Creatures that go bump in the night: skitters are nocturnal. (
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FOR TV WEEK —- FALLING SKIES —– SKITTER —- (
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Falling Skies,” executive produced by Steven Spielberg, tells of post-apocalyptic warriors who battle intelligent, human-sized aliens, with spider-like legs, known as skitters.
For the show’s two-hour second season premiere, the show’s creative team took The Post inside the initial yearlong process that brought the skitters to life.
While the creatures were entirely computer generated (CG) in the pilot, it became quickly clear that CG magic had its limits.
“The original skitters didn’t move that well. The legs kinda crashed into each other,” says Todd Masters, president of MastersFX Studios, which designed the physical embodiment of the skitter.
“Sometimes when you build something in a digital environment where you don’t have to deal with physics, you don’t realize that this arm is gonna crash into that arm.”
When Spielberg said that the skitters’ faces needed more human-like emotions, it was decided to make the skitters a blend of CG, remote-control puppetry, and live performance.
Effects company Zoic Studios, charged with the CG end, created 3-D computer models of different skitter scenarios.
“[We needed] this character to look creepy and threatening, but there’s a lot of legs [six], and he looked like he was tip-toeing around,” says Zoic’s Andrew Orloff, the show’s visual effects supervisor. “So we decided it looked best when the skitter used its legs almost like shock absorbers. It kind of bobs and weaves, and its hips sit very loosely inside the cradle of his legs. That allowed us to be very free with the legs.”
As development continued, Spielberg gave notes every step of the way.
“We were going through how the skitter’s mouth could be different and emotive, and Steven picked the way the mouth opens and retracts,” says DreamWorks Television co-president Justin Falvey. “It has an element of a vertical opening and closing which is [consistent with his] constant note of, make it feel like a creature we haven’t seen before.”
Sketches, 3-D computer models, and small-scale physical models were created, all leading to further tweaks.
“At the end of their long spider legs, we had these pointy crab-leg tips,” says Masters, citing one example. “We changed those to three-finger hands so they could grab stuff.”
MastersFX then began building the full-sized physical version of the skitter’s upper body and head, a process that took about three months, and cost just under $100,000.
While the skitter’s rubber upper body suit, painted a yellow-y green with black and brown specks to give it a “broken-up” appearance, is moved solely by an actor, the face on the head mask is controlled by off-screen puppeteers via remote control joystick.
“The puppeteers are creating a performance,” says Masters, “including the expression in the eyes, and the movement in the mouth.”
On the show, skitters shown in full, with lots of movement — scurrying up a wall, for instance — are generally still CG, due to the difficulty and cost of creating legs capable of sustaining complex action sequences. But a skitter in close up is either an actor and the remote control head, or, if seen in full view, a combination of those two plus CG effects for the legs.
(And if you ever see a skitter’s head explode, those are “fake alien guts,” including latex and thermal-gel chunks.)
While the end result was the product of a massive collaborative effort, the footprints of the man who gave us “E.T.” imbue every otherworldly second of the show.
“These are the sort of movie magic tricks that Steven is an expert in,” says DreamWorks Television co-president Darryl Frank. “He goes through every shot on the show, fine-tunes it, and gives us great advice that makes it all look real.”
What is a skitter?
KID ALERT
The creatures look for kids whose minds they can control.
SNAKE EYES
They have slitted eyes like reptiles.
OXYGEN-FRIENDLY
They breathe the Earth’s atmosphere.
FALLING SKIES
Today, 9 p.m., TNT