"Later, we digitally removed the wire and tracked Kathleen Quinlan's face onto the dummy. On set, we put her on a stretcher, and filmed her face as we raised her up through the actual stage lighting. That took five minutes. It was very low-tech, but it gave us an excellent 2-D reference for re-creating the lighting on her face digitally."
An even more involved digital tracking job was done to enhance the sequence in which Weir (Sam Neill) blinds himself. Although audiences are spared the actual eye-gouging experience, Neill goes through much of the film eyeless, courtesy of Bob Keen's prosthetic makeup and Yuricich's digital sockets. "We had Image Animation drill little holes in the center of each eye in the fleshy, bloody prosthetic device attached to Sam's face. Then we added a white circle, like a bullseye target, around each hole, and those were the tracking points. At Cinesite, we built a little 3-D CG model of a head with no eyes in it, and generated a fleshy eyesocket with a bit of fat tissue and little veins. Once we knew the interocular distance between Sam Neill's eyes, Cinesite could easily track our digital makeup to those little white bullseyes on the prosthetic. In the end, the eyes look gouged out and you can see into his head. Sam performed with an approximately 120-degree field of view while wearing the eyesocket appliances."
Another remarkable "vision" was the Burning Man, a haunting specter from Captain Miller's past. Originally, Anderson, Yuricich and [motion-control and systems supervisor] Mark Weingartner planned to use an elaborate, £60,000 robot to achieve the effect of a character whose epidermal layer was forever on fire. But after some budgetary belt-tightening, they were left with £5,000. "Image Animation built a mechanical man that was moved with strings and sticks, which we covered with fabric and then burned to make elements," Yuricich says. "We burned the body in sections, and then applied those pieces digitally to an actor in a burn makeup so the character wouldn't look like a flaming matchstick. We had various layers of flame. We also did a shot of the Burning Man walking in a tank of water, using robot legs. The element photography for this sequence was executed by Weingartner and his crew. We did multiple passes with the tank, the legs and some steam. He's only on for a few frames, so it looks pretty cool. It was 50 percent of the original plan, but it worked."
