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A live-action version of Mamoru Oshii’s celebrated 1995 anime film
Ghost in the Shell was always going to be a tricky proposition, and
the FX wizards at New Zealand’sWetaWorkshop dutifully rose to the
challenge, as Scott Hocking discovered on a recent trip toWellington.
Amajority of today’s
sci-fi blockbusters
are simply a feast of
CGI-candy, but in upholding the
ethos of the Weta Workshop,
a considerable amount of
practical effects were utilised
to bring Scarlett Johansson’s
cybernetic Major, the creations
of Hanka Robotics, and Ghost
in the Shell’s iconic geisha
assassin to startling life.
When it came to the physical
fabrication of the film’s future
tech, Weta found an ally in
director Rupert Sanders, who
was fully supportive of the
team’s practical approach.
“That was our agenda from
the beginning of the film, and
it’s really exciting to work with
a group that wants to back us
to make things physically,” says
Rob Gillies, Head of Manufacture
at Weta Workshop.
One of the more challenging
prosthetics for Gillies and his
team was the Major’s thermoptic
camouflage, which had to fit
Johannson like a second skin and
required a full body cast of the
actress as a starting point.
“A lot of it was wrapping our
heads around what that actually
was,” notes Gillies. “We decided
to settle on a suit because that
was the most appropriate thing for
the film, which required creating a
skintight silicon suit that wouldn’t
burst apart in the middle of
shooting. It had to be reinforced
in the right places to fit Scarlett
perfectly, and it had to look like a
digital augmentation, weapon or
tool, rather than a fabric suit.”
Another big creative challenge
for the Weta team was the
‘shelling sequence’, in which
the Major’s brain (the ‘ghost’)
is implanted into a cybernetic
skeleton.
“We got some amazing
designs for a full skeleton [from
designer Vitaly Bulgarov], which
was so fine and refined in design
that you couldn’t really cast it,”
explains Gilles. “We couldn’t
use our traditional pipelines for
manufacturing it, so we settled
on the idea of 3D printing the
entire skeleton, which had never
been done before. We had about
12 weeks to pull that off, so it
was a bit of a roll of the dice, but
we were pretty confident we
could pull it together. And we
did, and that’s actually what’s
in the final edit of the shelling
sequence.”
With its innovative combination
of practical and digital effects,
Ghost in Shell represents another
groundbreaking achievement for
Weta. Gillies acknowledges the
1995 film as being an invaluable
source of reference and
inspiration, with some scenes
recreated wholesale.
“With a piece of content as
strong as the original, you have
to pay a little bit of homage
to it. The original was almost
flawless – the art direction and
shot selection – so you can’t go
wrong in replicating those sort of
scenes.”
SHELLING
the GHOST
WETA
Fast Facts
028 AUGUST 2017
visit DVD&BD FEATURE
• Ghost
in the Shell
is available on
4K UHD
As well as being a world class
special effects company, a Weta is
also an oversized species of cricket
native to New Zealand. The insect's
fearsome appearance is not unlike
something its namesake would
create for a Hollywood movie.
The Weta Workshop was founded
in 1987 by Richard Taylor and Tania
Rodger as RT Effects. Its initial
projects included Peter Jackson's
early films Meet the Feebles and
Braindead, as well as TV's Xena:
Warrior Princess and Hercules: The
Legendary Journeys.
Sister company Weta Digital was
established in 1993 to handle FX on
Heavenly Creatures, and went on
to pioneer the process of motion-
capture technology for the Lord of
the Rings trilogy, as well as the
MASSIVE software program to bring
the armies of Middle-earth to life.
Weta is synonymous with the Lord of
the Rings trilogy but its filmography
is long, distinguished and diverse,
including The Frighteners, 30 Days
of Night, Black Sheep, I, Robot,
Prometheus, The Lovely Bones,
District 9, The Avengers, and Avatar.
Flo Foxworthy,WetaWorkshop
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