EX-Machina Shot Recreation Unreal Engine 5

eX-Machina Shot Recreation Unreal Engine 5

Lighting, texturing, and composting

Project

A technical lighting and cinematography study recreating a shot from Ex Machina (2014), directed by Alex Garland and shot by cinematographer Rob Hardy. The film’s visual language blends surrealism with a voyeuristic filming style.

This project was developed in Unreal Engine 5 to achieve photorealism in a real-time environment, with a focus on physically grounded lighting and materials. The primary challenge was matching the lighting, scale, and composition of the original shot. The workflow began with a detailed analysis of the source film, identifying the camera and lens used in production, then recreating a digital equivalent (sensor size, focal length) inside Unreal Engine. The actor’s height was used as a reference to estimate spatial dimensions, enabling proportional calculations for the room and ceiling height. The environment was then assembled using a combination of kitbashed assets to match the scene layout and dressing. Unreal Engine handled primary rendering, with DaVinci Resolve used for final compositing and colour matching.