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Hello this is Shane Mahan. Zathura was one of our projects with Stan Winston and it was
the first film that we did with Jon Favreau. This is the beginning shot of the robot sequence.
And the boys draw a card and they get a robot, thinking that it was going to be a very impressive
big robot, and of course it's just a -- the first glimpse you get is a little tiny one. And that's an under the floor rod puppet.
And that's an under the floor rod puppet.
Of course this is his full size, seven feet tall, rather imposing, fun thing. I think
Phil Saunders designed this robot. The illustration was done by Phil. It had a very 60s, 50s,
60s retro feel to it. But it was a complicated piece, very interesting in terms of the design
because what we were going to do is put blue screen legs with real feet -- like you see
here -- this would be a person actually operating the robot. And then we would put digital legs
between the waist and the feet.
"Can you do a, can you do a run?"
And so from these tests we then did a film test of him wearing blue pants -- which is
this one. And then the Stan Winston digital team, at the time, completed this test by
putting digital legs on. And that's how the overall movement was done. Then we would cut
to actual shots that were stationary, that would be the actual operation legs. There
were certain shots where we didn't need to do digital replacement.
"That metallic paint looks good"
This is Kan testing the arm mechanisms. One of the elements that Jon Favreau really insisted
on -- he had just come off of Elf -- and he wanted a lot of practical effects that were
highly visible. This is an example of the rotation of the full sized puppet.
"He's looking at the boy. He looks at his hand. Arm."
This is a rehearsal shot outside of Sony a day before the actual shoot. Now we worked
with the floor effects team and this is actual plummed fire coming out of the bottom of the
feet and the same with the jet pack on the back. And it was put on a rail and pulled
at high speed to give it that sort of, "launch" feel.
This of course is me, after hours, when I didn't think anyone would see me. I wanted
to be the robot and this was my only chance. Actually what I'm doing is demonstrating how
it's going to slide into the kitchen. And that's me running away.