Double Negative created the opening shot using the Universal logo, in which Earth is replaced by Mars and the camera flies into the research facility. All Double Negative images courtesy of Double Negative/Universal Pictures.

When the Movie Meets the Game
Pinky makes a last appearance at the end of the movie, after he has mutated into a horrific creature that is still attached to a now battered wheel chair. The Pinky demon was an entirely computer-generated character that was designed, built and animated by Framestore CFC. Its confrontation with lead Marine John Grim (Karl Urban) takes place at the end of a much talked about groundbreaking sequence. Several minutes long, the sequence starts with the camera pushing forward into Grim’s pupil as he wakes up from unconsciousness. At this point, the movie switches to the character’s point of view and remains so for the next seven minutes. “This is the sequence we were all excited about when we first read the script,” comments Mark Nelmes, Framestore CFC visual effects supervisor. “It was really the point where the movie met the game.”

The First Person Shooter sequence was shot on Steadicam, for the most part. “The choreography of the camera moves had been carefully planned with the objective that the individual takes could be combined in post to create one seamless sequence,” Keene observes. “In total, lead compositor Jonathan Fawkner executed over 15 of these hook-up points using both compositing, 2D paint and 3D environment techniques.” Some transitions were created by transitioning from a whip pan at the end of a plate to another whip pan at the beginning of the next plate. Other transitions required a more sophisticated approach. “One transition takes place when the character jumps over a creature,” Nelmes observes. “We had two Steadicam plates that we had to connect via a “jump plate” that had been filmed wild with a Libracam. This required reconstructing the set as a two and-a-half D matte painting. Once the 15 transitions had been completed, the sequence looked like a 7,000-frames long continuous shot.”

In order to manage the huge amount of data that the sequence represented, Fawkner broke it down into eight different sections, the final Pinky demon battle being a 2,000-frame scene of its own. Each section was then broken down into shorter segments that were handed over to animators for digital enhancement. Those included creating bullet hits, debris, sparks, blood splats, muzzle flashes, smoke, adding CG rats and performing CG head replacement on the Baron. Digital paint supervisor Bruce Nelson and his artists had quite a lot of paint work to do in order to remove pieces of equipment or light fixtures that couldn’t be hidden during plate photography. The completed elements were then integrated into the live-action plates. At this stage, the segments were carefully graded in Framestore CFC’s proprietary Baselight system to make sure that the entire sequence had a consistent look.

Double Negative and its CG supervisor, Jesper Kjolsrud, visualized the research facility and its futuristic technology, including the nanowall technology, a system that turns a solid wall into a liquid surface and allows people to pass through.

Mister Gun, Get Ready For Your Close-Up
The graded file was then given to animation supervisor Kevin Spruce who created John Grim’s CG gun and hands for the full First Person Shooter effect. Just like in the videogame, the weapon is seen at all time in the foreground, while the character’s hands occasionally appear in the frame to change the magazine. “We shot a test with real hands and a real weapon in front of a greenscreen,” Nelmes says. “It worked fine — we actually used it for the very first magazine change — but we found out that it would be extremely difficult to match the diverse lighting conditions of the sequence. By creating the foreground elements in CG, lighting supervisor Ben White was able to crucially match the lighting of the background plate onto the gun. Plus, we could have full control over the choreography of the weapon.”

The 2.35:1 image aspect ratio made it difficult to create interesting compositions with the gun in the foreground. In the videogame, the regular aspect ratio is 1.33:1, which leaves a lot of room in the upper part of the frame to animate the targeted creatures. “In the movie, we couldn’t use the same framing, as the gun would have completely blocked out the things the character was shooting at!” Nelmes continues. “It became a real exercise in animation. One solution was to place the gun on the side of the frame; the other one was to slightly lower it as soon as Grim had shot something. Using a greyscale animation of the gun, we then added the muzzle flashes in the right places, ensuring that they appeared in the right frames. This element was then composited over the background plate. We utilized that to set up the lighting model for the gun, taking into account both the real environment and the digital muzzle flashes. The CG gun was then rendered and composited in the shot. The last step was to run the sequence though a final grading tweak.”