it. “You can put a pencil, a pen, anything, and the thing will hold it like a paintbrush,” he said. Meanwhile, to create the cords for his wooden sculptures, he soaks about 100 wooden dowels at a time in water for two weeks, then steaming them for a couple hours until they’re “like a spaghetti noodle.” Finally, he bends and shapes them until they look convincingly like the cords tangled behind my TV, though with less dust and dog fur. (He said this method has a 70 percent success rate.)

A decade ago, Kaths would have been able to bend the dowels and use the lathe easily, but laser cutting? Forget about it. The technology has only been around since the 1960s, and Kaths would have had to seek out an expert to use an expensive laser-cutting machine. “Over the past 20 years or so, the technology has significantly become more affordable as patents have expired,” said Scott Van Campen, the executive director of Makerspace NYC. He estimates that the tools cost as little as one-fourth of their former price. That’s “allowed people to literally have high-tech machines on their kitchen tables. Three-dimensional printers, laser cutters, plotters and CNC routers all basically use the same technology to control the movements of the ‘tool’ of choice.”

Using these machines, Kaths estimated that one wooden artwork takes approximately one month to make (he has always worked a day job, but nights and weekends are devoted to his art practice).

Scar is still easy to distinguish from the other lions.

You can see this commitment in the characters, too. They’re emotive, but not to the same extent as the original movie. “If anyone had actually seen us over-animate these characters or over-design the worlds and the characters within them… I think it’s a very fine line and you produce something that just looks very strange if you push any one aspect of it too far,” Newman said. That doesn’t mean the animals are static, though. After the opening number, for instance, the camera lingers on a mouse that scratches its cheeks and scrambles up a rock — first unsuccessfully, then in a moment of understated triumph. It serves no narrative purpose — the sequence is merely visual fodder to sell you on the live-action illusion.

Other pieces of animation show the characters’ personalities. Scar slinks around to reflect his devious mind, for example. Pumbaa, on the other hand, trots around with a visible spring in his step — a clear nod to the character’s blissfully ignorant and happy-go-lucky attitude.

But there’s restraint. MPC trusted that the film’s documentary style could still engage the audience and make them feel for the creatures on screen. When you watch Planet Earth, Newman explained, there’s a ‘story’ that’s conveyed through careful editing and narration. That, combined with the beautiful cinematography, makes you care for the animals and their fate. A good example, he said, is the viral sequence from Planet Earth II that shows snakes chasing iguanas. “You’re still connected to that character,” he said. “You feel like you want that lizard to make it. You don’t want to see it [get] eaten by the snake. The lizard is not running around with a sad face or a panicked face. It’s still a lizard, but you’re still very much engaged, emotionally, in following the story.”

To make it work, the team needed large and incredibly detailed environments. Every location, including the Elephant Graveyard and Wildebeest Valley, was painstakingly realised and, more importantly, placed within a larger world map. “We always said we didn’t want to use back paintings in the background,” Newman said. “We wanted to try and ask: ‘How far can we push the environment into the background? How far can we extend the world?’ So, a lot of what we did was 3D, it was a full 3D environment. Just a lot of asset building. a lot of trees and plants and grass models were built, and we extended the world really far.”

Restrained skies made the movie more believable.

Some viewers have criticized the lack of emotion in the film. They miss the bright colours and surreal visuals that accompanied musical numbers like “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King” in the 1994 original. Others, like British film critic Mark Kermode, have questioned whether live action — or rather, the illusion of live action — is the right medium for a story that is, ultimately, fantastical and filled with singing.

Traditional animation allows characters to have a special elasticity. They can grin, twist and jump in ways that wouldn’t be possible in real life. Disney and Pixar have, of course, made films with stylized CG animation. Favreau had a vision for The Lion King, however, and ‘over-animating’ would have betrayed the movie’s documentary style. “As soon as you see an animator use a brow up shape to convey sadness, it’s like, ‘No, it doesn’t work. It just doesn’t work for what this movie is. Let’s dial it down. You don’t need it,'” Newman explained. “Its a strong sort of storytelling and a lot of that was conveyed through more subtle animation that was in keeping with the documentary style and the realism that we were going for.”

For some, the original will always reign supreme. Others will prefer the Broadway version. But many have, and will, appreciate the new Lion King for its stunning visuals and commitment to a single, distinctive style. It is, if nothing else, a technical triumph. And whether or not you like the end result, it will go down in history as one of the first ‘virtual productions’ with a Hollywood budget. One that proves the potential of VR as a way to make movies.

Images: Disney/MPC Film