(tribal chanting music)
How and when did our human species begin?
The NHK special Out Of The Cradle was planned
to explore the simple yet profound question.
But the production faced a huge problem.
How could humanity's ancient ancestors
and their long-lost worlds
be brought back to life on screen?
Surmounting this daunting challenge required
the latest in research and computer graphics.
(tribal chanting music)
Ultra-high resolution CGI to recreate
our distant evolutionary ancestors with amazing realism.
Creating these images of stunning quality
was the result of a new kind of collaboration
between a world-renowned video game developer
and expert scholars.
The quality of CGI for this program
was quite exceptional.
I think it's the first of its kind.
This ambitious project
exploring the millions of years of human evolution
has been two years in the making.
Get ready for a behind-the-scenes look
at the amazing process that has made this exciting journey
back through human evolution possible.
(suspenseful music)
This is a scene from the NHK special Out Of The Cradle.
You can almost the animal's warm breath.
We are seeing an ancient Earth,
millions of years before cameras were invented.
(grunts)
The grass, the ground, the sun, the trees,
everything, including this hominid,
was rendered by computers.
(upbeat orchestral music)
This breathtaking virtual world was created
by a leading Japanese video game company.
Its hits include enduring series like Final Fantasy
and Dragon Quest.
Now the state of the art technology they have honed
for producing games is being used to create
the lost worlds of early hominids.
(speaking in foreign language)
Game creator Hajime Tabata is leading the team
who are conjuring up this prehistoric Earth.
(speaking in foreign language)
We do have comprehensive digital
movie making technology and expertise,
but we've had no opportunity to use it
for any other application except for making video games.
We knew there would probably be many hurdles
to overcome along the way,
but our team was eager to tackle them.
So we accepted the offer right away.
(percussive music)
Creating a computer-generated movie
begins with storyboarding.
Storyboards are made up of sketches.
You could call them the blueprint for the movie.
(tribal chanting music)
The test of skill for a CGI production crew
is how well they can translate the storyboards
into a compelling film.
Based on these storyboards, they must first gather
reference materials about prehistoric Earth
and its inhabitants.
Hominids, animals, and everything else in the environment
must be digitally modeled.
So they assemble and create
a huge range of reference material.
These materials are then condensed
into concept art like this.
Concept art provides a visual representation
of key ideas and moods for the project.
All of the creators work
from these master design references.
They are critical in providing a shared visual vocabulary
for everyone working on the project.
Canadian illustrator Naomi Savoie is in charge
of the concept art for Out Of The Cradle.
Since we're making this time
more of an educational-based program,
we really had to work closely
with anthropologists and experts
just to ensure, really, that the things we were making
in the program was actually accurate.
So we had several visits where experts would actually come
in the office and teach us about all sorts of things
regarding to that period of time,
and we had regular checkups and feedbacks and conversations
to make sure that everything was correct.
As well, we actually did some extra activities,
where we were making stones and tools from scratch
to see actually how it would feel like
to make these things back then,
and learn the proper way to make it.
So that was also pretty interesting.
The CGI in the series is created
on the principle of reconstructing the distant past
as faithfully as possible.
So the advice of academic experts from various fields
is a vital component.
(upbeat music)
Anthropologist Hisao Baba provides overall supervision
(speaking in foreign language)
As researchers, we should normally only refer
to the things that we are completely sure about,
but when it comes to making CGI, we have to take some risks,
although we do sometimes hesitate.
But by going out on a limb a little,
we can show things in a way
that's more readily understandable to a general audience,
and then the final product provides a basis
for exchange of views among many researchers.
The gaming company gave us special permission
to film the team as they create the CGI.
This is their office.
(upbeat orchestral music)
The team that created the CGI for Out Of The Cradle
is the same team in charge of the famous game series
Final Fantasy.
These creative talents have taken on a big challenge,
to reconstruct a world none of us have ever actually seen.
Let's follow the workflow used to create
a computer-generated movie.
Using the storyboard as a blueprint,
a crude version of the animation known as a previsualization
is created.
This previz, as it's also called,
acts as a sort of visual script.
After that comes the process of making the digital models,
known as assets.
Then comes this animation process,
where movies are made from these assets.
The final step in the process is placing them into a scene.
Let's take a look at how these processes
have unfolded in the creation of the CGI
for Out Of The Cradle.
Our first character is a very early hominid species
called ardipithecus ramidus.
It is thought to have walked on two legs
and lived approximately 4.4 million years ago.
This CGI version of ardipithecus ramidus
is amazingly lifelike.
Look at how naturally it moves.
The skin and hair textures,
as well as the facial expressions,
are packed with ultra-realistic detail.
It's surprising how a computer-generated image
can be so expressive,
but it feels as if though we saw it
in a live action film.
These are fossil bones from ardipithecus ramidus,
discovered in Ethiopia between 1994 and 1995.
Numerous reference sources,
including the analytical data from these bones,
were used to resurrect
a 4.4-million-year-old hominid individual
in virtual form.
To reconstruct the ramidus male,
they first created his basic body.
Character modeler Kazuaki Iwasawa
was in charge of this step.
(speaking in foreign language)
The process is like building
a model from clay, but on a computer.
This process is called digital modeling.
The design factors in height, arm length,
and other basic body measures of ramidus
are determined here.
The modeling for the Out Of The Cradle series
was exceptionally challenging.
(speaking in foreign language)
I had no idea what this ramidus looked like,
so I had to ask the expert researchers a lot of questions
about its characteristic ecology, muscles,
skeleton, and so on.
And based on that, I kept tweaking the outline.
I repeated that process again and again.
Iwasawa built the digital model
in close consultation with experts.
His first attempts were met with harsh critique.
Advisory hearings with experts were used to evaluate
the digital creation of ardipithecus ramidus.
In order to keep the model
as scientifically accurate as possible,
experts were asked to check the quality of the CGI
at each production stage.
(speaking in foreign language)
Hisao Baba is an anthropologist
assigned as the overall supervisor for the series' CGI.
Today, he is assessing the proportions
of the latest iteration of ardipithecus ramidus.
(speaking in foreign language)
It looks like the hands
are a bit too large in this area.
They look much bigger than the feet.
Don't the hands seem about twice as big as the feet?
Why is that?
Or is that just because of the lighting?
Baba is unhappy at the hands' proportion
relative to the feet.
(speaking in foreign language)
Regardless of the data,
I think we should avoid giving an unnatural impression.
Baba scrutinizes the model closely,
right down to the size of the fingernails.
(upbeat music)
The model had to undergo numerous checks like this
before receiving final approval.
(speaking in foreign language)
The way the fingers attach,
the proportions of the segments, all those little details,
I worked back and forth with the experts,
refining it bit by bit, to arrive at the final form.
These fine-tuning rounds
have taken five months.
Now the ramidus body model is finished.
It's still just a featureless surface,
but the shape is perfect.
It's time for the next step in the process to begin.
Ramidus was an erect, bipedal primate
that lived 4.4 million years ago.
Its gait was slightly different from modern apes
and modern humans.
How can that be recreated?
Next comes a process called setup.
(speaking in foreign language)
Though the character model is completed,
it is still static like this,
so we need a few tricks to get it to move.
He adds bones and joints to the digital body.
These give the model its range of motion.
But that bending looks pretty unnatural.
Basically, after the first processing,
when the joints flex like this,
some parts still stretch out too thin
or shrink too short.
So we correct them all, but it's a tricky job
to fix the body parts in motion into smooth, natural shapes.
Here is the leg after some corrections.
Now the flesh looks natural.
This process demands a keen understanding
of human body anatomy.
(speaking in foreign language)
If the bones move like this,
then what should the shapes of the bending parts look like?
That's my daily struggle.
Now, thanks to a skeleton with joints,
the ramidus model is able to move.
The next challenge is its bipedal walking,
the species' most important trait.
Motion capture techniques are used to digitally simulate
the gait of ramidus.
A live human actor's movements are recorded
and that data is used to animate the digital character.
The actor's movements are captured with an array
of over 100 specialized cameras.
To ensure accuracy of the movements,
supervising anthropologist Hisao Baba also attends
the motion capture session.
He provides instructions on how to walk.
The force of the feet
pushing the earth backward should not be very strong.
It's somewhat like an elderly person's walking style,
say, an 80-year-old.
Think of it that way.
Not much backward force,
so should I move like this?
That's it.
That's about right.
Let's try it.
Rolling.
(gentle music)
A motion capture system makes it possible
to assess in real time the subtleties of how the movement
translates to the digital model.
The legs are a little too far apart.
Can you bring them closer together?
Okay, rolling.
The movements are recorded over and over,
with fine adjustments made each time.
Okay, rolling.
There shouldn't be
alternating swinging of the arms.
Their arms would dangle, like this,
just the part from the elbows down.
Okay, rolling.
It's not easy mimicking
an ancient walking motion that no one has ever seen.
An hour goes by in a flash.
(speaking in foreign language)
The way the arms swing is not quite even,
but that may actually add some personality.
The left arm seems to swing a little longer,
but slight inconsistencies may be better.
The motion capture data is fed
into the digital model.
(gentle orchestral music)
The result is a stripped down digital animation.
This is a previsualization, or previz.
4.4 million years after it last walked Earth in the flesh,
ardipithecus ramidus starts walking again
on a computer screen.
Its movements are so convincing already,
but there's still more work to be done.
(speaking in foreign language)
Even though we can get the movement
from the motion capture, it's not perfect yet.
There are little glitches in how the cameras pick things up
and it doesn't capture fingers.
See how the pointer finger is off,
how it doesn't make contact with the ground?
Motion capture will always leave
some unnatural glitches in the movement.
Those have to be corrected manually, one by one.
Kawamura has a technique to make the movement
look more believable.
(speaking in foreign language)
In the case of computer-generated images,
if, for example, the fingers touch down rigidly,
it will just look fake.
Actually, a little bit of flattening motion
or some more tensions in the pushing motion
are absolutely necessary.
If you don't add those little details
to the character's movements,
the finished animation will lack realism,
looking wooden and fake, that is, very much like CGI.
Kawamura filmed his own hand movements
to carefully observe how the joints and muscles behave,
and then he used that information to improve the animation.
(speaking in foreign language)
There is a lot of trial and error.
Until you actually see it animated,
you can't tell exactly what the range of movement should be,
where to pump it up or tone it down.
Okay, rolling.
In this motion capture session,
they have to record an even more challenging movement,
running.
Here, we really don't get the impression
he's running fast.
It's hard to run fast
when you can't push your legs backward.
Right, it's all in the glutes.
Because ramidus lived at the dawn
of bipedal locomotion, he was probably not a skilled runner.
Therefore, the animation must look appropriately awkward.
As a reference, Baba looks at the way gorillas run.
Here is the final animation of ardipithecus ramidus.
It certainly looks realistic.
Its movement is based on a live human performance,
which has been tweaked manually to become even more natural.
The virtual ramidus is looking more and more
like a real animal.
So what's next?
The smooth skin has been covered in fur,
and another related step will be essential
in making the digital model come alive.
The fur must move naturally.
Shiho Kobayashi takes charge of the task.
(speaking in foreign language)
I'm handling the fur simulation.
It's the process of physical simulation.
We simplify objects, assign them mass,
and add the pull of gravity.
The digitally modeled fur is static at first.
To make it move, parameters like hair weight,
gravity factor, and levels of wind
are fed to a computing system
to calculate how the fur should move.
Kobayashi uses a number of techniques
to make each strand of hair behave in a lifelike way.
The process is long and intricate,
but the results look great.
Today, a year and a half since the beginning of the project,
the making of the ramidus CGI is entering its final stage.
They still have work to do on the face of ramidus.
Perhaps more than anything,
the face is what will breathe life into this digital model.
This tricky final stage
is literally a vital life-giving stroke.
(triumphal music)
Creating the character's face involves multiple processes.
The process is called sculpting.
Now we add the fine wrinkles
and other details onto the skin.
Much like with a real sculpture,
Iwasawa draws in the wrinkles one by one.
Old fashioned artistry unfold at the heart
of cutting edge CGI production.
(speaking in foreign language)
I'm taking my inspiration from chimpanzees,
to model the facial wrinkles of ramidus.
The texture and color of the skin
are also modeled after chimps.
Each spot and wrinkle is drawn by hand.
After the sculpting process comes surfacing.
This adds skin color, spots, and other features.
A scientific basis is used
in the design of the skin texture.
(speaking in foreign language)
Since ramidus lived in the forest,
the skin probably wasn't completely dark.
I looked through chimp photos
and saw ones with spotted skin,
so I decided to try that on ramidus.
Now for the finishing touches.
(speaking in foreign language)
Now I'm doing what we call the facial setup,
the process to add facial expressions to the model.
Specifically, I use a trick to get the facial moved
by using a combination of different mimetic muscles.
Mimetic muscles is another name
for the facial muscles.
We modern humans also have mimetic muscles,
and by moving them, we create different expressions.
To create the digital ramidus face,
20 to 30 different facial expressions were set up.
All of them were modeled after human and chimp expressions.
Not even human actors can be so animated.
(speaking in foreign language)
The nose, mouth, and cheeks,
it was painstaking to make those areas expressive.
So what do you think about the outcome?
I wouldn't say it's 100% perfect,
but it's in the 60 to 70% range.
Shouldn't the rate be a bit higher?
(laughs) Maybe.
It'll be up to the viewers to decide.
The digital ramidus
now has a very expressive face.
It can make more than 50 types of facial expressions
through varied combinations of muscular movements.
It's been about nine months
since the work on ramidus started.
Out of a complex series of tasks,
the finalized ramidus has emerged.
At last, we can come face to face
with the primitive ape man.
(percussive music)
We still need to recreate everything in this virtual world.
This shot, for example, requires more
than just making the character.
Look at the background, the whole collection of trees,
shrubs, and grass.
The background design needs to reinvent the Earth
of 4.4 million years ago.
Millions of trees are needed to create this environment.
(speaking in foreign language)
The most difficult part
was figuring out the habitat of ramidus should look.
He conducted in-depth research
on ancient and modern plants from across the globe,
and then created the digital models
of necessary plants one by one.
While I was modeling these plants,
I always felt unsure about everything.
I could not feel relieved until the experts approved
the models I showed them.
It's taken three whole months
to determine the full set of vegetation types
to be included in the virtual environment.
Then the plants need to be placed,
but can you imagine just how much work is required
to fill up even just this one shot?
(speaking in foreign language)
I'm placing so many objects,
but they are all natural things,
so they should vary in shape.
Environments and locations are all differing factors.
For example, in this lot, seen from this angle,
separately created plants are all placed together,
but as similar shapes are bunched,
the shot will look unnatural.
So you must make individual corrections on each shot.
It's a lot of work.
Creating the habitat for ramidus
may have been tougher than creating ramidus itself.
Another technique for making
this prehistoric world look real is the lighting.
(speaking in foreign language)
In the digital world,
there is no sense of light until you put one there.
There's no sky or sun.
This section introduces the sky and the sun
that match the world, setting the angles
to incorporate the light
and thus give finishing touches to the CGI.
In the dark space, a sky and a sun are placed.
By controlling the hue, brightness, and angle of the light,
he optimizes the lighting of the scene.
(gentle piano music)
Finding the best angle for illuminating the characters
is an important job of a lighting specialist.
Without lighting, the completed ramidus model
would look like nothing but a black blob.
In this scene, the lighting helps create the atmosphere
of ramidus' forest home.
The art of lighting is a big part of making ramidus
come to life.
The scene is almost finished
and even these pieces of fruit were the product
of thorough research and painstaking work.
(speaking in foreign language)
This time, I created a type of fruit
called myrianthus.
This is a myrianthus,
or a giant yellow mulberry.
It has a knobbed surface
and is made up of many layers of pulp.
(speaking in foreign language)
It is native to Africa
and is frequently eaten by chimpanzees.
We don't have this type of fruit in Japan.
To create the model of the fruit,
Katsuyama collected a lot of reference data
about myrianthus itself,
but also about other types of fruit.
She gathered not only data,
but also bought various different kinds of fruit,
and carefully studied them
to make the digital myrianthus more realistic.
She seems to be picky about one aspect in particular.
(speaking in foreign language)
I like texture mapping,
so I sort of created my own fruit stand.
I built four different base models
with different patterns
from which I created more variations.
That part was a lot of fun.
Katsuyama also created
a whole series of models representing varied stages
of the fruit's life, from green to ripe to rotten.
She spent two weeks observing the rotting process
of real fruit, prior to her modeling work.
To make the myrianthus look even more real,
one last touch has been added.
Let's rewind.
Can you spot the bugs flying around the fruit?
(bugs buzzing)
That was added by a creator in charge of visual effects.
This is Masanori Yamao, a virtual effects designer.
Here's the bug that should be flying around.
This model already has its wing flapping animation.
Zoomed in, we can see that it's a fly.
That's what's buzzing around the fruit.
Even the detailed work of making this small fly buzz around
has to be created.
He's also particular about something else.
(speaking in foreign language)
Well, on this animation, I debated
whether flies should go near the fruit.
Took me a while to work this out.
I mean, what happens if they go near each other?
Because in real life, when bugs get close together,
they don't just keep flying.
They're actually aware of each other and react accordingly.
These flies are so tiny
that some viewers might not even have noticed them.
But they give a visual clue to the sweet odor
of the myrianthus fruit,
and they even hint at the passing of time
responsible for the fruit life.
(tribal chanting music)
Finally, after so many stages of work,
done by so many creative talents,
the Earth of 4.4 million years ago
that was once home to ardipithecus ramidus
has been digitally reborn.
Now let's explore this prehistoric world.
(grunts)
(tribal chanting music)
You would never be able to film this today
on any place on Earth.
It was lost a long time ago.
The prehistoric landscape
and the life of our distant human ancestor
has now come to life in a hyper-realistic movie.
(speaking in foreign language)
The quality of CGI for this program
was quite exceptional.
I think it's the first of its kind.
The overall impression is different.
I mean, it doesn't only recreate the body shape,
but also the skin texture,
the way the fur is slightly disarrayed,
and how all these elements change when the character moves,
and also the facial expressions.
The characters can make a puzzled face,
show a sense of danger,
or even make a truly subtle expression.
All those delicate movements are brilliantly recreated
and the integration of the characters with the environment
is also superb.
For example, you can really feel
that the sun is beating down and how hot it is.
You can easily empathize with the characters.
You can feel their relief
when they reach the cool shade of the trees.
I've never seen any computer-generated movie
that can convey this level of reality.
(percussive music)
For this project,
CGI was used to also reconstruct other hominid species
and their habitats from different epochs.
This is Earth of 3.5 million years ago.
900,000 years have passed since the time of ramidus.
The star of this era is a species
that lived in groups in plains.
Its forests had declined due to global aridification.
They are australopithecus afarensis,
a bit of a tongue-twisting name.
Let's take a look at their life.
(crunching)
The group is foraging together.
(elephants trumpeting)
But danger may be lurking.
A predator pounces.
(grunting)
(squealing and grunting)
Yes, in this epoch, hominids were prey to carnivores.
They were largely defenseless against the ferocious enemies.
(dramatic music)
(bug buzzing)
This is Earth, 2.4 million years ago,
when it was inhabited by another hominid species,
homo habilis.
They are considered a very important species.
Homo habilis were the first proto-humans to use tools
and may have even been responsible
for the invention of stone tools.
This group seems to have spotted something.
(grunting)
They've come upon a pack of hyenas feeding.
(bugs buzzing)
(grunting)
Will they try to steal the kill?
(grunting and squealing)
Very bold, but to survive, they have to eat.
Some researchers hypothesize
that the invention of stone tools
may have been a happy accident.
Out Of The Cradle dares to recreate that scene,
based on this hypothesis.
(grunting)
(gentle piano music)
(grunting)
Homo erectus lived 1.8 million years ago.
This species had two key traits.
The first is that they started hunting
other animals as prey.
The second is that their body shapes and movements
had come to resemble our species much more closely
than any earlier ones.
Since they look so much like modern humans,
a combination of live action filming
and digital recreations were used to reconstruct their life.
Location shooting was done in Australia.
Australia was chosen,
as it offers a variety of pristine natural environments,
from desert to forest to coastlines.
This ambitious effort to bring homo erectus back to life
was undertaken by a Japanese production team
working alongside filmmakers from Australia and Hollywood.
Around 100 people in total were involved in the shoot.
This man is playing homo erectus, our main character.
He is made up with prosthetics before the shoot.
Let's take a peek at how the special effect makeup is done.
A prosthetic makeup artist from Hollywood
will give the actor a face that turns the clock back
1.8 million years.
A special mask restores the raised cheekbones
and the brow ridge that are characteristic to homo erectus.
The makeup artist took a cast of the actor's face
and, under the guidance of anthropologist Hisao Baba,
built a mask with these features.
After two hours on the makeup chair,
his modern human face travels back in time
to create a 1.8 million year old homo species.
The actor's face is now that of homo erectus.
He's also wearing a green cap
so that they can add digital hair later on.
Essentially, it's a high tech wig.
And three, two, one, action!
It's finally time to roll the cameras.
First up is a scene of homo erectus hunting.
And action!
The prey is a species that no longer exists,
so it will have to be added digitally.
For shooting purposes, he stabs his spear into a prop.
(upbeat music)
When the live action footage shot in Australia
is combined with a digital model created in Japan,
it looks something like this.
For Mark Risso-Gill, the producer of the Australian shoot,
this was a brand new experience.
New people, new experiences, new locations.
This is very rewarding for me as a producer.
So, yeah, it was a great opportunity.
During their month on location,
they shot a variety of scenes with homo erectus.
All right, Cory, and we also probably--
Cinematographer Adam Clark
explains the shoot's difficulty.
There have been a lot of VFX elements
and, of course, as going into real locations and shooting,
but also having to bear in mind the visual effects,
the prosthetics, the post-production side of it,
that has challenges of its own right.
We've been to the DIWA fields
and we had to build an 80 by 20 blue screen,
and while there's always pressure to shoot at the time,
there's also the time that you are required
to get all of those elements together and right.
So at the end of the day, somebody said
put the compulsives together, actually,
that has information that they require.
Take one.
In this scene, a group of homo erectus
feast on meet from their prey.
(faint speaking)
(gentle music)
The primal food source for homo erectus
gradually transitioned from plants to meat.
Some experts believe the meat-eating diet
fueled an increase in their brain size.
To reestablish a vivid, prehistoric world,
you need something beyond visuals
of ancients species and their habitats.
The production also needed to create the right sounds.
(speaking in foreign language)
The right sounds include the speech of neanderthals
and homo sapiens.
(speaking in foreign language)
Reconstructing the language of our human ancestors
was one of the project's daring challenges.
(speaking in foreign language)
Good, and we wanna kinda flow to the next gesture.
So these have all been part of a sentence.
(speaking in foreign language)
For advice on the proto-language
used by the characters, the team turned to Andrew Byrd,
a historical linguist.
But how does he reconstruct something
spoken in distant prehistory?
We don't know if the neanderthals had language.
The further along we get within our research,
the more likely it seems that they did have language,
but we do know a couple things.
First off, we know that they were highly intelligent.
Second, we know that their anatomy,
while slightly different from that of homo sapiens,
was almost certainly tolerant,
or almost certainly permitted the production of speech.
Now that speech may have sounded different
from that of our own, but it would've been something,
I would imagine, fairly similar.
This scene depicts the possible first encounter
between neanderthals and homo sapiens,
as imagined by researchers.
The neanderthals shout as they run away.
What does that mean?
Reason the word for father
for the Neanderthals was ba-bu,
and essentially used babbling as an inspiration there.
But, of course, babies aren't babbling about everything,
so there are other concepts
that a baby's not gonna be able to create.
So I used onomatopoeia for that.
The idea is that there are certain sounds in the world
that we try to imitate and that becomes the word,
and so the idea that came to me was that to wait
is the idea of having two feet planting down in the ground,
in the mud, and that you're waiting,
physically waiting there.
So the word is p'uk'a, which is created to imitate
the planting of feet within the mud.
Another sound that needed to be reconstructed
was that of prehistoric music.
It can be heard during a scene where a group of homo sapiens
perform in a ritual.
(chanting in foreign language)
Here is the man who created the music of early homo sapiens.
(flute music)
He is Rupert Till
of the University of Huddersfield in the UK.
He is both an archeologist and a composer.
And it makes a very deep sound.
He's been conducting research
on the music of the paleolithic era for many years.
(whirring)
I tried to avoid using any sounds or instruments
that exist today.
These are sounds that are being made as part of a ritual,
and the music and the dance and everything comes together.
So I try to use natural sounds, sounds from the body,
clapping, singing, making sounds with your voice,
and the instruments we know about,
like prehistoric ancient flute sounds.
(clapping)
Till also found something ideal
to help achieve the sounds from ancient times.
(grunting)
I was really lucky to be able to go to some caves in Spain
and while we were there, we were looking for rocks
that ring when you hit them,
and in this cave, we discovered these amazing stalagmites,
stalagmites from the ground
and stalagmites from the ceiling,
and when you hit them, we hit them with a very soft mallet
so that it wouldn't damage them,
some of them ring like bells.
11, (stalagmite ringing), 12,
(stalagmite ringing) 13.
14, 15, 16, 17.
(clapping and flute music)
Even over these incomplete images,
Till's ritualistic music lends an enchanting atmosphere.
(chanting in foreign language)
(speaking in foreign language)
I think it's important to convey
actual images of ancient people to the public.
As researchers, we try to grasp the past
as accurately as possible,
based on previous excavations and research.
And these technologies are a truly fantastic means
of communicating our discoveries to the public.
Thanks to a vast amount of reference material,
the expertise and insight of many scholars,
and state-of-the-art digital imaging technology,
these lost prehistoric worlds
have been brought back to life.
If a real ramidus could see this digital model of himself,
how would he react?
What words of surprise would the neanderthal blurt out?
(grunting)
(speaking in foreign language)
Digital images will spark your imagination,
and they make perhaps make you feel closer
to the prehistoric species.
(orchestra tuning)
In Shibuya, Tokyo, today the soundtrack
for Out Of The Cradle series is being recorded.
(speaking in foreign language)
Shu Kanematsu and Takashi Ohmama
are the two talented young musicians
who composed and performed the original music
for the series.
The original score exceeds 40 pieces.
One, two.
(orchestral music)
An ambitious project to recreate human evolution
in hyper-realistic CGI.
A two-year production of stunning images
has been, in fact, driven by good old fashioned artistry,
contrary to the stereotype image
of cutting edge digital media.
In much the same way that human evolution
was a long and thorough process,
from standing upright to inventing tools
to acquiring language
and, ultimately, the arrival of modern humans.
This cutting edge CGI has come to life
through painstaking creativity and knowledge
from artists and researchers alike.
So for the first time, we can see how this stunning series
came Out Of The Cradle.