Classic splitscreens, traditional face replacements and new approaches to machine learning-assisted face swapping allowed for twinning shots in ‘Mickey 17’. An excerpt from issue #32 of befores & afters magazine. The art of representing two characters on screen at the same time has become known as ‘twinning’. For Mickey 17 visual effects supervisor Dan Glass, the effect of seeing both Mickey 17 and 18 together was one he looked to achieve with a variety of methodologies. “With a technique like that,” he says, “you always want to use a range of tricks, because you don’t want people to figure it out. You want to keep them like, ‘Oh, wait a minute. How did they…?” “Going back to the way that Director Bong is so prepared and organized,” adds Glass, “it again makes the world of difference with that kind of work, because he thumbnails every shot. Then, some of them are a bit more fleshed out in storyboards. You can look at it and go, ‘Okay, in this situation, this is what the camera’s doing, this is what the actor’s doing,’ which in itself is quite interesting, because he pre-thinks all of this. You’d think that the actors show up and basically just have to follow the steps like robots. It’s not like that. He gives them an environment to work in, but the shots do end up extraordinarily close to what he thumbnails, and it made it a lot simpler to go through.” Those different approaches to twinning ranged from simple splitscreens, to traditional face replacements, and then substantially with a machine learned AI approach, now usually termed ‘face swapping’. What made the twinning work a tougher task than usual, suggests Glass, was the fact that the two Pattinson characters are virtually identical. “Normally, when you’re doing some kind of face replacement, you’re comparing it to a memory of the face. But this was right in front of you as two Mickeys looking strikingly similar.” Here’s how a typical twinning shot was achieved, as described by Glass. “Because Mickey was mostly dressed the same, with only a slight hair change, we were able to have Robert play both roles and to do them one after another. Sometimes, you have to do these things where hair and makeup or costume has a significant variation, so you’re either waiting a long time, which slows production, or you’re coming back at another time to do the different roles, which always makes the process a lot more complicated to match, but we were able to do that immediately.” “Based on the design of the shot,” continues Glass, “I would recommend which of Robert’s parts should be shot first. This was most often determined by which role had more impact on the camera movement. A huge credit goes to Robert for his ability to flip between the roles so effortlessly.” In the film, Mickey 17 is more passive and Mickey 18 is more aggressive. Pattinson reflected the distinct characters in his actions, including for a moment in which they fight. This fight, overseen by stunt coordinator Paul Lowe, represented moments of close interaction between the two Mickeys. It was here that a body double was crucial in shooting. The body double was also relied upon for the classic twinning technique of shooting ‘dirty’ over-the- shoulder out of focus shots of the double—ie. 17 looking at 18. However, it was quickly determined that even these would need face replacement work. “Robert’s jawline is so distinct that even those had to be replaced or shot as split screens,” observes Glass. When the shot was a moving one, no motion control was employed. “I’ve never been a big advocate for motion control,” states Glass. “To me it’s applicable when you’re doing things like miniatures where you need many matching passes, but I think when performances are involved, it interferes too much. It slows down a production’s speed of movement, but it’s also restrictive. Performance and camera always benefit from more flexibility.” “It helped tremendously that Director Bong and DOP Darius Khondji shot quite classically with minimal crane and Steadicam moves,” says Glass. “So, a lot of the moves are pan and dolly. There are some Steadicams in there that we were sometimes able to do splitscreens on. I wasn’t always sure that we could get away with the splitscreen as we shot it, but since we were always shooting the two roles, we had the footage to assess the practicality later. We were always prepared to go down a CG or machine learning route, but where we could use the splitscreen, that was the preference.” The Hydralite rig, developed by Volucap. Source: Rising Sun Pictureshandled the majority of twinning visual effects, completing them as splitscreen composites, 2D face replacements, and most notably via their machine learning toolset REVIZE, which utilized facial and body capture of Pattinson to train a model of his face and torso to swap for the double’s. A custom capture rig, dubbed the ‘Crazy Rig’ and now officially, The Hydralite, was devised and configured by Volucap to capture multiple angles of Robert on set in each lighting environment in order to produce the best possible reference for the machine learning algorithm. “For me, it was a completely legitimate use of the technique,” attests Glass, in terms of the machine learning approach. “All of the footage that we used to go into that process was captured on our movie for our movie. There’s nothing historic, or going through past libraries of footage, and it was all with Robert’s approval. I think the results were tremendous.” “It’s staggering to me as I watch the movie that the performances of each character are so flawlessly consistent throughout the film, because I know how much we were jumping around,” notes Glass. “I did encourage that we rehearse scenes ahead. Let’s say 17 was going to be the first role we captured, I’d have them rehearse it the other way around so that the double knew what he was going to do. Therefore, eyelines, movement, pacing and in instances where we were basically replacing the likeness of his head or even torso, we were still able to use the double’s performance and then map to that.” Read the full Mickey 17 issue of befores & afters magazine in PRINT from Amazon or as a DIGITAL EDITION on Patreon. Remember, you can also subscribe to the DIGITAL EDITION as a tier on the Patreon and get a new issue every time one is released. 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Interviews Mickey 17: Stuart Penn – VFX Supervisor – Framestore By Vincent Frei - 27/05/2025 When we last spoke with Stuart Penn in 2019, he walked us through Framestore’s work on Avengers: Endgame. He has since added The Aeronauts, Moon Knight, 1899, and Flite to his impressive list of credits. How did you get involved on this show? Soon after we had been awarded work, Director Bong visited our London Studio in May 2022 to meet us and share his vision with us. How was the sequences made by Framestore? Framestore was responsible for the development of the Baby and Mama Creepers. We worked on the shots of the Baby Creepers within the ship, and the Creepers in the caves and the ice crevasse. We developed the ice cave and crevasse environments, including a full-CG shot of Mickey falling into the crevasse. Within the ship we were also responsible for the cycler room with its lava pit, the human printer, a range of set extensions, Marshall’s beautiful rock and—one of my personal favourites—Pigeon Man’s spinning eyes. We also crafted the spacewalk sequence. All the work came out of our London and Mumbai studios. Bong Joon Ho has a very distinct visual storytelling style. How did you collaborate with him to ensure the VFX aligned with his vision, and were there any unexpected creative challenges that pushed the team in new directions? Director Bong was fun to work with, very collaborative and had a very clear vision of where the film was going. We had discussions before and during the shoot. While we were shooting, Director Bong would talk to us about the backstory of what the Creepers might be thinking that went beyond the scope of what we would see in the movie. This really helped with giving the creatures character. Can you walk us through the design and animation process for the baby and mother creepers? What references or inspirations helped shape their look and movement? Director Bong had been working with his creature designer, Heechul Jang, for many months before production started. We had kickoffs with Director Bong and Heechul that provided us with some of the best and most thought out concepts I think we’ve ever received. Director Bong set us the challenge of bringing them to life. We took the lead on the Baby and Mama Creepers and DNEG took on the Juniors. It’s fun to note that the energy and inquisitive nature of the Babies was inspired by reference footage of puppies. Were these creatures primarily CG, or was there any practical element involved? How did you ensure their integration into the live-action footage? They were all CG in the final film. On set we had a range of stuffies and mockups for actors to interact with and for lighting reference. People became quite attached to the baby creeper stuffies! For the Mama there was a head and large frame that was controlled by a team of puppeteers for eyeline and lighting reference. The ice cave has a very distinct visual style. How did you achieve the look of the ice, and what techniques were used to create the lighting and atmospheric effects inside the cave? I was sent to Iceland for a week to gather reference. I visited a range of ice cave locations—driving, hiking and being dropped by helicopter at various locations across a glacier. This reference provided the basis for the look of the caves. The ice was rendered fully refractive with interior volumes to create the structures. As it’s so computationally expensive to render we used tricks where we could reproject a limited number of fully rendered frames. This worked best on lock offs or small camera moves—others we just had to render full length. How were the scenes featuring multiple Mickeys filmed? Did you rely mostly on motion control, digital doubles, or a combination of techniques to seamlessly integrate the clones into the shots? For our shots it was mostly multiple plates relying on the skill of camera operators to match the framing and move and the comp work to either split frames or lift one of the Mickeys from a plate and replace the stand-in. Since Mickey’s clones are central to the story, what were the biggest VFX challenges in making them interact convincingly? Were there any specific techniques used to differentiate them visually or subtly show their progression over time? This really all came down to Robert Pattinson’s performances. He would usually be acting with his double for interaction and lighting. They would then switch positions and redo the performance. Robs could switch between the Mickey 17 and 18 characters with the assistance of quick hair and makeup changes. The prison environment seems to have a unique aesthetic and mood. How much of it was built practically, and how did VFX contribute to enhancing or extending the set? The foreground cells and storage containers were practical and everything beyond the fence was CG with a DMP overlay. The containers going off into the distance were carefully positioned and lit to enable you to feel the vast scale of the ship. We also replaced the fence in most shots with CG as it was easier than rotoing through the chain links. When Mickey is outside the ship, exposed to radiation, there are several extreme body effects, including his hand coming off. Can you discuss the challenges of creating these sequences, particularly in terms of digital prosthetics and damage simulations? Knocking Mickey’s hand off was quite straight forward due the speed of the impact. We started with a plate of the practical arm and glove and switch to a pre-sculpted CG glove and arm stump. The hand spinning off into the distance was hand animated to allow us to fully art direct the spin and trajectory. The final touch was to add and FX sim for the blood droplets. How did you balance realism and stylization in depicting the effects of radiation exposure? Were there real-world references or scientific studies that guided the look of the damage? Most of the radiation effects came from great make up and prosthetics—we just added some final touches such as an FX sim for a bursting blister. We tried a few different simulations based on work we had none on previous shows but ultimately dialed it back to something more subtle so it didn’t distract from the moment. Were there any memorable moments or scenes from the film that you found particularly rewarding or challenging to work on from a visual effects standpoint? There were a lot of quite diverse challenges. From creature work, environments, lava to a lot of ‘one off’ effects. The shot where the Creepers are pushing Mickey out into the snow was particularly challenging, with so many Creepers interacting with each other and Mickey, it took the combination of several animators and compositors to bring it together and integrate with the partial CG Mickey. Looking back on the project, what aspects of the visual effects are you most proud of? The baby creeper and the Ice cave environment. How long have you worked on this show? I worked on it for about 18 months What’s the VFX shots count? Framestore worked on 405 shots. A big thanks for your time. WANT TO KNOW MORE?Framestore: Dedicated page about Mickey 17 on Framestore website. © Vincent Frei – The Art of VFX – 2025 #mickey #stuart #penn #vfx #supervisor

Bong Joon-ho’s follow-up to Parasite is coming to streaming on Max in just a few days.Mickey 17, starring Robert Pattinson as multiple versions of a menial worker in a dark future, is the latest film from the Academy Award-winning Bong. Pattinson’s Mickey agrees to become an “expendable” in order to escape a debt on Earth. He’s assigned to a colonial mission to outer space, where he is used to accomplish all the most dangerous tasks; every time he dies, he’s given a new cloned body and put back to work.He’s Mickey 17 because he’s now on his 17th body — at least until he seemingly dies in another work-related accident and the colonists create a Mickey 18. But the first Mickey somehow survives, leading to two Mickeysrunning around their space ship.In addition to Pattinson in the two lead roles, the film also stars Naomi Ackie, Steven Yeun, Toni Collette, and Mark Ruffalo as Kenneth Marshall, the former politician turned quasi cult leader who is heading the expedition into space to find a new planet capable of sustaining human life.Warner Bros.Warner Bros.loading...READ MORE: 10 Horror Movies So Extreme They Made Audiences SickHere is the film’s official synopsis:From the Academy Award®-winning writer/director of “Parasite,” Bong Joon Ho, comes his next groundbreaking cinematic experience, MICKEY 17. The unlikely hero, Mickey Barneshas found himself in the extraordinary circumstance of working for an employer who demands the ultimate commitment to the job… to die, for a living.Mickey 17 premieres on Maxon May 23. It premieres on HBO proper on Saturday, May 24 at 7:40 PM.Get our free mobile appThe Best Box-Office Bombs in HistoryThese films flopped in theaters — but they are worth watching now.Filed Under: Bong Joon-ho, Max, Mickey 17, Robert PattinsonCategories: Movie News #mickey #announces #streaming #premiere #date