Friday, November 08, 2013
Design FX: How Ender's Game Filmed Zero-G Battles That Obey the Laws of Physics
Underwire | Wired.com: A signature piece in Gavin Hood’s latest film Ender’s Game is its massive zero-gravity Battle Room — a place where the titular character played by Asa Butterfield trains for alien war. Seeing the film’s young stars float through weightless battle is a wonderful thing to behold — and something that took astronomical amounts of time and digital trickery.
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7 comments:
It is amazing how good we are getting at melding reality and CGI. The use of real faces on CGI bodies is an interesting idea that I never would have thought of. The fact that the physics of a body read clearly enough on film that people in the modern audience do not buy wire work as zero g really makes you consider the length that people need to go to in order to get a shot that people believe in.
I don't know much about wire rigs, but I've always thought that it must have some limitations to the types of movements that can be done. Filming a scene in 0G presents some really interesting challenges. The way this team solved those problems makes a lot of scene to me. It costs a lot to do CGI faces so I can understand why they would use the actors real faces. And it costs a lot to do crazy wire rigs so I can understand why they did that part with computers. What I don't understand is why the actors needed to be filmed on wires at all. If the actors body's just going to be replaced anyway.
I read a similar article a long time ago about how they filmed Benjamin Button. The processes was the opposite. They had body actors who had blue bags on their heads. These heads were replaced with the CGI face. Although the films had very different needs it's interesting to see how they both used a processes of CGI combined with real acting.
it is interesting how the breaking point in the budget is the need to CG a face. Filming zero g sequences have become more and more impressive as the industry progresses. I still need to go see Gravity and Now of course I need to go see Enders Game.
To respond to Akiva the reason why they filmed the actors on wire rigs for capturing their faces is that it gives their face the motion intended for the action. the other option would be doing motion capture like for avatar which would require rendering and animating their faces in motion in CG. Putting the actors on wire rigs also gives the actors a motion to naturally react to for the scenes.
This was so intense! I can't wait to see the movie (eventually) and this behind-the-scenes sequence really made me interested in the process of the movie. I had never considered the use of CGI for zero-gravity scenes, and this made it seem like it was the only logical solution. The research that must have gone into the fluid movements of the body in space is outrageous and extremely detailed. The fact that they kept the faces is interesting and a bit surprising, but I agree with their choice as it retains the actors' original reactions.
I saw enders game this past week and i can fully attest to the visual spectacle of the film. I have a decent background in physics and i can often be taken out of a movie when its done wrong and i never had a moment in this film when i was questioning the reality of the space in the movie. I think its really interesting how they accomplished their goal by only keeping the actors faces, and i think this also speaks to the animators of the CGI because it was so well done that i couldn't even tell the difference.
Its interesting to see how much thought goes into the details of movie special effects. I would have never had thought of the center of gravity shifting around in a zero gravity environment. Nonetheless, it is outstanding that they found such a unique solution to the issue. The use of the actors' faces on a cgi body is one solution that would have never crossed my mind. However, I find it kind of ridiculous that the producers still spend massive amounts of money on the rigs to flip the actors when their faces are just getting edited onto the bodies. I wonder if this is so that the actors feel like they're actually in the environment or once again because its cheaper than digitally manipulating their faces to the direction the body is facing.
I don't have much knowledge on how wire rigs work or how they simulate zero gravity scenes normally but this concept of melding CGI and reality so seamlessly is really cool. I can see how capturing the physics of how the body moves in a zero G environment can be difficult, especially because that type of environment can not be so easily achieved when it requires actually going to space. I can only imagine what other things can be possible in the movie world with such a fast development in CGI technology.
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