Thanks to films like Captain Marvel and The Irishman, digital de-aging is now commonplace. What makes Gemini Man unique?
Adcock: Will was pitted against himself. For that, we relied on performance capture, so Will would be in an A-B situation. Will would take on the role of Henry, grappling with a stand-in, and so on. Behind the smoke-and-mirrors visual illusions, there was nowhere to hide.
Then we’d reverse the equation, with Will playing Junior this time. To capture his performance, we mounted a head-capture gear on him with two small cameras looking at his face. After that, we employed performance capture in post-production to have a better understanding of the performance he performed. As a result, a wholly digital 23-year-old Will Smith may be 100% re-created synthetically.
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How did Gemini Man get shot?
Gemini Man, like director Ang Lee’s previous film Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, was shot digitally at a frame rate of 120 frames per second. Universal Production Partners (UPP), Park Road Post, Scanline VFX, Legend3D, Inc., The Third Floor, Inc., East Side Effects, Stereo D, and Clear Angle Studios collaborated on the visual effects for the film, which were overseen by Bill Westenhofer and Guy Williams. Will Smith also shared a video on his Youtube page that took fans through the whole visual effects process for the film.
Is Gemini Man created by a computer?
In truth, we only see one Will Smith in the movie, even when we assume we see two. According to the actor, who spoke at a Paramount event covered by Inverse: “It isn’t anti-aging… I am not the young character. That character was entirely generated digitally. They didn’t stretch some of the lines in my image. It’s a CGI character in the same manner that The Lion King is. My performance is being used to produce the CGI parts. The skin is a CGI creation. My skin isn’t like that.”
Lee collaborated with visual effects company Weta Digital to create a completely seamless young CGI counterpart of the 51-year-old actor. According to CinemaBlend, at a round table discussion, the filmmaker said: “You’ll have to come up with a fresh method. Junior being a CG character is, I believe, a prerequisite for this; it’s the full package. Not only do we do the face, but we also do the rest of the body. Nobody goes into detail about the levels like we do.”
Lee went on to say that he did it for the following reasons: “It’s a different attitude than watching a conventional movie, even if it’s 60 frames per second rather than 120 at 2K… I believe it was because of this that I felt compelled to, because you can’t put on cosmetics, erase wrinkles, change your hairdo, and appear younger, or cast Will Smith’s son to play him and call it a clone. That will not be possible with this material.”
Traditional make-up was also out due to the incredibly high frame rate and sharpness, as it was likely to show up on screen. Instead, the visual effects studio created a younger Will Smith based on the actor’s appearance during The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and his early flicks like Bad Boys.
Smith joked about it to the Hollywood Reporter, saying, “I got to watch all the horrors I committed in entertainment.” Not only that, but Lee said he had to duplicate his earlier, less subtle performances, adding of his previous work, “I had to copy my earlier, less nuanced performances.” “That’s not a good sign. That is something I require of you.”
How did the Gemini Man clone come to be?
Lee used motion capture to capture Smith’s performance in order to create this clone. This was used by the effects team to create a digital representation of Smith from the ground up. Fortunately, Smith has been acting for over three decades, so the WETA team had plenty of influences to draw from while creating Junior.
Is it true that Will Smith played both roles in Gemini Man?
Was Lee merely trying to be modest? Maybe. When we asked him about the production afterwards, he only had one question: “Did you believe in Junior?” His relief was evident when we said yes.
In “Gemini Man,” Will Smith plays two roles: a middle-aged government assassin named Henry Brogan and his younger clone, Junior, who is dispatched to assassinate his elder self. During several of the action sequences, stuntmen stood in for Junior, and Smith contributed to the character through performance capture, but Junior is ultimately a computer-generated construct from the effects firm Weta Digital.
Lee compared Weta’s approach to other films’ attempts to use visual effects to age actors, describing them as “simply brushing away actors’ wrinkles:” “You remove all the details when you do that… Aging is a difficult process; it’s a fact of life.”
What exactly is the CGI effect?
Computer-generated imagery, or CGI for short, is a word used in film and television to denote digitally manufactured pictures. CGI is a type of visual effects (VFX) in which filmmakers generate or alter imagery that does not exist in the real-world environment being shot on film or video.
In Gemini Man, who plays Will Smith’s clone?
How did Gemini Man’s clone come to be? During the majority of the sequences, a stuntman stepped in for Junior, according to TechCrunch. Smith, on the other hand, contributed to the character’s development through performance capture. Junior was eventually shown to be a computer-generated fabrication by the effects studio Weta Digital.
Is Gemini Man a Scammer?
E, E, E (2019) Will Smith can’t save this dull thriller from his deepfake younger self in Gemini Man. The Telegraph published an article on the 9th of October. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/gemini-man-review-will-smith-cannot-save-tedious-thriller-deepfake/ (Accessed on the 16th of December, 2020).
Will Smith was paid how much for Gemini Man?
Gemini Man, in which Smith co-starred with a digital, younger version of himself, grossed $12.5 million. “When I saw myself and my digital clone, it was incredible,” he told Hip Hollywood about the experience. It was honestly quite strange!” “It’s hard to create a computerized human being, that’s what we dida full digital replacement of Will at 23,” producer Jerry Bruckheimer remarked. On this film, he had to work twice as hard.” “Don’t say that to him, he’ll ask me for more money!” Bruckheimer joked when asked if Smith was paid twice.
Is the clone of Will Smith in Gemini Man CGI?
Of course, digital de-aging of actors is becoming more prevalent these days, but that isn’t the case with Gemini Man, as Will Smith revealed to io9, since the younger Smith is truly a wholly digital CGI person.
“It’s not de-aging,” Smith clarified. “I am not the younger character. That character is entirely digital. A character that has been fully reimagined. They didn’t just stretch some of the lines from my photograph. It’s an entirely CGI character, just like the lions in The Lion King.”
Given that the younger clone is expected to appear in about 400 sequences throughout the film, let’s hope the visual effects team was able to pull it off successfully and avoid the Uncanny Valley.
In Gemini Man, how did Will Smith portray his younger self?
Rather than simply digitally softening Smith’s looks, director Ang Lee and his visual effects team chose to build a wholly digital persona via performance-capture for Smith’s younger clone in Gemini Man.
