Oscars: Expert Comment and Graduate Success - Video

Bournemouth University graduates can once again claim to have had success at the Academy Awards, as over 25 graduates worked on the film Jungle Book, which won the Visual Effects Award at this year's Academy Awards.

The BU graduates who worked on the visual effects for the film did so at production houses MPC and Weta.  One of the graduates who worked on the Jungle Book, Bhavesh Pandey (MA Digital Effects 2010-11), developed the wet fur for Baloo the Bear in the scene where Baloo is floating down the river with Mowgli singing ‘Bear Necessities’. 

The Oscars success continues a long tradition of BU graduates working on Oscar-nominated and Oscar-winning films. Last year, BU graduate Mark Ardington took to the stage to collect the Visual Effects Award Oscar for his work on the film Ex Machina, while fellow BU grad Andrew Lockley has twice walked the red carpet at the Academy Awards to collect Oscars for his work on Inception and Interstellar respectively. 

After sensational coverage of the 89th Academy Awards, a panel of BU experts, led by BU's Social Media Officer, Jasmine Connolly,  gave their thoughts on the technology and film-making behind some of this year's biggest hits, including visual effects work on Jungle Book, the hype behind La La Land, and the recognition given to Moonlight. 

The panel included: 

Sofronis Efstathiou - Senior Lecturer in Animation, Director of BFX Festival

Dr Philip Long - Head of the Tourism Academic Group

Dr William Proctor - Lecturer in Media, Culture and Communication

For more information about studying visual effects at Bournemouth University, visit our course pages.