How Characters Are Made to Look Bigger and Smaller in Movies & TV | Movies Insider | Insider
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- Опубликовано: 21 сен 2024
- Since the invention of film, filmmakers have tried to trick viewers into believing that an actor is either shorter or taller than they really are.
The most classic techniques are sticking an actor on a platform or having them interact with props built to scale. But those need to be paired with clever camera angles and visual effects. In “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” (2001), director Peter Jackson employed a forced perspective so Gandalf would really look like he was interacting with a hobbit. More complex computer-controlled camera moves and blue-screen compositing helped make the shots more complex and were used further in “The Two Towers” (2002), “The Return of the King” (2003), and the “Hobbit” trilogy (2012 to 2014).
Performance capture created even more opportunities for actors to play giants on camera in “Avatar” (2009) and “The BFG” (2016), but creating the proper sense of scale gets trickier when these characters have to interact with normal-sized actors. When playing 8-foot-tall Thanos in “Avengers: Infinity War” (2018) and “Avengers: Endgame” (2019), Josh Brolin wore a cutout on his head to fill the gap. A more sophisticated method used in Marvel’s “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law” (2022) involved using CG to combine Tatiana Maslany’s performance with that of a much taller body double.
Now, with “Avatar: The Way of Water” (2022), director James Cameron and the artists at Weta FX figured out some of the most precise and convincing ways yet to size up actors through a combination of floating monitors, virtual cameras, and props.
Check out more of Weta FX’s work:
www.wetafx.co.nz/
/ @wetadigitalvfx
/ wetafxofficial
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Every Way Characters are Resized for Movies and TV | Movies Insider | Insider
Production at it’s best, especially for LOTR, Avatar and old movies. Respect for all the crew
avatar is still the best one out of all of them
@@LanaaAmor The Whole 3 Hours of Avatar is nowhere near First 5 Minutes Of LOTR FOTR
@@yashrajgaikwad5629 LOTR didn't even release in India lmao. Where did you watch it p*jeet? Probably on your smartphone. Pa jeets in india like watching western fantasy bs for some reason and will be the first ones to defend them. Probably cause their own mythology sucks lmao. The first avatar still looks better than the newer hobbit series. Eww you're a lower caste gaikwad lmao, How did you end up here?
@@yashrajgaikwad5629 CAP!
She-Hulk is obviously better than all of them combined.
This is why movies cost so much to produce. Absolutely fascinating.
Sometimes the height illusion is as simple as giving an actor heels, like Tom Hardy playing Bane in _The Dark Knight Rises._
The visual effects of the movies are amazing. Every movie gets better and better
Yet writing stories get lazier and lazier.
Well not always.
I would say the opposite for Marvel movies
Not exactly I think cg can rock but the Hobbit uses it too much and it’s uncanny. Pinocchio had worse cgi than shriek 2. It all depends
No, they are getting worse because visual effects are CGI now, so no more trickery like in the Lord of the Rings or ELF where they really had to place actors further away from one another to make them look bigger or smaller now everything is being replaced by crappy CGI because it is easier.
In that scene with Frodo and Gandolf, I never thought about how that's forced perspective. Now knowing that, I would assume that the wooden rectangle beams on each side are not the same size, but only appear to be the same to really secure it in our minds that Frodo's hand is far smaller than Gandolf's.
Even after seeing how it’s done… it’s still magical
The way the hobbit was shot to accommodate for the hight differences made Ian McKellen have a breakdown on set
Truly Avatar's CGI and VFX is mind-blowing
I think it looks fake.
@@mem1701movies it is fake
@@mem1701movies I've got a bad news for you buddy, Avatars are fake.
@@mem1701movies You're not different buddy nobody thinks Avatar looks fake at any level.
@@m0v1estar I do
It’s pretty amazing to see the progression all these many years. Imagine what it’ll be like another 50 years down the road! Wow.
“No, Dougal, this one is small, the ones out there are far away” - Father Ted Krilly
Drink!
The picture of the face propped above the head is kind of hilarious. I guess the tennis ball wasn't cutting it anymore.
Amazing CG work..!! Thank you for the update, Insider..!!
Honestly, I want to see more from Darby O'Gill & other older movies. Practical effects always impress me more!
This video could be made up of examples of all Tom Cruise movies and it would still make sense.
Making Tom Cruise as tall as or even taller than Kelly McGillis in Top Gun is the greatest SFX ever. You'd think he's 6'0 tall watching all of his movies despite being paired up with Nicole Kidman, Cameron Diaz, Olga Kurylenko or Rosamund Pike who are taller than him barefoot in real life.
So many apple boxes…
🤭
the clip at 1:44 of "Darby O'Gill And The Little People" is a 1959 Disney film that set a certain standard for using forced perspective photography to make people look smaller, it is quite brilliant with some very complicated set ups and it has never quite been equalled, there is no Cgi and no back projection, the small characters and full size characters are on set at the same time , it is quite mind boggling to watch the film and try and figure out how it was done, it is totally convincing. Nowadays it is very easy to do with Cgi.
Short of the involvement of time-travelling visual artists, it would be a bit odd if a movie from 1959 used CGI for *_any_* of its effects.
@@fireaza I think everyone knows that there was no Cgi in 1959, amazing practical effects were achieved back then that would be very easily achieved nowadays using modern Cgi, that is the point I was making so I guess you totally missed that!
In the LOTR they also have "Scale actors" : they were children or dwarves (small people, not the fantasy species) with the size the hobbits should have. There were used in larger camera shots when their faces were less precise in the camera.
They also cast it so that Gimli was significantly taller than the hobbits' actors. That way they could always film them together
Sharp-eyed watchers can see a giveaway to the forced perspective in the shot of Gandalf and Frodo at the table. Ian McKellan bumps his leg on the table during the scene, and only the front half of the table jiggles while the Elijah-sized half stays steady.
What can i say , tech is getting better and better day by day
I was really hoping this would go into detail about Hagrid in HP.
It was impressive seeing how Forced Perspective was used in Lord of the Rings or in She Hulk
Props for the props teams in these movies.
A good overview in FX-shots to get a general idea. But very rudimentary.
Say what you will about LOTR & Hobbit movies, but that's really clever film making.
ian mckellen did not like acting by himself. He almost had a mental break down in the Hobbit.
I never thought I'd stan a company but WETA has been THAT GIRL, ALWAYS
The beginning is almost word for word from the episode of Movie Magic that talks about the Attack of the 50ft. Woman remake from the 90s.
SHOULD BE CALLED ROTO-TAR. The Rotoscope team gets the awards!
8:04 I thought it was still Zoe Saldana in a motion capture suit
i liked She-Hulk and cgi wasn't bad when compared to worst of all times- Scorpion King Mummy Returns And Troll 2
From a technological standpoint this is all really impressive. But from a performance side I think it's a negative. You can just feel the disconnect in the performances when you can tell that people didn't film scenes together. Or when you see this elaborate cgi set but you know they were just looking at a bunch of green fabric. And considering that the cgi STILL looks artificial - I could not even remotely enjoy the 2nd Avatar film because the CGI was just so overt - , and often times just adds a bunch of needless noise to a scene, I'd settle for a less elaborate set, or more normal looking characters if it meant better performances from the actors.
There's a very good reason why movies that give major roles to puppet characters are very rare: it really doesn't look good. While it's cool that the turtles in the 1990 Ninja Turtles movie are real actors in real costumes, the animation on the robotic suits looks, well, robotic. The character's mouths just snap open and closed when they talk, it looks really unnatural. Which is a problem for a movie where the characters need to talk a lot. A puppet suit just wouldn't work for the aliens in _Avatar._ James Cameron is no hack, he knew what technology would be able to bring his vision to life, not because it would make the movie cheaper or faster to produce.
@@fireaza True, puppetry wasn't perfect and had it's limitations but you ask most actors and they prefer acting with a puppet that they can engage and respond with in real time rather than talking to a ball on a stick that's supposed to be something they wont even see until months, or even years, after filming is done.
And while everyone agrees Avatar was a technological achievement, they also agreed that the story and acting were mediocre at best, Stephen Lang being the exception because he seemed to have fun chewing up his scenes. Nobody went and saw those movies for the characters. They went for the spectacle.
So yes, in the case of something like Avatar, Cameron was able to get the look he wanted. But he sacrificed the quality of the acting. Which is just how things are now. Audiences have been trained to look at movies as assaults on the senses now, so I don't think they even really care about weak performances as long as there is a lot of stuff happening on screen.
The Weta Workshops team make amazing work. Seriously guys, well done!
"The trees are going to need to be 30% smaller if the characters are going to be 30% bigger." With maths like that I'm amazed they pulled this off. 🤣
Example: If the trees are made 100% bigger (ie double the size) the characters aren't made 100% smaller (ie non-existent). Percentages don't translate up and down the same.
Yeah it would be 23% smaller if the characters are 30% bigger
If only AAA video games has this much dedication than money grabbing
I thought they just stood Tom Cruise on a box...
So what we've got here is a Darby O'Gilly situation?
Need to give modern actors some credits in terms of using their imagination. It seems half the time they are acting/interacting with ppl/obj that are not even there.
My friends are our dads listening to the rules before laser tag 0:36 damn you, memes!!
WETA is an amazing company.
Nothing really to say, but I enjoyed this video. Thanks for making and sharing it.
That first VFX shot they show for Avatar looks terrible. I worked in Previs/Postvis and that's almost as bad the quality of our temp work. It's interesting that they went through the trouble to light the actors with a yellow/green light, yet the final CG environment mostly lit with blue lights. And the lighting on the Na'vi looks like a 1990s render. Very surprised that is the final version since so much of the film looked beautiful.
When you say it like that, it really looks weird
And I wonder how little these people who work on the movies actually see from a monetary standpoint considering some of these movies gross close to a billion dollars. I can pretty much guarantee you nobody who does any type of work like this ends up being rich unless they're on a owner of a company.
I was inspired by seeing the article: Keanu Reeves Gave $75M to 'Matrix' Crew
Our policy is everyone in every position gets base pay, then if the film is a success they all get a cut of the profit.
The actor and actress is amazing.
6:20 so that she doesn't break her fall.
These movies would be nothing without the fx companies
So much effort
God those poor CG artists 😅
Amazing video!
Those Lord of the Rings Movies did it the right way but now CGI has taken over with their CGI Creatures that look fake.
So much work!
Omg that more job than I expectd :O
7:29 at 2x speed is the dr.livesly phonk walk
so _That's_ how they made all those Tom Cruise movies!
No man....
Many stunts are reall stunts
I know, because it would really look fake if they were done by CGI. But I was being a jerk about Tom Cruise being short, which he kinda is in real life. I should do better, shame on me! ☹️
Film production hit a snag with 3D, but why are they filming everything in 3D anyway? Film productions could save a whole lot of money if they just did 2D and spent the money saved on better writing and screenplay. 3D for me is and will always be just a gimmick, I've always been disappointed with all the movies I did watch in 3D, especially The Last Airbender which by far is the worst movie in 2D and 3D.
great video but is everyone going to forget about Gods Of Egypt lol
All i can think of now is Markiplier on how he "met" the Rock for RUclips 😂🤣🤣🤣
It’s obvious they spend more time on the effects than on the scripts. :(
100%. These dummies in Hollywood think that the script doesn't matter. The script is MOST of what matters. Name me a special effects movie with an incredible script that bombed. Doesn't matter if it's a 75yr old comic book property or a brand new concept. You can not save a bad script with good CGI.
Blows me away how often you hear a movie got greenlit with a 9 figure budget and no script but filming starts in 7 months.
And on a blockbuster, a great script will net you possibly hundreds of millions extra, yet it's treated as almost an afterthought (or if it's not, then I don't know what to say because too many scripts are absolute first draft garbage).
wait WHAT?!?!
Avatar used CG?
🤦♂️
them wires hanging the small eyeline screens in Avatar were made of Kevlar
If something screwed up those wires could seriously cut actors up into pieces
Ellenshaw referred to it as "split scale" not forced perspective.
LOTR, Avatar were great, I have watched LOTR so many times but never got bored but avatar
2 it wasn't a great movie to watch, lacked story and direction.
Both are meh
Nice 👌🏼💙
The example of Forced Perspective was horrible. Didn't work at all 😂
Wow, all this CGI and stuff. Very complicated.
"The better CG and camera tech has gotten the more seamless these scaled shots can be".... and the worse the movies have become.
This puts a whole new spin on Napoleon Syndrome.
They all look like video game characters though 🤔
Erik, hea from GHS!!!
The Lord of the Rings trilogy was so good...and The Hobbit trilogy was so disappointing. The effects were great in both cases though.
Wrong thumbnail
She hulk is fine as f*** though
Keep it in yo pants boy
Anyone else here after seeing Eric on Corridor Crew?
even with better Technology.. Lord of the Rings had a much better quality than the Hobbit.
The CGI Battles in the Hobbit are just awefull
The reason why LotR looks a million times better isn't because *"CGI BAD!"* but because they had years and years of pre-production for LotR. While Hobbit was switching directors and being re-written up until the last moment. It's a small miracle it doesn't look even worse than what it does.
Great video - but that's a lot of work no matter what.
Yeah alright, the tech, tricks and cgi is super cool and all, but personally, if I was an actor, this kind of movie shoot and "performance" would bore me to death.
Movies aren't made for actors
Was the microphone a potato?
By all their greatness, today's movies let no room for the viewer's fantasy allthough the story and the dialogs are of minor quality. Today's streaming platforms present hardly any content without superhumans, weaponry, huge destruction and meaningless heroism with the rate of a daily newspaper. The story is more important than the money behind the movie version.
i don't think i could crush my own skull.....
She Hulk is hot
I hope S1mple gonna be in the next movie
With She-Hulk, it's amazing how so much work can be invested in something so sh!t.
I actually liked it.
Literally
I was thinking the same. For the walk scene they could have just scaled her up on stock backround. Noone would have cared. Thinking about it, it wouldn't have made a big difference if they had just face-swapped a taller actor painted green.
@@magnuskallas For some shots, they did. The irony was for this feminist green fatale was that they used the body of an extra tall, buff, black MAN. 🤐
@@PhantomFilmAustralia Hence "actor", LOL!
How to mix Amapiano
Interesting
Disliked for thumbnail
Forced Perspective is an embarrassment. The director should first obtain consent.
Slang?
Wow!
So, witchcraft? 😂
Cool 😀
I see she-hulk I give thumb down
She hulk, "I'm a strong independant woman" 🤢
I'll save you some time. It's all just smoke and mirrors. And computers too.
Neat
slay
as a tip dont put she hulk as your thumbnail, i almost didnt click. pleasantly surprised it was more LOTR
The annoying green screens
Did not like either avatar movie
She hulk thumbnail why
Question; Can a country join NATO, while it is being attacked?
All the digital fx in the world can't save a bad movie or show.
Cute