Film Secrets - Box Office SPYS: Watchmen's Dr. Manhattan

After coming from seeing the long anticipated Watchmen film, (based on Alan Moore's graphic novel), one might wonder in awe of how they made Dr. Manhattan's character come alive (so to speak). If you have not seen the movie, you are more than likely to have seen an advertisement for it, since Warner Brothers has been running a ridiculous advertising campaign for it. But, that is enough of getting off track. The point is, you probably know who I'm talking about. But still, with all that said, if there are still those of you who do not know of the Watchmen Universe, he is being referred to in some groups as "The Blue Guy".

So how did they make this Dr. Manhattan seem so real, with expressions that look like they could not be replicated by some form of animation. Believe it or not, this is what was done (with the partial use of animation).

So how did they do it exactly?

First, Dr. Manhattan was chosen to be played by Billy Crudup. You might remember him from Almost Famous, MI: 3, The Good Shepard and the forthcoming highly anticipated Public Enemies. During the filming process, Billy would wear a type of VFX Tron suit, that was equipped with literally 2500 LED lights (a very similar technology to what was used in Beowulf). This was used so that it would be easier to capture Manhattan's blue glow when it was edited after filming. Although it did present some other lighting difficulties when filming.

In addition to wearing the LED lights, he also had hundreds of sensors or markers located on his face that monitored his expressions. This was all in preparation to make Dr. Manhattan become as believable as he was on screen. Lastly they set markers on his body so that they could monitor his body movements. Again to be used for Dr. Manhattan's animation.

The fact is that Dr. Manhattan, as we see him in the Watchmen movie, is fully animated with the use of CGI and other technologies. The reason that his expressions look so real is due to the hundreds of sensors that I mentioned which allowed them to imitate Billy Crudity's facial movements. It was a long and difficult process and something that could most definitely not have been done 5-10 years ago.

I have some pictures below for you to see as a "before" and "after" type format. When all is said and done, the pictures tell it all. See them below.

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