American Cinematographer - November 2013 - 44

◗

Facing the Void

Top: For scenes shot onstage in the LED Box, an Alexa was rigged on a modified Mo-Sys remote
head attached to a motion-controlled robot arm that could be moved around the actors in a
preprogrammed trajectory. Middle: Footage of the virtual environments was played on LED
panels within the 20' cube. Bottom: The camera is positioned during a test with a stand-in.

44

November 2013

American Cinematographer

lighting," he says. "The actors are often
lit differently than the animation, and if
the lighting is not right, the composite
doesn't work. It can look eerie and take
you to a place animators call 'the
uncanny valley,' that place where everything is very close to real, but your
subconscious knows something is
wrong. That takes you out of the movie.
The only way to avoid the uncanny
valley was to use a naturalistic light on
the faces, and to find a way to match the
light between the faces and surroundings as closely as possible."
This challenge led Lubezki to
imagine a unique lighting space that was
ultimately dubbed "the LED Box." He
recalls, "It was like a revelation. I had the
idea to build a set out of LED panels
and to light the actors' faces inside it
with the previs animation." Lubezki
conducted extensive LED tests and then
turned to Webber and his team to build
the 20' cube and generate footage of the
virtual environments, as seen from the
actor's viewpoint, to display inside it.
While constructing the LED Box, the
crew also solved problems involving
LED flicker and color inconsistencies.
Inside the LED Box, the CG
environment played across the walls and
ceiling, simulating the bounce light from
Earth on the faces of Clooney or
Bullock, and providing the actors with
visual references as they pretended to
float through space. This elegant solution enabled the real faces to be lit by the
very environments into which they
would be inserted, ensuring a match
between the real and virtual elements in
the frame.
For Lubezki, the complexity of
the lighting from the Earth source was
also essential, giving nuanced realism to
the light on the faces. "When you put a
gel on a 20K or an HMI, you're working
with one tone, one color. Because the
LEDs were showing our animation, we
were projecting light onto the actors'
faces that could have darkness on one
side, light on another, a hot spot in the
middle and different colors. It was
always complex, and that was the reason
to have the Box."
➣



American Cinematographer - November 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - November 2013

Contents
American Cinematographer - November 2013 - Cover1
American Cinematographer - November 2013 - Cover2
American Cinematographer - November 2013 - 1
American Cinematographer - November 2013 - 2
American Cinematographer - November 2013 - 3
American Cinematographer - November 2013 - 4
American Cinematographer - November 2013 - Contents
American Cinematographer - November 2013 - 6
American Cinematographer - November 2013 - 7
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