The new Netflix movie “The Electric State” shows the world full of robots – but not a robot as we know them.
Brothers Anthony and Rosso, who have directed the first two Avengers blockbusters, “Infinity War” and “Endegium”). An Notification Budget of $ 320 million“Electric State” occurs in the alternative version of the 1990s, where there have been emotional robots for a decades. It is a long time for them that they rebelled against their human masters, lost the war, and found themselves deported in an area of the southwest – an area in which the film’s hero (Milli Bobi Brown and Chris Pratt played) must be hidden.
Importantly to the supervisor of visual impact Matthew e -Butler, According to the design, these robots are “deliberate enmity” of today’s robot.
Butler told me, “Most of us have seen modern -day robots … and are accustomed to these designs.” If you look at the Boston Dynamics Robot, you will see that they focus on a large -scale robot center, and then when you go to extremism, they meet at least on a large scale, because it’s just a defensive design. “
On the contrary, the film’s robot cosmo “has a big head on a small neck”, which Butler describes as “the worst design for the robot”.
Like the film itself, this design is based on the Simon Stelin Hog’s saintly novel by the same name. But Butler explained that there is an explanation of the movie for Cosmo and other quirky robots that are often drawn from real and imagined pop culture: they were created to be “atllying”, which is why they all look like “various and stupid and fun”.
All of this meant that the Butler’s team had to start with a design that was naturally unprofessional but turned it into something that felt “physically reliable and real.” To do so, they decided to honor Cosmo’s original design in “Slammet Fashion”.
“If you scoot and you removed it away from [the] The camera, she looks like a cosmo, as she is in the book, “Butler said.” But if you get closer and you check a shoulder, you will see that there are push bars, and you can see motors, you can see the circuit, with ankles and feet. “
The purpose is to persuade the audience that “thing can really work.” Once they are convinced, they will accept the design of cosmo, and other robots without seeing all the details.
And yes, there are many other robots. Butler said his team has to live “hundreds and hundreds of unique robots”-not because every robot in this alternative world is of one type, but because in the film, “we usually show only people.”
In other words, each robot was an individual character. And unfortunately, there was no easy shortcut for the VFX team that they had to make as much as possible.
He said, “We have scratched our heads many times – like,” How do we do it? “He said. “If you have found 100 different robots and they are all moving, they will be able to move, which means that you have to be able to rig them, so someone has to design them, some have to paint them, some have to mobilize them.”
To live these robots, Butler said the team used a traditional optical collection Motion Capture And a new system using an Excelrometer suit. This allowed a section of seven motion capture actors to work directly with action actors to work on the location and set, after which they could be provided with a dynamic robot’s base with their performance-whether they fit into the palm of a powerful, human size, or a character.
Butler emphasized that the process was much more complicated than transmitting an actor’s movement to a robot’s body.
“For example, take Little Herman,” he said. “You’ve got [motion capture] The actor, and he is adding his consciousness, his performance, and this is the person with whom Chris Pert can now work. Then you say, ‘Okay, okay, but the original robot does not do a lot of things that this boy can do.’ So now you need to change it based on the design limits of the robot.
And it’s not over yet: “And then you talk to the directors, and there is a significant change of features, which you need to honor now, so you will change it, and then you’ve got your wonderful voice actors who add a lot, and now it is, ‘Okay, if character, if character is,’ [sounds like] That, then the cadins [of the robot] Need to change. ” ‘
Finally, Butler said that the robots we see on the screen were prepared with all these artists and actors: “And that’s why we really just wrapped our sleeves and went with it.”