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’s clone come to be?
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.
Who is the clone of 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.”
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 much of Gemini Man is computer-generated?
In 2019, no one blinks when they see de-aged stars in big-budget films. For the majority of Captain Marvel, Marvel’s digital plastic surgeons have pushed this technique to its logical conclusion, offering fans a credible 46-year-old version of Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury. Director Ang Lee is taking the de-aging trend to a whole new level with Gemini Man, which is set to hit theaters this October from Paramount.
Will Smith plays an aging assassin (Henry Brogan) who is pursued by a younger, cloned version of himself (Junior) in the film, which avoids de-aging fully. Instead, Lee collaborated with Weta Digital to build a fully digital rendition of Will Smith when he was younger. Even at the 120 frames per second rate that Lee opted to film the movie in, the result is spectacular and surprisingly believable (the industry standard is 24 FPS).
It’s not de-aging, Smith stated at a Paramount-hosted event. 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. That isn’t my skin.
The theater experience is going to be different, and we’re at the vanguard of it, said producer Jerry Bruckheimer.
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.
In Gemini Man, who plays Will Smith’s stunt double?
The clone battle scenes in Ang Lee’s Gemini Man may appear seamless, but they were the result of Will Smith’s two stunt doubles working diligently on set.
And what about the man himself? He’s as approachable as they come, striking up conversations with everyone on site, from producers to extras.
We speak with Travis Parker, who is best known for doubling Will in Gemini Man and Bad Boys For Life, as part of our Seeing Double series, which looks into the incredible lives of some of film and television’s most brave actors stunt doubles.
Travis discussed everything from stunt disasters to duetting Aladdin songs with Will, as well as how even legendary director Ang gets ‘lost in the sauce’ on production.
How did they manage to turn Victor Hugo into Will Smith?
Will Smith, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Clive Owen, and Benedict Wong feature in the action thriller Gemini Man, directed by Ang Lee. The story follows a hitman who is hunted down by a younger clone of himself. Thanks to the talents of Weta Digital’s artists, both characters in the film are played by Will Smith.
While the film featured a variety of visual effects (as well as other firms who contributed to those VFX scenes), Weta was responsible for the amazing advancement in facial work shown in Gemini Man.
To create the 23-year-old version of 51-year-old Will Smith, the production team decided not to use compositing to age Smith, as several Marvel films have done so successfully. Rather, the team chose to create a younger Will Smith who is entirely digital. The end product is some of the most innovative digital human work ever created. The realism, rendering intricacy, and behavior of the computer character sets a new standard for digital humans.
The Weta team began with a scan of Will Smith on the USC ICT Light stage, as well as a number of photo shoots and turntables. Weta was not attempting to re-create Will Smith, but rather a younger version of him, who is referred to in the film as Junior. Weta built a precise likeness of 51-year-old Smith as a stepping stone to the 23-year-old version of the actor in order to accomplish this. Weta even photographed the “backside of his teeth” during their photoshoots, according to visual effects supervisor Guy Williams of Weta. Williams collaborated alongside Bill Westenhofer, the production VFX supervisor, and Sheldon Stopsack, the co-visual effects supervisor.
Over the course of the film, Weta photographed Will Smith on three times. Weta did a shot three times: once during early prep, once during the shoot, and once at the conclusion. At the start of the production, the crew undertook a FACS session, scanning not only actor Will Smith but also Chase Anthony, a young African American actor, at USC ICT. He was scanned for a reference of juvenile skin texture. “Chase Anthony, a 23-year-old male, has skin that resembles Will Smith’s when he was younger, but not in terms of face shape. We performed two photo shoots with Victor Hugo and one with him.” Hugo acted as Junior’s on-set reference for Will Smith, as Williams noted.
The production took a “AB” style to shooting. This referred to Will Smith portraying Henry Brogan in real time on camera, with Victor Kigo, his acting partner, portraying Junior. The roles would later be reversed. Will Smith had someone to react to, someone to act with, an eye line, and someone who could provide him more than simply someone reading lines back to him using this method. “Victor Hugo is an actor, and he was attempting to provide enough of a performance to support Will’s. As a result, you have this lovely synergistic performance from them both.”
Weta later assisted in the setup of a mo-cap stage in Budapest at the end of the shoot. The crew re-captured all of the AB performances. “We switched the equation such that Will Smith was now Junior and Victor was the 51-year-old Will,” says the producer. Other actors, such as Benedict Wong or anyone else who was crucial in the action, returned to the mocap stage to reprise their roles. Providing the ideal acting atmosphere for Will Smith was one of the driving forces behind this production. “One of the things I told Ang from the beginning was that Weta’s digital performance would only ever be as good as Will can offer you,” Williams stated. Weta advised the cast and crew to view the Mocap as just another day of performances rather than a technical exercise. “We put a lot of effort into making the Mocap work as well for Will and the other performers as possible.” The crew decided against having Will shoot one role in the morning and then switch to the other in the afternoon. It would have been difficult for the actor to keep such a schedule, and “it would have burnt an hour and a half in the middle of our filming days, with makeup and outfit changes – which you can’t afford to lose,” Williams argues.
The crew would set up Will Smith with exact tracking markers on his face on days when they were just filming Junior, and then he would wear the infrared head-mounted camera rig (HMC), which was powered by a battery setup carefully attached to the small of the actor’s back, beneath his clothes. Because the HMC employed infrared light, no visible light was cast on other performers, props, or Junior’s costume. Through Will’s outfit, the infrared lights/dots on his vest could be seen. “They show up as discrete dots through the garment, which helped us track his torso,” Williams explained.
Weta maintained that the show must come first, “and to that end, the body is a part of the show.” That’s why we said we couldn’t put a Will (Junior) head on another actor since the body wouldn’t match Will’s performance.” However, Williams goes on to say that if the scenario consisted just of Will performing as Junior in solitude, that was no longer the case. “Suddenly, the performance is linked to the body.” So now we only have the option of replacing the head.” The team was capturing the head and body in situ at the same time. “We’d do a flawless track of the head back onto the shoulders by mocaping the shoulders.” That’s what we’d term a ‘b-side only’ shot.”
Face CGI
To create a digital version of Will Smith, who is 23 years old. The researchers initially created a digital clone of 51-year-old Will Smith, and then retargeted his performance to the young digital persona once that was correct.
During a FACS session, a variety of expressions and motions are used. Will Smith got white face paint and dots on his face for the FACS emotions; the white splatter paint was only to give the photogrammetry something to ‘grip’ onto. The FACS session generates a set of animated meshes of Will Smith, who is 51 years old. While Weta has a method for temporal capture that is theoretically comparable to Disney Research Studio’s Medusa rig, Williams claims that “you’d be shocked, – we do less of the motion stuff than you would imagine.” He remarks, “At the end of the day, it’s not really that beneficial.” “We’re more concerned in where elements of the face go – from point A to point B than with how they get there.” Because our system is thoughtful and intelligent, we ‘get there’ right.”
A photo from the FACS session appears on the left. The Weta team had to create a fully animated face for Junior with the necessary skin texture in order to remap the expressions to a youthful Will Smith.
While there existed scanned skin reference, the team devised a novel method for creating plausible skin texture at the pore level, which they used once the animation was approved.
“One of our shader writers came up with the notion of enlarging the pores of Junior’s skin while we were sampling skin textures. Williams explains, “He basically came up with this extremely sophisticated rule system for generating pores on a face.” “We created a flow field that described the flow of the young actor’s skin,” he continued. It then establishes links between the poor locations. As a result, you end up with small elliptical football-shaped pores.”
This was significant because it removed the assumption of a flat 2D UV space produced from a rubber mask scanned from an actor’s skin. It expands the pores in three dimensions rather than two. “This gave us the most beautiful facial skin we’ve ever seen,” Williams says.
The pore sites are shown with dots (above) and the lines between the bad sites generate the wrinkles that are the pores in these Junior photos (see below). “You’ll observe that the heavier lines are biased in the flow direction,” Williams says. “In the wrinkling pass, you can actually discern the flow direction.” Because the heavier lines are deeper, the football shapes originate from them.” “Because your face can fold in many directions,” he says, the minor lines are still crucial.
“Having this million+ polygon mesh of all the pores on a person’s face at high resolution is fantastic,” Williams adds, “but then we felt we could go even farther.” “We can do a tetrahedral simulation on that.” Because the face has a ‘grain,’ the pores buckle along the proper flow lines when the face moves, contracts, compresses, and stretches. This signifies that all of Junior’s micro wrinkles are being done appropriately when his pores begin to collapse.”
While this sequence depicts the development of the face, the animation is transmitted first, followed by the pores once the animation has been approved. The FACS session is used to define the face’s facial movement, which is then sent into Weta’s sophisticated facial solver. Although the Weta face solver is rarely described in detail, it is thought to use Machine Learning. The facial puppet is then driven by this. “The FACS session not only informs you how every muscle on your face moves, but it also shows you how the skin, with its various densities of fascia, reflects that movement,” Williams explains.
Digital Eyes
Weta additionally improved on their already amazing and complicated digital eye pipeline. “Williams quipped, “We examined Will’s eyes to a pedantic level.” Weta took a lot of macro shots of people’s eyes for the film. “We had six people sit in a chair for a day, and we simply orbited around them, taking as many shots of their eyes as we could, pushing the lids around, and so on.” Williams wanted to make sure the digital eyes didn’t appear like Dolls’ eyes. “CG eyes have always reminded me of doll eyes. “I was curious as to why that was,” he says. The scientists determined that it had something to do with the way the eyelid and the eye reacted sympathetically with each other after doing considerable investigation. “There’s a blending of the two, and until you treat it properly and get the science correct – the eyes will always appear like they’re from a doll.”
Weta’s perceptions of an eyelid and how it’merges’ with the eye’s surface have shifted. According to Williams, the way the lid hits the eye’s surface enables it to operate almost like a single surface with the eyeball. “Although the two sides are obviously distinct, we discovered that the backside of the eyelid is actually quite soft. As a result, it fillets up on the eye. The eye squishes and pushes against the eyelid. As a result, the eyelid bulges out a little and you get this tiny little ‘fillet.’ That is extremely significant.”
The cornea and corneal bulge of the eye, as well as the scalera, were previously represented in Weta’s complicated existing technique “We matched the choroid, as well as the Iris, which is kind of evident,” Williams explained. The choroid, also known as the choroid coat, is the vascular layer of the eye that lies between the retina and the sclera and contains connective tissues. The human choroid is thickest at the far back of the eye (0.2 mm), and it narrows to 0.1 mm in the outlying portions. “The choroid is the layer of tissue that lines the inside of the eye,” Williams adds. “If you cut a person’s eye open, you’ll notice a black substance on the inside of the eyeball. It’s a thin, inky black film that lies within your eye to prevent your eye from seeing a lot of white reflections that would otherwise bounce about on the inside of your eye’s white surface.” The choroid coat is usually described as black in conventional medical texts, but Weta discovered something different. “The key is that the core roids aren’t black at all. It’s an extremely dark blue.” The reason for this is that as your Scalera (eye white) thins, the whites of your eyes become a little bluer.” Varied civilizations and races have different levels of melanin. Melanin is a dark brown to black pigment that can be found in the hair, skin, and iris of the eye.”
Gemini Man was made for a reason, according to Ang Lee.
“I thought I’d be the right guy for Gemini Man since it has a lot of action and involves technology, which I’ve done before. As I sat backstage at the YouTube Space in Los Angeles, California, he explained candidly, “They phoned me and asked if I wanted to do it, so they must have thought I was the guy.” “But I don’t believe it matters whether I believe and am the guy or not. It piques my interest. When I come back with the material for a movie I’m interested in, it always feels like it’s my movie, and nobody else should do it; it’s just me.”
