FAREWELL HARRIET

THE INCITE HRE-1T MAINTENANCE DRONE NICKNAMED HARRIET GETS EXECUTED UPON BECOMING REPROGRAMMED…

Though used mainly as a point of reference, motion capture did influence some of the traits of Harriet. “The mocap performer had a nice, slightly synthetic feel to his performance,” states DNEG animation supervisor Ben Wiggs. “He turned it up a little bit after Harriet gets hacked [by Mauve] because she had to feel slightly more human.” Harriet was not only feminine in name. “Latching onto the idea that she is female gave us a direction into how her body would move in different situations,” explains DNEG VFX supervisor Jeremy Fernsler. “Mauve activates an evade and escape mode that gave us an opportunity to incorporate humanistic traits such as panic when Harriet gets cornered and doesn’t know what to do; she has a lot more frantic motions.”

One of the challenges of the Harriet escape was her destruction over the course of 30 or 40 shots. “A talented Houdini artist in Los Angeles built a procedural destruction system where we had a master area that kept track of all of the bullet hits that Harriet would take,” remarks Fernsler. “Each bullet would do a level of damage based on where it was and how deep it went into her body cavity.”