Back in 2012 I was Compositing-Sequence-Lead on the "Total Recall" remake at Prime Focus World in London.
We where working on several sequences, but I was mainly involved in the sequence when the trans-earth elevator passes through the core of the earth and the zero-gravity sequences starts. We where responsible for all the interior shots up until to the point when the main characters escape from the police. This included creating the Synths (Police Robots), floating bullet-shells + other random objects, set extensions, bullet-holes, wire removals, and many many other things.
Here I found a video that shows you the zero-gravity sequence on Total Recall:
It was a great project and we had a great team back then and I think the work we have done was pretty good.
We had different tasks on this show, and every task had certain problems that needed to be solved, and we needed to be fast because there was not much time left.
One of those problems was, that we needed to create a floating pony tail for Melina (played by Jessica Biel) during the zero-gravity sequence. We had to choose if we would go full CGI for the pony tail or if we would try to shoot some live-action elements. We decided to shoot elements because it would save us R&D time and they would just look real out of the box.
Since this was the sequence I was working on, I had the pleasure to go on set with our VFX aupervisor Aleksandar Pejic to shoot some pony tails. So how do you shoot zero gravity hair?
Well, you pin it to a stick and move it around in a big water tank! And that is exactly what we did at Shepperton Studios - Pinewood in London.
We had 2 studio operators helping us. One operating the RED camera, and the other one was trying to follow our instructions on how to move the hair in the water. We loaded all the shots that would need a pony tail onto my iPad, and based on that we where planning out the movement of the hair for every single shot. We had to come up with a few variations for each shot just to make sure that we would have enough material to work with. Also we had 2 variations of the hair. One where the pony tail was fixed onto a stick, and one where the hair was fixed onto a sphere that was attached to a stick. The idea was that the sphere would mimic the head volume, so when we would move the hair back and forth quickly it would move and interact along the shape of the sphere.
We where also shooting at 48-frames per second, to make the hair look even more floaty and light.
The water tank was evenly lit, and had a green screen behind it so that we could extract the hair from the footage.
We also had an external monitor so that we could judge if the current take was usable or not.
It was pretty interesting for me too see how the work and atmosphere on set is different from my usual office work-environment. It was pretty fun and I would not mind to go more often on set. We where sharing the elements shoot with Double Negative (who was the main VFX-House on Total Recall) who was also shooting water/rain/bullet hits and some other elements that where needed for the movie.
If I remember correctly I was a total of 2-3 days on set to get all the takes we needed. After we where done with our elements shoots I spend 2 days to look through the whole material and trim it down to the main parts we would need. In the end in 90% of the shots we used the green-scree elements we created, about 8% was a mix between CG hair + green screen elements and the rest was full CGI.
Here some shots I did while working on this sequence:
If you like it... Follow/upvote/re-steem! Have also a look at my other posts. Thanks!
Interesting to go behind the scenes and see how much detail went into the floating ponytail.
I have played the game TOTAL RECALL most of the time. Thanks @giorgiomarino
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Interesting write-up.
I have deep respect for practical effects and the CG variety. I like how you used the fluid dynamics as a simulation environment, I imagine the motion is extremely similar to microgravity, viscosity notwithstanding.
Curious to ask what your opinion of the post-capture refocus abilities of Lytro Cinema cameras - https://www.lytro.com/cinema
I've heard but not verified that it enables even finer-grained control in integrating shots like the ones you worked on. Apparently the refocus ability allows CG to pick out the finest elements without any green screen "bleed" or artifacts.
Is this true? I am not in the field myself, but have an interest in it, so I'd love to hear what you think of that tech.
Thanks! .. before we decided what to do we where looking at footage of austronauts in zero-gravity envoriments and the water envoriment was pretty close to that.
I heard and read about the Lytro camera. It sounds super interesting but to really judge how useful it is I would need to see it in action. They claim that you can change the focus/angle (to a certain degree) after the fact. They also claim that the depth information they can capture is so good that you can basically cut out every object at every depth making green/blue-screens obsolete.
I still doubt that you can separate things like fine hair detail and semi transparent objects, and also if, you still would have the problem of colour bleeding from bright objects in the background. But this is just a guess for my side. If I have a chance to work with some actual footage I will let you know!
Very cool, I wasn't completely sure about what its capabilities were. I would be interested if you ever get involved with a project utilizing that tech, just to understand its limits and applications.
Thanks for the post, I enjoyed reading it and look forward to future "behind the scenes" or "effects tech" posts.
This post has received a 1.64 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @giorgiomarino.
；)
http://www.simulation-argument.com/
Haha.. spot on. We probably live in a simulation.. ;)
Wow... I'm really impressed. I had no idea that is what you did for a living and to have worked on such a major motion picture would definerely be a nice resume booster!
Congrats and I wish you the best in your upcoming projects!
Thanks! If you want you can check out my current and past projects on my homepage: giorgio-marino.com
And yeah.. it was a great project to work on! =)
I will definitely be making my way over there to check it out!
wow! so lovely... every word and image is so captivating... keep it up.
thanks! =)
Nice Post! Upvoted
Nice! I liked that movie, it was a good remake
Practical FX ftw :D
Thanks! Glad you liked the movie. =)
When I saw the stick in the water with the floating hair- I laughed a little because I'd definitely be the one volunteering to do that. I'm glad you enjoyed yourself! It really looked like a lot of fun and the images you worked on came out great.
Haha.. yeah the operator also had his fun with the hair! =)
That's AWESOME!!!!
Thanks! Good to see you liked the post!
Wow, Great look behind the scene. Thanks for sharing. @giorgiomarino
Thanks!
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STOPciao @giorgiomarino! Ho letto il tuo post interessantissimo! Un esperto di effetti speciali... che dire, WOW! Mi farebbe piacere se ci venissi a trovare sul nostro canale telegram siamo quasi 80 italiani tutti attivi su Steeemit, ci aiutiamo l'un l'altro a crescere più velocemente su questa piattaforma. Ti aspettiamo QUI! Credimi se ti dico che è decisamente utile stare sul canale che ti ho indicato... dai a presto!
nice
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