'RoboCop' returns under the direction of José Padilha

Directed by José Padilha and written by Joshua Zetumer and Edward Neumeier, the director of photography was Lula Carvalho who, together with the effects supervisor, James E.Price, have done an impeccable job.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and Columbia Pictures release RoboCop, a Strike Entertainment production, starring Joel Kinnaman, Gary Oldman, Michael Keaton, Abbie Cornish, Jackie Earle Haley, Michael K. Williams, Jennifer Ehle, Jay Baruchel, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, and Samuel L. Jackson. Directed by José Padilha and written by Joshua Zetumer and Edward Neumeier, the director of photography was Lula Carvalho who, together with the effects supervisor, James E.Price, has done an impeccable job.

Man and machine shake hands RoboCop, a new vision of the cult classic of the 80s. In the film, police officer Alex Murphy becomes the star product of OmniCorp, the world's leading robotic defense company. In the crime-ravaged city of Detroit, OmniCorp identifies a way to introduce the perfect cop – a robot that can clean up the city's streets without risking police officers' lives.

For OmniCorp, Murphy represents a huge opportunity. “It is a product that they want to sell,” explains Padilha. "It's a prototype. They have developed it like someone developing a new soft drink. They are trying to find the ideal design of a new robot to sell to police stations. Potentially, we would be talking about billions of dollars that the company would pocket and they are motivated to get that money at all costs, even if it is not in the most ethical way. But there is one detail that they have ignored – inside the product, there is a man; it is not a mere suit, it is a human being. They set up this invention thinking that they will be able to control her, but they chose the wrong man. They chose someone who was too good, a guy willing to use his new powers for justice.”

Padilha assures that her participation in the film happened by chance due to the designs of fate: "I had a meeting at MGM, we were talking about films that I would like to make. They had a poster of the film. RoboCop original and I said, well, look, that's a movie that I would have liked to make. It's brilliant, a classic, an icon. I gave them my perspective and they said, „let's do it.‟ It was a lucky coincidence – a studio that had the right material, a fan, and a poster.”

The film's producers, Marc Abraham and Eric Newman, say Padilha was the perfect choice to direct this new vision of RoboCop. “The studio really took a chance,” Abraham says. "They turned to a filmmaker who had made brilliant documentaries and two films, Elite Squad and Elite Squad 2, which were hugely successful, especially in Brazil – Elite Squad won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. They were excited to be able to hire an original filmmaker to make an original film."

“Jose's films exhibit a frenetic quality,” says Newman. “You leave the theater thinking, ‘That was cool.’ But at the same time, he injects life into the film with his own point of view.” Newman adds that RoboCop provided the ideal framework for this. “RoboCop "It's still as relevant now as it was when it was released,” he continues. “José wanted to make a successful film on two levels – it had to be packed with action and leave you breathless with things you've never seen before – but the subject matter also had to be relevant, it had to comment on the world we live in.”

“It's fun to go to the movies, have a great time and think, 'There's something here,'” explains the director. Through his admiration of RoboCop, Padilha found a way to represent that story on the screen in a new and very current way. “Currently the themes of the films are even more burning,” confesses the director. "We are entering a world where wars will be automated. We will see robots replacing soldiers and police. Now we begin an intense debate about robots for military use, which are not automated – there is a human being who observes from a remote place and decides when to pull the trigger. But what happens when a computer program or an algorithm makes that decision? Everything that appears in the film will be real in a very short time, and we will have to discuss these issues and decide if it is right or not. It is fascinating to have the opportunity to direct "This project so many years later after knowing everything that has happened in the technological field, and trying to recreate it in our current times, but at the same time, keep alive that philosophical debate that the original character represents."

Look futurista

In it RoboCop Originally, the filmmakers used frame-by-frame animation for the ED-209. In the new installment, the filmmakers evidently opted for visual effects. “That moment where you see ED-209 in the original film is really memorable – but, because of the kind of animation they used, the camera movement and shot composition were very limited,” says visual effects supervisor James E. Price. "Now that we are able to use modern tools we have more flexibility. We are really able to integrate sophisticated movement and different constructions into those scenes. And this way of working fits perfectly with José's style – he is very active and the camera moves a lot, he lives in the moment. We didn't have to tie down the camera, we let it fly and so the visual effects adapted to his way of shooting."

To achieve the futuristic look of RoboCop, the filmmakers turned to production director Martin Whist. Although the day-to-day life of a production director is setting up the sets – and Whist was undoubtedly responsible for them – he also designed other aspects of the film, such as the costumes of RoboCop, the bikes and cars, the weapons, the visual effects robots: the ED-209 and the EM-208. “It is the first time that I have designed elements whose animation would take place in the field of visual effects,” explains the director. “I faced many new challenges that captivated me from the beginning and I had a great time – designing everything from cars to bikes to costumes and weapons. All that added to the sets!”

Whist assures that it is thanks to the experience of his team that he was able to cover so much work in RoboCop. "Of course, because we complement each other. I had extraordinary people and amazing designers who worked on different aspects: some worked on the weapons, two guys worked on the robots," he explains. "That allowed me to design as a supervisor – calibrating, adjusting details, rather than doing everything myself. The experts got to work and we took advantage of their ideas and talent. We guided, edited."

When designing the costumes RoboCop Whist assures that the second – black – attracted more attention from designers. “The second suit is black, visually more stylized, designed, thoughtful, and a little more elegant and aggressive.”

To build the physical suits of RoboCop, Whist collaborated with a team at Legacy Effects, one of Hollywood's most sought-after sources for creating visions that become reality as is the case with the creators of the Iron Man suit and other notable effects commissions.
Whist worked closely with the visual effects team to coordinate the design of the robots. “I designed the 209 as a static image,” he explains. "Once we started with the animation and movement, we had to modify the design. Although it is a visual effect, you have to respect the physics of the real world for the movement to be appropriate; for example, you have to place the leg joint in a certain point so that you can raise the leg or rotate the gun."

Whist designed the vehicles that appear in the film and here they also gave a nod to the original installment since the police cars are based on the new model of the Ford Taurus – just as the first generation Taurus had had a starring role in the original film. “Luckily, the latest Taurus model is amazing!” smiles Whist. “I have been very satisfied with the patrol cars, they turned out great.”

Visual effects

For the film's visual effects, the filmmakers turned to visual effects supervisor James E. Price, who ensures that the pending tasks of RoboCop The robots could be assigned into three categories – mostly the EM-208, the ED-209, and the robot itself. RoboCop; the futurization of the environment; and the graphics and visual appearance, including the point of view of RoboCop.

The design of the robots began in the art department, but soon the artists began a close collaboration with the visual effects team who would add animation to their designs. “The goal for the 209 was to make it look as real as possible – like it was a really heavy, intimidating robot,” Price explains. “The design is unique in that one knee is upside down and the head is big and heavy so the challenge was to give it a movement that was interesting and mechanical and not contrary to the laws of physics – that could maintain its balance and walk properly and be threatening without being ridiculous.”

For the 208th – the “foot soldiers” of Whist – Price says the challenges took on another dimension. "The 208 has a humanoid design, so we wanted its movement to reflect its humanoid joints. But they couldn't be too human; they had to maintain that mechanical quality in the way they walked and moved. For us, the crux of the matter was precision and speed. When a person is pointing their finger in a direction and turns, their finger and hand will probably move a little after making the turn to compensate for the weight of the arm during the turn. But a robot doesn't – it has a very precise control over their joints. We started doing motion capture with human beings and each time we eliminated the overshoot, the sudden movement, the impulse typical of human movement.”

For one's own RoboCop, all these considerations and more came together. “We use a wide range of techniques so that our RoboCop came to life," Price continues. "We started with an actor who was dressed in a suit – either Joel or a stuntman. In some cases we substituted parts of the suit – for example, we kept only Joel's head and face and substituted the rest of the body for a particularly complex movement. And if RoboCop had to perform an action that a human being was incapable of performing – such as moving faster or jumping further – we went directly to a 100% digital version of RoboCop. When moving on to the animation of RoboCop In those situations we based it on Joel's movements and then added another dose of power, agility, or flexibility that only a robot can provide.”

As for futurization, it was important to present it subtly and without going overboard. "On the street you see cars that are between one and twenty years old. The same goes for buildings – in fact you will see buildings here in the US that are between 50 and 100 years old," Price points out. “We didn't want to force things – we chose to create a subtle evolution from our current moment.”

The main futurization challenge the team faced was how to change the skyline of Detroit. “We added the prominent OmniCorp headquarters,” Price notes. "The top half of the building, the skyscraper, was designed by the art department; the bottom half was based on the Vancouver Convention Center, which is precisely the exterior where we shot part of the final scene. For the shots of the skyscraper, I moved to Detroit and shot aerial shots of the city's current skyline. We chose a location where the building would be – south of the Renaissance Center, the classic building with the GM logo. Just south of that area is a park and open space and there we shot We used the gyro-stabilized camera and shot a 360-degree view of Detroit from two slightly different altitudes – one that would represent Sellars' office, and another slightly higher one that would represent the roof, where the heliport is located. In post-production we used those still photos to create a large moving panoramic view.

And ultimately, the result is that the view of Detroit seen from Sellars's window and from the roof is exactly what it would look like if a building were actually built there.

The final elements were graphics and visualizations – a key part of representing the point of view of RoboCop. “His perspective conveys a lot of information to the viewer – about the state of RoboCop, about how he manages his environment, how he evaluates things.”

To do this, the filmmakers decided how the point of view of RoboCop. "We worked with a special crane for the camera that the department called the Robo-vision. It is an intelligent crane – the head was stable and mounted on a Steadicam. It allowed a very fluid movement, very Steadicam – a shot that viewers would traditionally associate with a shot that shows the point of view of the actor in question – but thanks to the remote-controlled head, it gave us the precision in the turns and horizontal movements that we were looking for, in order to give it a sensation. robotics. When you look through the eyes of RoboCop, it turns out that you walk similar to how a human being would, but your attention is able to focus on something and then switch very precisely to something else. On top of all this, we added lots of graphics, text, and readings that show how RoboCop “analyzes the things you are observing.”

Price and his team also created the virtual set for the show of political commentator Pat Novak – played by Samuel L. Jackson. “We shot Sam on a 240-degree green screen; the background is pure animation,” says Price. "These scenes had their own look so we worked with a company in Los Angeles to design the aesthetic of the show and the look of those sets. Fortunately Sam has a lot of experience working in these contexts and knew exactly what to expect."