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But in the constraints of what we had to play with, we had to think our way around the problem.” On the set of Infini, shot in Sydney, Australia.
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In a perfect world, we would have gone a full CG route. “We had to give the impression of Whit’s face being formed on these rather exaggerated or skeletal jelly forms. “The brief was that the slime and ooze was forming and learning to take the shape of human,” says Anderson. Again, the visual effects for these shots were not completed in the usual way. Towards the end of the film, the image of crew member Whit Carmichael (Daniel MacPherson) is revealed amongst a number of aliens – the ‘jelly people’ – in semi-transparent form. “We had little strings to lift the heads but all of that lovely sinusoidal motion was entirely in camera and from the same phase gauge to give it that slow jelly-like undulation.” Oozing with aliens
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“We used the same stepper motor drivers to add all the secondary and tertiary motion to the worm-like forms,” outlines Anderson. With that blood effect so successfully achieved practically, Infini’s special effects supervisor Phillip Young consulted Anderson on another effect – the creepy ‘jelly fingers’ – that he was looking to solve. We did have to have a little bit more light than we would have needed if we went the high speed route, though.” The ‘jelly finger’. We also had to have a very shutter angle otherwise it wouldn’t work. “We just attached that to the table and created that vibration in sympathy with the camera. “It had more torque and fine control,” he notes. You get this snapshot moment 25 frames a second of a repeated event, and when it’s ever so slightly out of phase it looks like it’s slowly going forwards or backwards – like high speed photography.”Īlthough Anderson created a first test with a speaker, he eventually settled on using a stepper motor to drive the phase effect event.
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“We found this reference on YouTube where some people were using a speaker driven by a signal generator to make a sign wave that’s really exactly the same as the frame rate of the camera,” explains Anderson, “where you vary that frequency ever so slightly to be a little slower or faster than the frame rate. When Anderson read the blood moment in the script – a drip of blood falls from the table and suspends itself in mid-air and then slowly reverses itself back up onto the table – he immediately thought of utilizing the ‘frame rate phase’ effect. “We had these vintage lenses from the 1980s,” says Anderson, “that when you pull focus there was a whole lot of breathing going on, heaps of chromatic aberration and some soft corners and vignetting – all the kit bag of lens issues that we had to deal with in visual effects.” Infini was shot by DOP Carl Robertson on the ARRI Alexa in full 4:3 with 2:1 anamorphic lenses. Most were achieved via an in-house effects unit. The shots we cover include real-life ASCII art screens, ooze-filled blood and creature gags and some elaborate stunt and set extension work. We find out from Anderson how just some of the 350-odd shots were achieved for Infini, a film on which fxphd alumni Mat Graham was a producer. It’s always good to look in the back catalog for how things are done.” That path is not always best achieved via digital methods. “It’s about finding the path to the best effect for the available time and budget.
“I see the role as a visual effects supervisor as not just a digital consultant,” says Infini’s visual effects supervisor ( and fxphd Prof.) Steve Anderson. Director Shane Abbess (left) and VFX supervisor Steve Anderson. While there are some stunning set extensions, hologram work and plenty of visual effects enhancements, the production skewed heavily on carefully constructed sets, practical effects and practical solutions for visual effects. But that’s where the new sci-fi film, Infini, from director Shane Abbess, is different. If you’re making a sci-fi film set in the 23rd century on a deep space mining colony, you might think that heavy CG builds and a ton of visual effects shots would be necessary.
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