CGI and digital effects aren't just for explosions and battle scenes. Filmmakers have all kinds
of tricks for making actors look their best on screen, and sometimes they have to bring
in some fancy digital editing to get the job done.
For Dakota Johnson in Fifty Shades of Grey, a rather intimate edit was required in post-production.
The 2015 erotic drama definitely had its fair share of bare skin, and the actors wore flesh-colored
covers over their private areas during filming so that they weren't actually naked. But it
wasn't removing something that created a challenge for the editors, it was putting something
extra in. To get specific, and a little risqué, some pubic hair needed to be added. In an
interview with The New York Times, cinematographer Seamus McGarvey revealed one of the challenges
of post-production. As he put it,
"Dakota had kind of a patch that went over her pubic area, and right round her whole
body. We were in the curious situation, in post-production, of adding [hair down there].
I wouldn't say it was one of the highlights of my career, but it certainly was one of
the most surreal scenarios."
When you think about it, digital alterations of actors' bodies, no matter how intimate,
certainly can be rather disorienting.
It's not just female actors who require digital edits. Henry Cavill had already started filming
Mission: Impossible – Fallout when he was needed for reshoots for Justice League. The
problem was that he'd grown a mustache for Mission: Impossible, while Superman is very
much clean-shaven. It took some back-and-forth between the two production companies until
it was on Justice League's crew to edit out the mustache instead of Cavill shaving and
then growing it back out for Mission: Impossible. Cavill explained the facial hair kerfuffle
to Empire Magazine, as he noted,
"I was slightly surprised. When we decided to go for the mustache, I certainly wasn't
expecting all the events to unfold as they were going to unfold. I wasn't expecting Justice
League reshoots to be as extensive as they were."
He added,
"When it came to that, it was one of those things where I'm in the middle of another
movie, and to change my look for a movie that should have finished already becomes a real
problem. And as you will see when the movie comes out, to have a fake mustache on would
not have been a possibility."
"You're not fond of the face furniture, are you?"
"It's not that I'm not fond of it, it's just that, you know, if I'm walking past schools,
people give me funny looks."
Anyone who's seen the 2011 Marvel movie Captain America: The First Avenger surely remembers
how Steve Rogers, played by Chris Evans, began the film as a scrawny young man. After a scientific
experiment turns him into ultimate superhero Captain America, Evans spends the rest of
the film looking like a perfectly proportioned god among men.
In order to play the earlier version of his character, Evans had to lose a ton of weight,
as the young Steve Rogers was a mere 90 pounds. But the producers didn't actually ask Evans
to lose and then regain all that weight. Nor did they use a body double. Instead, they
opted to employ some CGI. As director Joe Johnston explained to Reuters,
"Chris moves in such a unique way; he doesn't move like anybody else. The body double could
not move like him. As hard as he tried to watch Chris and duplicate the movements, it
just wasn’t the same."
The CGI technique involved shrinking Evans' real body by essentially digitially removing
sections of his body. The process was reportedly pretty difficult as it involved adding in
background elements around the smaller Steve in each shot. It must've been painstaking,
but it ultimately paid off quite handsomely!
The 2018 comedy Tag was based on an actual true story about a group of grown men who
play a month-long game of tag every year. It boasted an all-star cast, including Jeremy
Renner as Jerry Pierce, one of the tag competitors. While you wouldn't think a movie with a simple
premise like this would require too much CGI, there was an accident that made some digital
adjusting a crucial part of the editing. As Renner's co-star Jon Hamm revealed on The
Ellen DeGeneres Show, Renner broke both of his arms just three days into filming, and
they had 40 more days of shooting to go.
So instead of waiting for his arms to heal, Renner wore green screen casts that were eventually
removed during post-production. We have to say, that's pretty impressive that he managed
to keep filming an action flick while wearing not one, but two casts! We're also impressed
by that editing job. Alas, it wasn't completely perfect. As The Ringer noted in an article
closely examining the CGI arms, Renner frequently wore long sleeves to cover his casts, and
in one shot in the trailer, his cast is clearly visible. And when the CGI tried to recreate
his arms, they sometimes looked a little less-than-realistic.
In the 2010 action flick Machete, Jessica Alba is seen in her birthday suit during a
shower scene. But as it turns out, that lack of clothing was actually the result of some
CGI magic. A leaked set photo revealed that while filming the scene, Alba actually wore
white underwear and a white bra, which were edited out in post-production. The actress
has always been resolute throughout her career with a no-nudity policy. As she told Scarlet
magazine,
"I'll never do a nude scene. I can act sexy and wear sexy clothes but I can’t go naked."
She added,
"I come from a very Catholic family so it wasn't seen as a good thing to flaunt yourself
like that. I can handle being sexy with clothes on but not with them off."
After the photo of Alba shooting the shower scene emerged, her publicist released a statement
to Entertainment Weekly that read,
"Jessica has been steadfast in her resolve not to appear nude in films from the beginning
of her career. The decision to digitally remove the underwear from the shower scene in Machete
was one she and Robert Rodriguez made together, which would serve his vision for the film,
as well as honor her personal convictions regarding nudity."
Based on that explanation, it sounds like Alba was able to figure out a compromise that
worked for everybody.
Brad Pitt starred as the title role in the 2008 David Fincher film The Curious Case of
Benjamin Button, which tells the story of a man who ages in reverse. Pitt played Benjamin
at every stage of his life, even when he was really, really old. So in order to make the
transition from old to young convincing, the crew had to employ some crafty CGI to appropriately
alter Pitt's face and body.
Digital editor Ed Ulbrich explained how it was done during a TED Talk in 2009. For the
first hour of the movie, Benjamin's head was completely computer-generated from his neck
up. As Ulbrich explained, they cast little people to play the old version of Pitt's body,
and then they created a version of Pitt's head. To achieve it, they first tried using
marker-based motion capture, which is able to capture three-dimensional movements and
translate them digitally. But this didn't result in a realistic-enough face. So they
ended up reconstructing Pitt's facial performance, recreating it digitally, and adding it to
the body actor. It's pretty fascinating to see what this digital team managed to pull
off!
In the 2007 comic book flick Ghost Rider, Nicolas Cage appeared shirtless in one scene
with some very chiseled abs. The actor revealed to IndieLondon that he spent plenty of time
in the gym for the film, about four or five hours per day on shooting days, and pretty
much all day on the weekends. So his abs were real, but some digital alterations still had
to be made, as his huge arm tattoo needed to be removed.
CBR compared side-by-side photos of Cage on set and in the finished product, which revealed
a few key differences. The actor was definitely in incredible shape, but his actual abs might
not have been quite as defined as they were in the film. It could be the case that the
CGI team started work on his arms and then decided to touch up his abs as well. We'll
probably never know exactly what happened in the editing room definitively, but we can
at least offer kudos for the tattoo removal.
"Boo-oo-oo!"
The 1995 post-apocalyptic action film Waterworld was a bit of a disaster. During production,
a set was destroyed by a storm and the script was rewritten. With all of the shooting delays,
it ended up with a budget of $175 million. A juicy rumor was started by Newsweek at the
time that star Kevin Costner had added to the costs by demanding a CGI makeover for
his thinning hair. The actor naturally denied this, as he told Entertainment Weekly,
"We had a hard enough time getting the computer-generated things we need for the movie, let alone that."
One thing that was definitely added using CGI, though, was a pair of gills for Costner.
These also caused some uproar, as a Universal Studios exec reportedly said,
"The damned things look like little vaginas!"
The Waterworld team managed to transfer the gills from an above-water scene to an underwater
scene, where they indeed looked a little suspicious. CGI has clearly come quite a ways in the past
few decades!
"Mutation!"
"He's a mutant!"
It shouldn't surprise you at this point to learn that not all of the bare skin you see
in movies is real. In the case of the 2011 comedy The Change-Up, there was definitely
some fakery involved when Olivia Wilde appeared without her clothes on. As she revealed on
Jimmy Kimmel Live!, it was all an illusion. As she put it,
"I wasn't actually naked, but now I appear naked. They CGI'd me naked."
In order to film the scene, Wilde had to wear some pasties, which are little stickers that
covered her private parts.
"Just the parts covering the breasts."
Then in post-production, the salacious details were added digitally. Wilde even got to approve
the edits. As she recalled,
"They sent me an email saying, 'Please review nipple cover shot one through seven and decide
which one is most like the original.'"
Talk about having a weird day at work!
When the fantasy rom-com Splash was released in 1984, one scene featured Daryl Hannah as
the mermaid Madison kissing Tom Hanks before she ran back into the ocean. As Madison jumps
into the water, her bare rear end is clearly visible. But when the movie became available
on the Disney+ streaming platform, some CGI was added to maintain Hannah's modesty.
As Disney+ is meant to be generally family-friendly, a decision was made to cover up the actress'
bottom with some digital magic. Her long blond hair was extended, but unfortunately the CGI
ended up looking a little weird, as the lengthened locks don't really seem to be connected to
Hannah's real hair. As one Twitter user joked,
"They gave her a furry bath mat on her butt what the hell."
This is definitely a case of CGI gone hilariously wrong.
The film adaptation of the Broadway musical Cats became instantaneously infamous when
it was released in 2019. It was met with almost universally bad reviews and flopped at the
box office. One of the common complaints about the movie was the strange CGI that morphed
many well-known actors into bizarre feline-human hybrids. But if the post-production had gone
a little differently, it could've been even worse.
The first cut of Cats was reportedly filled with errors that needed to be edited out using
CGI. For instance, in some scenes, Judi Dench could be seen wearing her own wedding band,
which is a little odd for a cat! In another scene, one of the extras is wearing a hoodie,
as the editing team forgot to add CGI fur to him. Ultimately, Cats is a prime example
of how CGI can only take filmmakers so far when pulling off the visuals they're trying
to pull off. A human-cat mix might be just a little too weird no matter how you achieve
it.
Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, even more List videos about your favorite
movies and movie stars are coming soon. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so
you don't miss a single one.