In the last decade, visual effects have come a long way. The Advanced Imaging Society gave Gemini Man the Entertainment Technology Lumiere Award in September for its use of ground-breaking technology. On a business level, though, Gemini Man demonstrates that new visual effects concepts don’t always pay off. The emphasis on technical aspects may have overwhelmed the plot, resulting in Gemini Man’s failure.
What are your thoughts on Gemini Man’s visual effects? Is there anything else you’d like to see? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.
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Is Gemini Man a success or a flop?
Ang Lee directed Gemini Man, a 2019 American action thriller film. The film, written by David Benioff, Billy Ray, and Darren Lemke and starring Will Smith, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Clive Owen, and Benedict Wong, follows a retiring hitman who is targeted by a much younger clone of himself while on the run from a corrupt private military firm.
The picture, which was first conceptualized in 1997 by screenwriter Lemke, spent over two decades in development hell. Several directors were involved at one point, including Tony Scott, Curtis Hanson, and Joe Carnahan, as well as a number of actors, including Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, and Sean Connery. The screenplay (which had gone through numerous rewrites) was purchased by Skydance Media from Walt Disney Pictures in 2016, and Ang Lee signed on to helm for Skydance in October 2017, with Paramount Pictures handling distribution. Filming took place from February through May of this year.
Gemini Man was released on October 1, 2019 in standard 3D, Dolby Cinema (2K Dolby Vision 120 fps), 4DX, IMAX 3D, and ScreenX formats, as well as in 120 fps HFR (high frame rate) “3D+” on select screens in the United States by Paramount Pictures on October 11, 2019. (including 16 Dolby Cinema and 47 IMAX 3D with Laser screens worldwide and only one TCL cinema that presented film in 3D 4K 120 fps but without HDR). No one showed the native 4K Dolby Vision 120 frames per second. The film was presented in Dolby Vision at 59.94 frames per second on UHD Blu-ray. The film’s writing and plot garnered mostly unfavorable reviews from critics, however the performances were lauded. Smith’s de-aging and the high frame rate of 120 frames per second attracted conflicting reviews, with some hailing them as technical triumphs and others dismissing them as unconvincing. It was also a box office disaster, making $173.5 million against a $138 million budget, resulting in a $111 million loss for Paramount.
Why are males born in the sign of Gemini being bombed?
We’re looking into why Ang Lee’s Gemini Man flopped at the box office during its first weekend. The high-concept sci-fi/action film finally gained traction in 2017 when Lee and Will Smith signed on after years in development hell and multiple directors and stars. Gemini Man was released in theaters this past weekend, seeking to continue Smith’s strong start to the year. Aladdin, the A-highest-grossing lister’s film, was released earlier this year (which includes several major box office hits).
Unfortunately, Gemini Man did not live up to the hype. Lee’s latest film was hampered by poor reviews that attacked its dull premise and shaky visual effects, and it failed to draw a large audience. In its first three days, Gemini Man only made $20.5 million in the United States, far below the reigning champion Joker ($55 million) and even the new animated film The Addams Family ($30.3 million). A Smith-led genre film used to be guaranteed box office success, but that is no longer the case. There are a few major reasons behind Gemini Man’s failure.
Was Gemini Man a hit at the box office?
Even an Oscar-winning director and one of the most well-known performers in the world couldn’t stop Gemini Man from flopping at the box office.
According to sources and box office analysts, Ang Lee’s VFX-heavy film, starring Will Smith, faces losses of $75 million or more after opening at $20.5 million domestically for the Oct. 11-13 frame and concluding Sunday with an anemic worldwide total of $118.7 million. Gemini Man was expected to make up ground and open to large crowds in China. Instead, it debuted to a disappointing $21 million over the weekend, trailing Maleficent: Mistress of Evil ($22.4 million).
What was Will Smith’s fee 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.
Who was the clone of Gemini Man?
In the film, Will Smith played two different personalities. He played Henry Brogan, a middle-aged assassin who was on the run from the government. Junior, a younger clone of himself, was the second character, and he was after Henry.
Will there be a sequel to Gemini Man?
If Gemini Man is successful enough to merit a sequel, it is likely that Gemini Man 2 will be released within the following three to four years. In less than two and a half years after Ang Lee and Will Smith joined the project in April 2017, they were able to assemble a cast, complete production, and deliver the finished film. While certain essential cast members have already been confirmed, the majority of the time spent developing Gemini Man 2 would be spent honing the story. As a result, the best-case scenario is for the film to be released in late 2022, provided Lee returns as director.
Is Deadshot a Gemini?
Will Smith is now a successful actor “a “normal” movie star He is, like almost every other movie actor today, a high-level added value piece for an already viable IP/franchise/brand pitch, with the exception of Leonardo DiCaprio and (at a cost) Kevin Hart. He’s worth his weight in gold as Deadshot in Suicide Squad or as Genie in Aladdin. A similar situation exists “Bright is a Netflix movie that you don’t have to leave the couch to see. However, the “The “star+concept” packages that previously defined Hollywood are now bad business (unless the budget is small enough). Gemini Man joins Focus ($150 million worldwide on a $50 million budget), Collateral Beauty, After Earth, and Concussion as entirely original star vehicles that couldn’t hold their own in a branded/IP theater environment.
It’s interesting that Ang Lee chose to make a film with a CGI double of himself “Young Will Smith” and shoot the film in 120 fps, which is ultra-detailed (and hence extremely unforgiving). However, media coverage focused on how the film was made, overshadowing what the film had to offer in terms of meat-and-potatoes entertainment. People were turned off by the high-frame-rate (maybe they were burned by the first Hobbit prequel), had little interest in 3-D, or were unable to find a nearby cinema screening it at a high frame rate, with the condition that the movie’s reviews were poor. The story behind Gemini Man, like The Walk in IMAX, was that you shouldn’t bother seeing it if you can’t/won’t see it as intended.
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.”