Israeli Tech Helps ‘Jungle Book’ Snatch Visual Effects Oscar

This article was first published by The Times of Israel and was re-posted with permission.

The live action remake of “The Jungle Book,” a 1967 Disney classic, won the Oscar for best visual effects at the 89th Annual Academy Awards Sunday night in Los Angeles.

The film, a huge success at the box office, relied on computer generated imagery, known as CGI, to recreate the tale of Mowgli, the orphaned human boy who is raised by animals.

It also used Mellanox Technologies, an Israeli supplier of data center server and storage system solutions, which offers the bandwidth necessary to stream and distribute films like “The Jungle Book” and previous blockbusters, such as “The Martian,” “Gone Girl,” “X-Men,” “Godzilla” and other films that grow in complexity and pixel density each year.

The Jungle Book 2016 Film. Photo via Disney/The Jungle Book’s Facebook’s Page

“Resolution and effects are getting more complicated,” said Eyal Waldman, founder, CEO and president of the NASDAQ-traded Yokne’am Illit company. “You need telecommunication that is faster; you need more bandwidth to watch movies.”

To highlight the animation and special effects nominees that use Mellanox, the company, known for some of its popular, unconventional online ad videos, made a special tribute video to what the 89th Academy Award nominees would have looked like without technologies like theirs.

It’s been about eight years since the film industry began using Mellanox for data storage, said Waldman, contributing to some of the industry’s best work on the screen, including “The Hunger Games,” “Spectre,” “Gravity,” “Guardians of the Galaxy,” and “Night at the Museum.”

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Photos and video: Disney/The Jungle Book, Mellanox