In the automotive industry, robots with articulated arms build and weld car parts or doors. Having left the factories, they also operate in studios, and increasingly in the cinema and audiovisual industry, particularly in the United States. In France, Spline, a visual engineering company established in Aubervilliers (Seine-Saint-Denis), is one of the first specialized companies which, since 2018, have been diverting the use of these reliable, precise and robust articulated arms, for the benefit of world of audiovisual and special effects.
Special effects: in Vendargues, silence, we’re faking it!
Purchased in Germany, its fleet of six proprietary robots, measuring from 1.30 meters (doorways, apartment filming) to 3 linear meters, operates on 120 to 130 shoots per year: from music videos and advertisements (packshot or product lighting) to feature films and series. This niche technology has proven itself on a film like Black Box with Pierre Niney, for an accident scene, or even on the promotion of fiction Becoming Karl Lagerfeld, recently arrived sur Disney+.
100% control of camera movements
Four of these articulated arms are installed in Aubervilliers, one model equips Indie Location, a rental company for digital cinema cameras and lenses in Lyon, and a last one, the largest named Tessa, has been strengthening the offer of Provence Studios in Martigues since April. With a span of six meters, Tessa will be used in synergy with the XR The Next Stage set.
« Often, mistakes made during filming are corrected in post-production. A motion control of this type makes it possible to streamline the workflow and better integrate visual effects upstream for greater creativity. Our arms, whose joints are almost the same as those of a human arm, are re-designed to be equipped camera plates at their end. They perform movements that humans cannot perform, precise to almost a millimeter and infinitely repeatable » explains Lucas Limonne, Spline’s production director.
Controlled by 3D software allowing virtual preview of the final scene, this connected robot synchronizes with the LED screens by sending them its trajectories. From zooming in on the texture of a material to a slow-motion scene or cloning a character in a fiction, motion control multiplies the possibilities of complex or innovative shots compared to a classic camera.
« For the director, it is 100% control of the camera movements and what he sees in the frame. The robot is also capable of turning at high speed: the arm of the Tessa model can deploy at three meters per second, or even more depending on the movement. », explains Lucas Limonne.
The fiction market and studio filming in the lens
While the budgets for fiction have increased under the impetus of the platforms, the recent partnership with Provence Studios aims to provide a complementary technical solution in order to implement other ways of filming: for example by accentuating visual effects or by facilitating post-production. For Provence Studios, this is another argument to attract very ambitious French and international productions.
Without revealing the rental price of such a tool, Spline, which advises producers and directors on the best technical solutions for creating effects sequences, says ” that it is also accessible to producers with small or medium budgets ».
