RoboCop: Breaking Down the Special Effects of the RoboCop Suit
Released on 03/07/2014
(piano)
(machines and guns clicking)
Hi I'm Mike Seymour from fxguide.com for Wired.
In the new RoboCop film
OmniCorp's solution to the acceptance
of robot in the USA
is to actually put a guy in the suit.
In particular injured policeman, Alex Murphy.
As the first RoboCop film showed us
a real actor in a real suit
makes for a very, very bulky suit.
Besides, the guy in the suit
is meant to only be part there,
having been kind of blow to bit
earlier in the film.
In other words he's missing huge parts of his body.
So how did they put just part
of actor Joel Kinnaman in a robotic suit?
Well, the producers opted for a very on set solution.
Given that the character is digital,
you might expect to see the now familiar
green or gray tracking suit.
This is the kind of thing that's
the familiar trademark of motion capture.
Well, there were some of those used,
but only for deploying the EM-208s
walking down the streets of, say, Tehran.
For the character Alex Murphy,
even though the suit would be redone digitally,
slimmer and sometimes without an arm
the team at Framestore in the UK
opted to still have the actor wear a real
and very expensive physical suit.
And there are several advantages to doing this.
The first is they get terrific lighting reference
and they can see any sort of reflections
or anything that would have happened
in that real environment.
(gunshots and robot motors whirring)
Secondly, as Joel was first to admit,
the suit really helps the performance
and his own acting choices.
The way I moved in the suit
I did want to give it something a
little bit more robotic.
So when I was walking
I'd turn my head first then
the shoulders afterwards.
So the idea is he is a superhuman
and has very fluid motion.
And you know, after all
somebody has to effectively act the motion
of the RoboCop suit
and having the actor actually do it
means that we the audience have a more
consistent performance.
Plus the lighting and camera department
actually have something real
to frame up to on the set.
Not to mention the other actors
having something more realistic to react to.
So even if you have to painstakingly paint out
thing that aren't wanted,
sections of shoulder or hands,
if you start with more than a guy in a gray suit
you're gonna be better off.
And thankfully in some of the shots
a lot of the background was actually also added
which makes the job of adding a digital RoboCop
actually sometimes easier.
Sometimes literally just his face
or his chin was lifted from the original material.
Almost everything else was digitally altered.
So don't forget to subscribe for more
behind the scenes action.
I'm Mike Seymour for Wired.
(zooming)
(dinging and whooshing)
Starring: Mike Seymour
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