The BOX

Remarkable work from Bot & Dolly.

They are a design and engineering studio specialising in automation, robotics and filmmaking. Their raw material is sophisticated industrial robots taken out of the factory and set loose on film sets, where they manipulate lights, performers, cameras and other volumes with movements that are more precise, more coordinated and more complex than a human could manage — and endlessly repeatable.

The magic happens in real time, at a level of precision and predictability that lets the virtual and the physical meet and stay perfectly in sync in a live performance. There is enormous value in either of those things on its own; combined, the possibilities are remarkable. It is no surprise that Bot & Dolly's IRIS motion control system, used here, was also used extensively in the shooting of Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity.

Here is the video that explains how it was done.