Framestore

Cinema is meticulous, crafted magic. It relies on a thousand tiny decisions in every frame to bring a story to life. When filmmakers pull back the curtain, they reveal the delicate dance between practical execution and digital artistry. A recent industry discussion on the popular Visual Effects Artist React series highlights how modern production pipelines blend these disciplines. Modern filmmaking techniques have evolved past the simple binary of CGI versus physical sets. Solving the physical space problem In the film Locked, the crew faced a classic logistical puzzle: filming a continuous three-and-a-half-minute shot inside a cramped car cabin. Placing a physical camera and dolly inside a standard vehicle is physically impossible due to spatial constraints. Instead of replacing the vehicle entirely with CGI, the production team utilized a modular, physical car rig. Crew members dressed in green screen suits physically disassembled sections of the car's frame, pillars, and doors as the camera moved past. They then reassembled the pieces in real-time once the camera cleared the space. This approach allowed the actor to interact with a physical environment while maintaining accurate lighting on their face. The VFX team then seamlessly blended the seams, added glass reflections, and integrated a 360-degree background plate. The reality of zero green screens The highly anticipated adaptation of Project Hail Mary sparked industry discussion when its directors claimed they did not use green screens. While the public interpreted this as a declaration of pure practical filmmaking, it actually meant the production relied heavily on manual rotoscoping. The crew captured Ryan Gosling on physical set pieces, and digital artists manually isolated his silhouette to insert the cosmic backgrounds. To depict the alien "astrophage" environment, the crew built a custom physical rig. They placed thousands of tiny infrared lights on chicken wire surrounding the actor. By using a camera with the infrared cut-off filter removed, they captured authentic, blooming light points in-camera. Bringing Rocky to life The film's emotional core relies on the relationship between Gosling and an alien creature named Rocky. Building this bond required a hybrid approach. Puppeteer James Ortiz operated a physical puppet on set, which gave Gosling a real entity to interact with and allowed for natural, improvised dialogue. ``` +----------------------+ | Set Performance | | (Physical Puppet & | | Actor Interaction) | +----------+-----------+ | v +----------------------+ | Animation Planning | | (Framestore Team) | +----------+-----------+ | v +----------------------+ | Dual-Pivot Rigging | | (Tracking Bubble & | | Rocky's Center) | +----------+-----------+ | v +----------------------+ | Final CG Render | | (Complete Visual | | Replacement) | +----------------------+ ``` For the final film, Framestore replaced the puppet with a completely digital character. Animation supervisor Arslan Elver oversaw the complex physics of Rocky moving inside a rolling polyhedron bubble. Animating this required a dual-pivot system: one pivot tracking Rocky's weight inside the bubble, and another dynamically shifting where the bubble's outer edges made contact with the ground. This combination of physical puppetry on set and meticulous digital animation created a character with genuine weight and screen presence.