STACK Aug #154

DVD&BD FEATURE

visit stack.com.au

WETA Fast Facts

Get the STACK Magazine app for more digital content

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. A majority of today’s sci-fi blockbusters are simply a feast of SHELLING the GHOST

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.

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.”

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

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.

Flo Foxworthy,WetaWorkshop

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,”

• Ghost in the Shell is available on 4K UHD

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 .

028

AUGUST 2017

jbhifi.com.au

st154_028_WETA.indd 1

21/7/17 12:13 pm