Scott Stokdyk: That’s a complicated question to answer. Digital Trends spoke to the film’s Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor, Scott Stokdyk ( Spider-Man 2, Hollow Man), to learn how the film turned Jeff the robot into such a remarkably human character.ĭigital Trends: It’s always difficult to tell where the performance-capture work ends and the visual effects begin with a character like Jeff, so how much of Caleb Landry Jones’ performance do we see on the screen?
While Hanks delivers a powerful performance as a scientist confronting his own mortality, it’s the android named Jeff that provides much of the heart and humor in Finch, thanks to a brilliantly nuanced motion-capture performance by actor Caleb Landry Jones and a blend of practical elements and visual effects. Dying from radiation exposure and forced to abandon his laboratory, Finch sets out on a cross-country journey with his dog, Goodyear, and the android he created to care for his canine pal.
Set in the year 2030, Finch follows titular engineer and inventor Finch Weinberg, one of the few survivors of an apocalyptic solar flare that turned most of the Earth into an uninhabitable desert blasted by deadly UV radiation. Nevertheless, director Miguel Sapochnik went all-in on his sci-fi drama Finch by making a robot one of the film’s three main characters, right alongside an adorable dog and two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks. Using a robot as a featured character in a movie is always a bit of a gamble, particularly if you want the audience to form a sincere emotional connection with your nonhuman android.