JAM Brings Memorable VFX and Animatronics to Black Mirror Series 6

JAM VFX’s primary involvement in Black Mirror series six was on Beyond the Sea. The lion's share of this work was in a sequence where David Ross (Josh Hartnett) gets his arm chopped off. 

The scene was shot against a green screen using a prosthetic animatronic arm. The prosthetic was itself very impressive. However, some of the attributes of the asset would prove challenging to control or capture in camera. Initially, JAM VFX had planned to simulate the machine fluid that would ‘bleed’ from the severed robot limb. This would also necessitate building other elements of the geometry to emit the fluid from. 

However, following the shoot it became apparent that elements of the prosthetic needed further refining. Specifically, the lighting made the substance of the arm feel less natural and some interaction caused the arm to distort in an undesirable way.

For the most part we were able to blend between JH's real arm and the prosthetic used. However, in the key shot of the sequence there was too much rotation to adopt a 2D or blending route and thus we opted instead to rebuild that arm in CGI using a scan of JHs actual arm.

The first port of call was to use this scan then retopologise and rig it. Once the team had that it was able to match, move the prosthetic and place the CG arm in its place. The prosthetic arm had different dimensions JHs real arm, to replace what was there it would mean first cleaning off the old one and restoring partial areas of highly detailed live action BGs.

Moreover, as the arm interacts and affects many other surfaces and live action elements including people it would require the team to create multiple geometries of interacting elements such as the table surface and the hands/arms of the extras to simulate the correct shadows on and displacement of the skin as the arm was interacted with.

The prosthetic had its own cables and tubes but during the reviews it was decided that this didn’t have a sever that matched the nature of the cut, in so far as the real cables were too loose and hanging over the point of sever. This made the skin feel hollow. As such the next stage of the process was to develop what the internals of the arm would look like. This was completed in Z brush and after a short process of R&D involving conversations about gooey pizza strings and Turkish delight, the team eventually settled on a look that had stuck a balance between a sort of silicone supporting structure and tubes would be set within. These are the tubes that contain pressurised fluid bleeding from the arm. You can see this in the supporting breakdown. 

With this JAM VFX were able to gauge a sense of how it would ‘bleed'. Abigail Scolly (VFX supervisor) and Josie Henwood (VFX producer) shot reels of element plates of the type of fluid they wanted to see and how it behaved. This was a great starting point, but the fluid needed to interact with people and surfaces so ultimately this was mostly simmed using Houdini, though, the team did also combine it with element plates and practical assets too.

VFX is a process, and that process works best when the whole team is able to have an open dialogue about what elements may or may not work and why. Every week we were able to sit down (virtually) and discuss all the shots in minute detail. There was a real openness to the discussions and no comments were off the table, ultimately this helped create something that everyone could be immensely proud of. It was imperative to us that both John and Charlie got exactly the level of detail and finish that they wanted, and we were very happy to help them realise that. 

“Team JAM 'were simply fantastic! Evren, April, Pete and the whole team were clearly excited and delighted to be part of 'Black Mirror’. Their passion, enthusiasm and determination to deliver was always apparent. Our creative process needed plenty of discussion, reflection and openness to explore in a different way to the norm as result of how this particular sequence had come together.” Dan Winch, producer of Beyond the Sea.