New technologies to drive Asia’s first live-action sci-fi Mecha movie

Sony has joined a production partnership to produce the first live-action sci-fi Mecha movie in Asia.

‘The Boy and His Robot’ is being produced by Richmanclub Studios, a Singapore film production company, in collaboration with production partners such as Sony, NVIDIA, OTOY OctaneRender and Nanyang Technological University’s Multi-plAtform Game Innovation Centre (MAGIC).

Sony says it will be the first feature film to have visual effects fully produced by GPUs (Graphics Processing Unit) instead of CPUs, the first feature film workflow utilising Cloud Computing for the entire project and the first to massively use Markerless Motion capture and with just six gaming Webcams (Sony PS Eye). 

The film’s director, Rich Ho, said Sony’s NEX-FS100 professional interchangeable lens camcorder captured his imagination. He was attracted to the camera’s picture quality, which he says matched those of major studios’ pictures, yet remained within reach of smaller independent studios and cinematographers in cost and efficiency.

“I knew that the traditional way of movie production would be too costly and time consuming to allow the story to be brought from paper to reality,” Mr Ho says.

“I am humbled that many international partners decided to take the risk with this movie, and dive in to pioneer a new movie production workflow that just might revolutionise the film industry in terms of time and costs. It’s a new faster and better way of working, which essentially frees artists to focus on creation and ultimately entertaining the public with a dramatic, action-filled, live-action Mecha movie.” 

The film is scheduled for release online in the later part of 2014.