So literally, when Dakota went like this, Atom went like this. When Max looked at Atom and said can you understand me? I told the puppeteer, whatever Dakota does, you do. And the reason that the scenes between Dakota and the robot are so wondrous is because that boy Dakota, loved that robot. And we did it in the hope that the mesh of Atom’s face, with just those LED eyes, would be like a screen that we as an audience would project onto in the same way that Max (Dakota Goya) does.Īs soon as I saw how the puppeteers could move him, you could be ten, you could be 42, you could be 62, there was like a magic to that robot. We made our most human robot be the only robot with no face. He was puppeteered by a remote controlled puppeteering kind of machine. The Legacy team also used computers to "touch up" the puppet sequences with some additional detailing, enhancements, and animated damage.I directed Atom like another character.
I actually wanted the aesthetics and the style of the movie to be quite realistic."ĬG obviously rendered the faster, action-packed robot sequences requiring more movement. And I knew that I wanted the movie because the premise is so kind of out there. And so you get an acting reality and also you get a visual reality. "But if you're asking an actor to play a scene with a real 8.5-foot-tall robot, you get something different altogether. "If you're asking to fake it with a tennis ball, that's tough," he said. Levy said he wanted to build working versions of the robots so his cast could have more to play to than a green screen. I'm very, very thrilled with the results of going practical with the effects, which is a rarity increasingly." And from that moment on, we did not have any mishaps. So we had a 25-minute break and we fixed him right up. "To see kind of destroy himself was a little sad.
"It's hard to believe, but the truth is when you're in the presence of these robots and they're moving, you think of them as real," Levy continued. And his chin got stuck in his chest plate, and it was scary."
He was standing on the lift gate, and in the middle of the take, I guess his hydraulics system went haywire and his chin started lowering and it lowered all the way down as such that he crushed his own collarbone. We had one scary moment early on in the first work where Ambush was fighting that bull in the opening of the movie. "These robots and the puppeteers who operate with their remote controls were incredibly reliable. "We had remarkably few mishaps," Levy said.
Legacy used digital design and sculpting software in house to turn around all of final creations in four months. Each limb joint could be adjusted to let operators take control of the bots with puppet articulation rods. According to Legacy's statistics, each puppet contained more than 350 individual machine parts, making for a final creation that weighed more than 250 pounds. Legacy Effects built 24 robot puppet in total, including versions of the main "stars" Atom, Noisy Boy, and Ambush. But Levy had Legacy Effects construct working "real life" versions of the creatures via animatronics to interact with Jackson and the other actors on-set.ĭuring a recent press event for the flick, Levy said he was amazed at how well the robots worked and how easily his cast rubbed elbows with them. There are plenty of CG shots of the automaton ring warriors training and going at it round by round. The Dreamworks film takes place in the near future when human fighters have been replaced by mechanized pugilists. That's part of the reason director Shawn Levy decided to build huge, gadget-rich "puppet" versions of the boxing robots from the new Hugh Jackman action movie "Real Steel," which opened in theaters yesterday.
That doesn't mean there isn't still something magical about using engineering and craftsmanship to make lifelike, "in the flesh" versions of the other-worldly or futuristic characters these movies bring us onscreen. LOS ANGELES-Big-budget sci-fi movies and computer-generated visual-effects are inseparable and probably will be for years to come.