Production Companies 20th Century Fox, Canlaws Productions, Davis Entertainment, Laurence Mark Productions, Mediastream Vierte Film GmbH & Co. Vermarktungs KG, Overbrook Entertainment
Studio Alex Proyas, Davis Entertainment, Laurence Mark Productions, Mediastream IV, Mystery Clock Cinema, Overbrook Films Production
Academy Award-winning Visual Effects Supervisor John Nelson (“Gladiator”) supervised over 1,000 visual effects shots from pre-visualization through postproduction. Nelson and his second-in-command, Digital Visual Effects Supervisor John Berton (“The Mummy,” “Men In Black 2”), began with a team of 20 at the start of production in Vancouver. Ultimately, the department swelled to thousands, occupying several effects houses for approximately eight months of post-production, a relatively short period for the volume and sophistication of the shots rendered. Digital Domain, WETA Digital, Image Engine, Rainmaker and Pixel Magic were among the visual effects houses on the film.
The department’s tasks were three-fold: create a credible, emotional performance from Sonny, establish a world integrated with robots in the year 2035, and make the huge, high-tech action sequences look seamless and believable.
“Sonny must look real for audiences to buy it,” says John Nelson. “Visual effects take the nuances and emotional energy that Alan Tudyk creates on the set and brings it through in the CG robot. The level of detail that an actor can create is amazing. Alan Tudyk gave us an incredibly high standard to work towards.”
“You do care about Sonny because he is an incredible character,” adds Nelson. “He’s a robot that can feel and improvise. He becomes a reflection of us and that becomes a very powerful and potent storytelling possibility. So we must have complete realism.”
Will Smith embraced the idea of working with a digital character. “This is a very revolutionary process,” he says. “As an actor, it makes it so much easier to really capture the emotional depth and comedy of the individual scenes, because I actually get to play the scene looking into someone’s eyes rather than, like in the past, a tennis ball!” “This is on the cutting edge of what we’re trying to do with computer graphics characters – finding better ways of making them interact with the other characters and drawing on real acting performances,” adds John Berton.
Visual effects house Digital Domain won the coveted assignment of creating the robots and specifically, breathing life and emotion into Sonny. The Digital Domain team was led by supervisor Erik Nash (“Titanic,” “Apollo 13,”) and Animation Supervisor Andrew Jones.
I, ROBOT defines the world of Chicago in 2035 by filling it with robots of every description and futuristic landscapes and skylines. “I, ROBOT has the most complex and sophisticated CG work in movie history,” says Wyck Godfrey. “Not only are we creating a photo-real CG character, but that character is set against a CG background.”
Award-winning New Zealand-based visual effects powerhouse WETA (“The Lord of the Rings”) was charged with creating the broad sweeping shots that establish the future world and the colossal sequences involving robots fighting, as well as robots and humans fighting.
Two-time Oscar®-winner Joe Letteri (“The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers,” “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King”) and Brian Van’t Hul at WETA oversaw the grand spectacle ‘David Lean’-type moments of the film. “Only our ‘cast of thousands’ involves thousands and thousands of humans and digital robots interacting,” says John Nelson.
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