EX Machina

EX Machina

Producers: Andrew Macdonald and Allon Reich

Production companies:  DNA Films and Film4

Director: Alex Garland

Screen writer: Alex Garland

Actors:

• Alicia Vikander as Ava
• Domhnall Gleeson as Caleb Smith
• Oscar Isaac as Nathan Bateman
• Sonoya Mizuno as Kyoko
• Symara A. Templeman as Jasmine
• Elina Alminas as Amber
• Gana Bayarsaikhan as Jade
• Tiffany Pisani as Katya
• Claire Selby as Lily
• Corey Johnson as Jay the helicopter pilot

 Budget: $15,000,000 (estimated)

Screens shown on: $3,324 (USA) (23 August 2015) (4 Screens) to $3,510,000 (USA) (10 May 2015) (2,004 Screens)

Box office figures:

Opening Weekend-$250,000 (USA) (10 April 2015)

Gross- $25,440,971 (USA) (28 August 2015)

Music (composer of score/ soundtrack):

• Schubert Piano Sonata No.21 in B Flat Minor

              Composed by Franz Schubert (as F. Schubert)

              Performed by Alfred Brendel

              Courtesy of Decca

              Under license from Universal Music Operations Limited

• Unaccompanied Cello Suite #1 in G Major BWV 1007 - Préludé

              Composed by Johann Sebastian Bach (as J.S. Bach)

              Performed by Yo-Yo Ma

              Courtesy of Sony Masterworks

• Bunsen Burner

              Written by Anthony Tombling Jnr.

               Performed by CUTS

               Produced by CUTS

               Licensed from Invada Records UK

                Published by Sentric Music UK

• Ghostbusters

              Words and Music by Ray Erskine Publishing Limited

              Published by EMI Music Publishing Limited

• Enola Gay

              Written by Andrew McCluskey

              Performed by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark

              Published by BMG Dinsong Limited, a BMG Chrysalis company (c) 1980

             Courtesy of Virgin/EMI Records Limited

             Under license from Universal Music Operations Limited

             Used with permission.

             All Rights reserved.

• Get Down Saturday Night

              Written by Oliver Cheatham (as Cheatham) & McCord

              Performed by Oliver Cheatham

              Published by Universal/MCA Music Ltd

              Courtesy of Geffen

 

              Under license from Universal Music Operations Limited

• Husbands

              Written by Thompson, Hassan, Milton & Camille Berthomier (as Berthomier)

              Performed by Savages

              Published by BMG Rights Management (UK) Ltd, a BMG Chrysalis Company (c) 2013

              Courtesy of POP Noire Records

              Used with permission.

              All rights reserved.

Marketing: teaser trailers, trailers, posters, websites, you tube

Storyline: Caleb, a 26 year old coder at the world's largest internet company, wins a competition to spend a week at a private mountain retreat belonging to Nathan, the reclusive CEO of the company. But when Caleb arrives at the remote location he finds that he will have to participate in a strange and fascinating experiment in which he must interact with the world's first true artificial intelligence, housed in the body of a beautiful robot girl.

Special effects:

Production

Ex Machina was shot in the summer of 2013 for four weeks on the B and D Stages at Pinewood Studios and for another two on location in Norway, where the production found the Juvet Landscape Hotel. Footage was shot with the Sony F65 and, for handheld work, F55 and recorded to 4K raw. At Pinewood, DIT Jay Patel told Definition Magazine, his 12-core Mac Tower handled playback "almost at real time."

Lenses and lighting

Interestingly, the high-res 4K look was partially countered by DP Rob Hardy's use of vintage lenses — mainly, the Cooke Xtal Express series, with glass that dates to the 1930s but was famously modified by Joe Dunton for anamorphic shooting in the 1980s. In fact, Hardy later said he chose Sony's F65 (in part because it was sensitive enough to pick up specific aberrations in the "ridiculously insane" glass he had selected. He used 15,000 tiny pea bulbs embedded in the sets for a dramatic increase in the tenability of the lighting for individual scenes.

Avas body

More than 300 robot shots were delivered under the direction of Double Negative's Andrew Whitehurst, who was VFX supervisor for the production, according to Cinefex. Shots were generally around eight seconds in length, with the longest shot of Vikander in the film running for more than a full minute. That, along with the above-mentioned use of vintage glass and its attendant distortions, made tracking a special challenge. Scenes featuring Ava were photographed normally on set, with no green-screen photography at all. After each shot, VFX captured clean plates with the main camera as well as HDR lighting reference. Vikander's face and hands were roto'd in every shot, sometimes along with her shoulders, feet, and/or lower torso. Pixar RenderMan was used to render robot Ava's body as a mesh generated using camera- and body-tracking data (and the HDR light) from set. The 2D compositing team finished the shots.