PRODUCTION. THE INVISIBLE MAN
Having perfect focus in slow motion, perfectly in frame, every time, while dealing with a person in a morph suit that you have to mask out could become a total nightmare.” The decision was taken to depart from traditional filmmaking and instead create it with one continuous looping shot, so the viewer doesn’t know when it starts and when it ends. “That’s why we went for a complex choreography of three robots, where we would have the Bolt X holding the camera,” Fulga adds. “A natural motion guided through the apartment where the murder scene happens and two other robots – the Bolt on track and the Bolt on pedestal – which would believably manipulate objects, in essence behaving like the left or right hand of The Invisible Man himself.” Those robots have custom-built pneumatic grabbers, so they would pick up an object, do a natural motion as if held by The Invisible Man, be put down and then grab something else. “We ended up having almost a Rube Goldberg machine of this one shot, where all these robots would be working together in sync. We would just push a button, and everything would be done for us, while on the VFX side, we would only need to remove the small rods holding the objects to complete the illusion.” THE MASK SLIPS “For the first three-quarters of the movie you don’t see him,” says Fulga, building up the big reveal. “We have
Radu Stefan Fulga says the strategy was to make the film using three robots. “Besides its spectacular nature, there’s an actual reason for it,” he explains. “There are certain limitations to how believable you can make floating CG objects. As soon as you have interactions with particles, glass cups or reflective surfaces, it becomes difficult to achieve a convincing result. “On the other hand, we had some detailed camera movements planned around these floating objects to showcase them. Good luck achieving that by hand! “The decision was taken to depart from traditional filmmaking and create it with one continuous looping shot”
BOLT ON The robots were able to believably manipulate objects, making it look like human hands were at work
the suggestion of him with the floating objects. We do have a reveal at the end of The Invisible Man, where we went into a collaboration with Digital Stage, amazing VFX guys with a very expensive and accurate performance-capture system. “In collaboration with motion control, the team produced a complete performance capture of an actor from Digital Stage, which would then be used to integrate the lead character as a full-CG element. We didn’t want to limit ourselves to green screen so that you would actually see inside his clothes after the reveal.” Audiences are now on tenterhooks waiting to see this latest iteration of The Invisible Man… or not. The Invisible Man will be released 21st May on YouTube and Instagram
TAKE MY ARM Mark Roberts Motion Control provided the robotic machinery for this high-tech short
34. DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM
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