The year 2015 in Hollywood hasn’t shied away in pulling off some of the most daring stints with the digital technology at the film-makers disposal. Earlier this year, we marveled at WETA Digital’s incredible work in re-creating a digitalized Paul Walker for Furious 7 to complete the actor’s shots even as Paul Walker’s untimely demise in 2014 shocked us all.
Starring the 67year-old, Arnold Schwarzenegger in his iconic android T-800 avatar in Terminator – Genisys, Hollywood just seems to push its envelope further, as Alan Taylor re-imagined a younger Arnold on-the silver screen. Apart from Arnold reprising his role for Genisys, the sci-fi flick with time-travel as one of its core plots flaunts a brilliant sequence wherein the aging Arnold fights head-on with a younger (and bad) version of himself, directly lifted off from the 1984 original Terminator.
Technicolor owned visual effects studio, Moving Picture Company (MPC) undertook this mammoth task which included 35 digitally rendered shots of the younger Arnold. The studio took no less than a year to complete the mere five-minute sequence and the results are well, splendid! Forget the stoned and ill-crafted Arnie we get a glimpse of in Terminator – Salvation, for MPC goes a step ahead in not only creating a CGI Arnie that blatantly would look fake, but used a body-double with motion-capture senses to spit life into the final product.
Here’s how MPC’s Visual Effects Supervisor, Sheldon Stopsack explained the digitalized process in accomplishing their ambitious project.
31 years ago, Arnold was at the peak of his muscular physique with a robust 50-inch chest as the world also knew him as one of the finest body-builders of his time. MPC decided to use a body-double to shoot the fight sequences using special effects and getting a body-double matching Arnie’s physique was essential. Brett Azar, an Australian body-builder was roped in and on-set, Brett and Arnold were shot enacting the fight sequence between the two terminators.
The studio animators browsed through every image of Arnold to get the fine detailing of his face-structure right. All of Arnie’s earlier movies were instrumental to the animators who also sought to performance-capture sessions with Arnold recording his present-day features and expressions. “We took the results from this facial-capture session and tried to map that onto our younger build and compensate for the discrepancy between the ages,” added Stopsack.
The studio found the 1977 documentary Pumping Iron quite handy in re-creating Arnold’s unique body pecs and glutes for the younger version. Stopsack stated that, “We digitally replaced Brett for the majority of the shots in favor of creating realism and believability.”
Stopsack who has also worked on high-scale projects including Guardians of the Galaxy and X-Men Days of the Future Past couldn’t resist his excitement on being handed over the sequence. “It’s a completely crazy idea due to the sheer complexity of the task. To work on a digital human being is considered the holy grail in visual effects,” he exclaimed.