How the Producers of the New Robocop Film Used a Real Suit to Enhance the Performance

Summary

In this article, we will discuss how the producers of the new Robocop film used a real and very expensive physical suit to enhance the performance of the character Alex Murph. The team at Framestore in the UK opted for this solution despite the character being largely digital. There are several advantages to using a real suit, including getting terrific lighting references, having a more consistent performance, and giving other actors something more realistic to react to.

The Challenge of Putting a Guy in a Robotic Suit
The On-Set Solution: Using a Real Suit
Advantages of Using a Real Suit
Conclusion

The Challenge of Putting a Guy in a Robotic Suit

In the new Robocop film, Omnicorp’s solution to the acceptance of robots in the USA is to put a guy in the suit, specifically injured policeman Alex Murph. However, as the first Robocop film showed us, a real actor in a real suit makes for a very bulky suit. Additionally, the guy in the suit is meant to only be part there, having been blown to bits earlier in the film. This means that he is missing huge parts of his body. So how did the producers put just part of actor Joel Kinnaman in a robotic suit?

The On-Set Solution: Using a Real Suit

The team at Framestore in the UK opted for a very on-set solution. Given that much of the character is digital, one might expect to see the now familiar green or grey tracking suit. However, there were some of those used, but only for deploying the EM-208s walking down the streets of Tehran. For the character Alex Murph, even though the suit would be redone digitally, slimmer and sometimes without an arm, the team opted to still have the actor wear a real and very expensive physical suit.

Advantages of Using a Real Suit

There are several advantages to using a real suit. The first is that the team gets terrific lighting references, and they can see any sort of reflections or anything that would have happened in that real environment. Secondly, as Joel Kinnaman himself admitted, the suit really helps the performance and his own acting choice. The way he moved in the suit was meant to give it something a little bit more robotic. When he was walking, he would turn his head first and then the shoulders afterward. This gave the impression that he was superhuman and had very fluid motion.

Having the actor actually act out the motion of the Robocop suit means that the audience gets a more consistent performance. Additionally, the lighting and camera department actually have something real to frame up to on set, and the other actors have something more realistic to react to. So even if the team has to painstakingly paint out things that aren’t wanted, such as sections of shoulder or hand, starting with more than a guy in a grey suit is better. In some of the shots, a lot of the background was actually also added, which makes the job of adding a digital Robocop actually sometimes easier. Sometimes literally just his face or his chin was lifted from the original material, and almost everything else was digitally altered.

Conclusion

In conclusion, using a real and very expensive physical suit to enhance the performance of the character Alex Murph in the new Robocop film was a smart decision. It gave the team terrific lighting references, allowed for a more consistent performance, and gave other actors something more realistic to react to. Even though the character was largely digital, using a real suit was a great on-set solution that ultimately enhanced the film.