How Jupiter Ascending was made

Feb 11

How Jupiter Ascending was made

Tue 10th Feb 2015, by Trevor Hogg | Production

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“Every film that you do with the same team means that you’re not rebuilding from scratch,” notes Dan Glass who has been collaborating with Andy and Lana Wachowski ever since The Matrix Trilogy and was responsible for supervising the visual effects for Jupiter Ascending. “The Wachowskis have shifted more and more from stage work toward location shooting.” Unlike Speed Racer [2008] which existed in a digital and stylized world, Cloud Atlas [2012] was very location based. “Jupiter Ascending fits into the same trend. While being highly fantastical and science fiction in its vision, the Wachowskis wanted to keep a focus on grounding it in reality.” Glass adds, “There are, of course, some large scale environments where there is no way we could find practical locations yet we always sought inspiration in reality where we could.”

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Chicago figures prominently in the first act and subsequent off-world environments incorporated CG augmented real locations such as the Natural History Museum in London and the Guggenheim Museum in Spain. “For off-world we selected architecture that felt somewhat futuristic but designed by human hand. We mixed a whole variety of things. There’s a wedding ceremony that takes place on Titus’ Clipper that we shot in Ely Cathedral which you’d think would be as far from science fiction as you can get. The suggestion in the film is that our aesthetics on Earth were influenced by somebody getting a glimpse of the structures in this far-off civilization. For the docking bay for Titus’ ship we adapted moulding from King’s College in Cambridge and turned them sideways so they’re familiar but there’s a twist to their use.”

The Wachowskis in action
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“The idea of space opera was definitely in the minds of the Wachowskis from the outset and they’re fans of trying to build great scale and a sense of history,” states Dan Glass. “They felt sometimes the mistake made in science fiction is that a city is portrayed with a singular look to it and that’s not how cities evolve; they’re a juxtaposition of many different aesthetics.” Given the task of developing the initial concepts was John Gaeta who served as a visual effects consultant. “John has a long history of working with us and the Wachowskis; he was on board for the first stage of production helping to collate and bring together the visual designers and guide some of the drawings and concepts that gave life to the project at an early stage. That was happening simultaneous to us doing Cloud Atlas which was the other reason that his was role was so helpful.” Production Designer Hugh Bateup (Cloud Atlas) worked closely with the visual effects team ensuring a common understanding of the core ideas. “As you get nearer to principle photography things naturally separate into different realms. The Art Department is chiefly responsible for physical set builds and the Visual Effects Department becomes chiefly responsible for virtual set builds.”

Extensive previs was constructed for the project. “We had complicated creatures that interact heavily with the performers,” explains Dan Glass. “The shots had to be carefully thought through which is not to say that cameras on-set were limited nor that people had to step in exactly the right place. It wasn’t to that level of literalness. You want to leave room for the performers to bring something to the scene. One scene, called the Shadow Chase, sees Caine [wearing his gravity boots] and Jupiter being chased through Chicago by creatures called Keepers in their Shadow ship; that sequence had to be meticulously planned to gain approval for the photography, which included hanging stunt doubles from helicopters being flown around the Chicago skyline, to ensure the safety of the movie crew and bystanders.”

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A rig was also engineered to assist with the complicated Shadow Chase Sequence. “We helped to co-design with Pictorvision a rig that could sit inside their regular stabilized mount with an array of six RED Epics that shot simultaneously; it effectively gave us a massive high resolution tiled plate that had over a 140 degree field of view. We had to do that for a couple of reasons: our selected time of day, just prior to dawn, gave us about 10 to 15 minutes of prime time each day to get the footage we needed; it was not practical to shoot traditionally the number of days the scene required so we had to be super efficient with the time we had. Secondly, we wanted the freedom to shoot our stunts with natural camera movements which meant the background plates needed to be very versatile. In post we overrode camera moves and stabilized when speeding up the footage, however, the look and quality of the footage came out very realistic and beautiful.”

CG adversaries make an appearance that battle with the principle cast members. “We used a whole range of techniques sometimes improvising on the day,” remarks Dan Glass. “The two main creatures we were working with each had respective challenges, one was a lot smaller than your average human and the other was much larger. We didn’t easily have the opportunity to stand somebody in for the actors to play off of. The Keepers which were smaller creatures were particularly challenging in that regard. It ended up having to be about miming for Channing Tatum [White House Down] who did a great job. We rehearsed with a maquette which Channing could hold and grapple with; then he would do a take the way they wanted and do a take without the maquette. Some of the plates we selected had the maquette in it so it was painted out in post.”

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“For the hero Sargorn named Greeghan [Neil Fingleton] and his henchmen, we sometimes had stuntmen on stilts to bring them to the right height,” explains Glass. “If the stuntmen were doing any kind of fast running it was preferable to have them running without being impeded by the stilts even if they weren’t at the right height. Neil was cast because he is over seven and a half feet tall, close to the actual height of the Greeghan.” The creatures were influenced by mythology in a deliberate effort to create a sense of familiarity for audience members. “The Sargorn were inspired by a gargoyle and a dragon. It is a vicious lizard creature that can fly and which has been bred to fight.”

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Titus Abrasax’s Cruiser
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The Wachowskis were keen that the spaceships look different from things we have seen before,” remarks Dan Glass. “Titus’ ship is no exception. It is insect-like with its wings. Extruded from the surface of the ship we added art deco lattice panelling mixing a lot of gold and precious metals you wouldn’t normally associate with objects of that scale.” Titus Abrasax (Douglas Booth) has dinner with Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) in his spaceship. “It is an entire set with the view of outer space added in. The design had the intention of feeling like luxury wooden yacht.”

Titus Abrasax’s Cruiser
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A massive home is inhabited by the sister Kalique (Tuppence Middleton) of the Abrasax Royal Family. “At one time it was a floating palace amidst beautiful waterfalls. In the end we went for something more grounded because we didn’t want it to lack too much physical realism. We did incorporate a floating landing platform that pushes the boundaries of modern day physicality but the palace itself we decided to keep grounded. We continued the idea of using multiple aesthetics bringing in aspects of the Natural History Museum combined with a lot of Middle Eastern architecture as well as gold and precious metals mixed with the stone.”

“The Jupiter Stockworks required some set pieces to be built but the gargantuan scale required was nothing we could ever construct or find anything practical for,” observes Dan Glass. “When Jupiter is trying to escape near the end we went to a huge power plant near London in order to give it some grounding and provide some real texture but the majority of the environment is heavily digital. It’s the largest asset that Double Negative has ever constructed. It was an amazingly complex and rich place.” As for the planet of Jupiter, Glass states, “We referenced footage from NASA probes heavily for the exterior shots of the planet surface; we wanted the planet when you approach it to feel recognizable.”

Orous
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“Orous is the planet in the story where our human civilization was born,” states Glass. “As a result we had to portray it as being extremely old, dating way beyond the origin of our Earth’s societies. The complexity of the world needed to be at an extreme scale. There are populated moons, craters, structures, and vast rings of commercialized industry. The planet surface is heavily covered with structures and towering spires that take you into the stratosphere to suggest a highly ancient civilized world. Despite this vast heavily futuristic society it is also somewhat backward in the appearance of some of its technology suggesting an encumbered over-developed world.”

Orous
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“The Zero is a cool mech armour suit and spacecraft used by the galactic police force, called the Aegis, which Caine [Channing Tatum] and his buddy Stinger [Sean Bean] use to rescue Jupiter from her wedding to Titus. In doing so they have to cross a field of warhammers which are like large scale space mines.” Amongst the futuristic technologies encountered are gravity boots, tractor beams, bots, and holograms. “A great deal of effort and time was put into every detail which is always the case with the Wachowskis. They are never content to let anything they or anyone else has done before be the easy track that we tread. When we breakdown the script and analyse any aspect of what characters use in the movie, we have to individually design each device so they have a unique flavour and feel right down to muzzle flashes.”

Caine Wise is a genetic amalgamation of wolf and human DNA while Stinger Apini has bee DNA who, along with many other genetically altered beings featured in the film, were digitally enhanced. “Some more than others,” reveals Dan Glass. “There was a lot of work by Jeremy Woodhead [Avengers: Age of Ultron] and his Make Up Department to develop some of those looks. Hybrids we call them. We did select work on various characters, especially the Aegis crew, like an elephant trunk for a nose or in the case some of the bots like Gemma Chatterjee [Christina Cole] and Advocate Bob [Samuel Barnett], we shot real actors made up but replaced the back of their heads and neck with machinery. We always strive to find the best combination of real and augmentation to achieve the desired result.”

“Double Negative and Framestore each did large chunks of Jupiter Ascending,” states Dan Glass. “Double Negative principally handled the exterior and interior Jupiter world, the larger sequences in Chicago including the Shadow Chase and a scene in an alley which happens early in the film. The chief responsibility of Framestore was the creature work, the Sargorns and the Keepers as well as some of the general space environments which included the warhammer fight and the wormholes travelling from planet to planet. Method Studios handled Orous, Kalique’s planet, the Aegis crew and Advocate Bob. The work of One Of Us included the Wedding and the Bees.” In regards to the Bee Sequence, Glass adds, “We tried to find something that felt naturalistic and yet unusual as Jupiter has some ability to manipulate their flight pattern.”

Rendering was a significant challenge for Jupiter Ascending. “It’s why we went to companies like Double Negative and Framestore which have sophisticated systems to handle the massive scenes,” states Dan Glass. “The Jupiter Stockworks was a huge asset and involved highly complex simulations of the Jupiter gasses that are being held back by a force field. Those gases are always present and ultimately come swirling in and destroy the Refinery structure with huge pieces collapsing. Double Negative did an awesome job avoiding getting completely bogged down with the technical aspects. It enabled us to efficiently evolve the sequence creatively.”

“It is hard to single out the greatest challenges sometimes, especially when a movie is of such a gargantuan scale,” notes Dan Glass. “On one hand the challenge is the scale itself and the vast amount of ideas to be tackled. In terms of actual technical and creative achievement I’m particularly proud of the Shadow Chase. Although it is grounded in a real city it took quite a lot of work to elevate beyond things we have done in the past which I always felt were more digital in the way they were represented. But this movie lifted that, and kept the stunt and performer work very rooted and physical in feeling. It was one of our original goals set by the directors to make sure that the stunt work felt believable and physical. They wanted to feel the muscle tension when someone was taking the weight of a landing or banking with their gravity boots.”

Imperfections needed to be incorporated into visual effects to make them believable. “Cinema is like that,” observes Dan Glass. “I remember a project long ago where we had to create some amazing storm systems. The constant feedback was that it didn’t look real and so you had to tone it down to something that looked more ordinary. I would go outside the building sometimes and look at cloud formations above me that were real but extraordinary. I thought, ‘If I were to make that exactly nobody would buy it!’ Sometimes reality isn’t credible.” The veteran visual effects supervisor believes, “Despite how much you’re trying to represent reality you have to have an eye for what fits the story.” Glass did not want to give anything way as to the fate of Sean Bean (Patriot Games) who has a habit of getting killed on the big and small screen. “I hope that everybody enjoys Jupiter Ascending. It’s a great epic ride through a highly original universe.”

Hasta La Motion!