Ex Machina Behind the Scenes

 

    Ex Machina is probably one of my all time favorite movies. It has a relatively tiny budget of 15 million dollars and they only had six weeks to film. It stars Alicia Vikander, Domhnall Gleeson, and Oscar Isaac and was written and directed by Alex Garland. Garland is especially keen on science fiction that has lots of fantasy elements but is also based mostly on real science. On real dilemmas or situations that are probable in our lifetimes. When Garland contacted his producer that he wanted to direct something, he simply told him to write something that anyone would want to direct and Garland could direct it. The film is about a man who wins a competition for a week at his CEO’s house. However, it turns out that he is not going to be spending the week just hanging out at his house but also assessing the artificial intelligence that he has been designing. The film explores the interacts that the AI has with this man until many moral questions are brought up.

   On a budget of 15 million dollars, it was going to be hard to create a convincing robot. However, they were about to create something really amazing. The final project of the AI looks amazing. They used a tight net suit that had to fit her body perfectly or wrinkles in the suit would ruin the effect. To make her skin to appear as if it was pasted over the robotic body, they put makeup around the rim of the skin that was showing to give it that lip. It took them about three hours each day to do the makeup. Then, in post, they took out parts of the suit and replaced them with robotic parts encased in glass.

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    Another big obstacle they had while making the movie was where they filmed. They decided they wanted to use zero green screens. The movie takes place at the remote home of the billionaire genius CEO of the most successful internet search engine company. They shot all the scenes in the above ground portion of the house in Norway. They wanted this house to be in a  beautiful landscape to make the wealth of this CEO to be clear since he would own all this land. They found two houses by the same architect a half an hour away from each other. Using movie magic they made it seem like one big house. All of the living quarters and sciency rooms were meant to be below ground so were shot on a set they built.

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    During the movie, Gleeson’s character has many “sessions” with the AI. Originally, they were going to be in a room bisected with a wall of glass, giving both of them equal space. However, it was changed to where the man was in a little box and the AI had space to move around. It created an interesting situation where the one who was free in an enclosed space and the one who was imprisoned had a lot of space.

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    Overall, I absolutely adore this movie and it was very interesting to learn about how they did everything on such a low budget. There are usually just two or three people in a scene together at a time. To think it was only shot over a six week period is mind boggling. I loved learning about all the problems they needed to overcome to get the effect they wanted.