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Possessed by New Technologies Neill Blomkamp experiments with the possibilities of Volumetric Camera Systems and real-time filmmaking in Demonic. By Trevor Hogg
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cclaimed filmmaker Neill Blomkamp (District 9) goes beyond his usual realm of science fiction with the late summer release Demonic. The well-received horror film centers on a young woman (Carly Pope) who enters into the mind of her comatose mother (Nathalie Boltt) and unleashes a malevolent creature. After making a series of experimental shorts for his production company Oats Studios, Blomkamp decided to tackle the low-budget project after the pandemic shutdown delayed other big-studio productions. Another motivating factor was the desire to utilize an emerging technology. “On a purely visual effects level, I was obsessed with volumetric capture as an idea for the last three years,” explains Blomkamp. “Oats Studios is well-suited to experiment with vol cap because we don’t have to answer to anyone. Under that framework, I started speaking to Metastage in Los Angeles, which is backed by Microsoft. But when
COVID-19 happened, the cast and I couldn’t cross the border, so I was not able to use them.”
Disguised as Prototype Tech
The director began conversations with Volumetric Camera Systems in Vancouver and went through discussions about the size of the volume and the number of cameras he needed. “I knew that the visual resolution would be glitchy,” he explains. “The best way to use vol cap would be to incorporate it into the story as a prototype technology; therefore,
the audience would accept the way that it looked and it would give me the opportunity to experiment with it like I always wanted to do. Once we decided to do that, then the next thing was to drop volume capture data into Unity. We would be in a real-time environment and could use virtual cameras at any point as well as change the lighting.” Different camera styles were adopted for the real world and dreamscape scenes. “The fictitious technology is used as a way where a person in a coma or a quadriplegic patient would be able to venture into a virtual world in a Unity-like re-
‘I knew that the visual resolution would be glitchy. The best way to use [volumetric capture] would be to incorporate it into the story as a prototype technology; therefore, the audience would accept the way that it looked. This would give me the opportunity to experiment with it like I always wanted to do.’
www.animationmagazine.net 62
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— Director Neill Blomkamp
september|october 21
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