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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Benjamin Button

Roberto Lequeux

Roberto Lequeux

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I though I saw a thread discussing the film but I guess I was wrong.

I just watched the film and though I'd ask people who know more than I so I could hopefully get to the bottom of how in the @%&@#! they made Cate Blanchett look so flawless...

Here is how I imagine it might have been done:
They obviously filmed their faces separately and composed them onto other performer's bodies... and what a marvelous job at that they did! So I am guessing that since the faces were filmed 100% stationary possibly with several cameras for a 360 degree view, then since there was no real movement it might have been possible to VFX their faces in sections to a level not done before... certainly not in such a scale.

What I just said may not make any sense to you, I am not eloquent in proper high level VFX speak... hope it made sense, at least enough so that I can get to the bottom of this.
 
USlatin said:
I just watched the film and though I'd ask people who know more than I so I could hopefully get to the bottom of how in the @%&@#! they made Cate Blanchett look so flawless...
Click to expand...

If you're talking about the scenes where she appears younger than her current age, that was largely done by a company called Lola FX using compositing techniques. Lola specializes in this type of effect, they also did the scenes in the last X-Men picture in which Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart were made to look about 20 years younger. The Benjamin shots for about the first hour of the movie - until he de-ages to about 60 - were done as CG head replacements by Digital Domain. This is far, far more complex than it sounds, as it involves copious amounts of rotoscope, 3D tracking, and some very advanced rendering and lighting techniques - not to mention animating to motion capture footage of Brad Pitt. You might want to pick up the latest issue of Cinefex, which has this movie as its cover story and goes into a lot more detail about those and many other effects throughout the movie.
 
I certainly noticed that it must have taken a team of best in class devoted binary artists to make Benjamin for the first act... there were only a handful of shots where Brad Pitt got to act with anything more than his face... compare to "Elf" (2003)... night and day. A "marvelous job" simply won't cut it, not by a long shot. I can't read the articles now but I can't wait to sit down and read them slowly to marvel at their work. Some insane 3D tracking indeed I suspect. And I guess the 3D creation of the face must be beyond cool.

However I have to say that I was marveled at young dancing Cate... not so much when she danced, though it was hard to have any quarrel with the beyond splendid job they did to get someone's face onto a @#$%ing dancing ballerina!!! OMG!!! I do NOT want that job! Major cudos to the tracking and all other teams involved! Still... I was hardly able to notice almost anything suspect... and I was really trying... with the way that her face was rot-airbrushed or whatever that sort of magic is called. I must say that I am partial to Cate's brand of beauty, I often tell my fiance that she resembles her (only more beautiful of course)... and I absolutely adore her acting. She should be nominated. But about the work tone for young Cate: stunning job that must have fed so many mouths for a long time.

Splendid set design too wasn't it? I want to have that set design budget and crew, can anyone make that happen for me pls :)

Or course the script must have been out-of-this-world! What a concept to work on... what a beauty of a story... what a movie.
 
I was impressed with young Cate, but not as shocked or as impressed as I was with how they achieved 18 year old brad pitt...amazing technological feat, bravo to the fx crew on this project.

From what I understand they ended up using another actor for the 10 year old brad pitt (end of movie) cause they exhausted the fx budget.
 
C.H.Haskell said:
From what I understand they ended up using another actor for the 10 year old brad pitt (end of movie) cause they exhausted the fx budget.
Click to expand...

I've been told that the plan was always to use other actors for the end of the picture, because Fincher felt that if they pulled off the rest of it, the audience wouldn't feel cheated by that point.
 
mmost said:
I've been told that the plan was always to use other actors for the end of the picture, because Fincher felt that if they pulled off the rest of it, the audience wouldn't feel cheated by that point.
Click to expand...

That's smart thinking there, because that's exactly how I felt. Far from feeling cheated at all. Brilliant filmmaking techniques.

After reading the articles posted here I have to say that I hardly even payed attention when I saw the movie; I was pretty absorbed into the story by the first 30 minutes. I had no idea how they did what they did, but it looked so real I didn't care.
 
I didn't feel cheated but thought the first young actor could have looked more like him.

I haven't read the articles yet, still working, but I too was completely absorbed into the story, not only because of how beautiful it was told in every way but also because no matter how hard I tried to figure out how they did it, how hard I looked for the little hints of VFX, it still was so little and so scarce that it was hard to get pulled away... the only spots that were very noticeable were in the dancing... analyzing body language was the easiest way to tell... but such a phenomenal job... and the story kept tugging at you pulling you in... the concept is just such a phenomenal concept in of itself... needless to say hat is off together with a deepest of bows to F. Scott Fitzgerald

lol... there are thousands of girls in LA now, dreaming, wishing they will get those VFX done to them.. hahaha...
 
DontStopMe said:
I was thinking the same thing. I was also amazed at how young they made brad really look. Anyone else notice the plot similarities between Benjamin Button and Forrest Gump?
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Yup. First thing I said to my buddies after the credits was "Man that really reminded me of Forrest Gump" to which my friend replied "Yeah it was the same screenwriter, Eric Roth." No wonder! Of course both stories originated in book form from different authors, although Button was only like 10 pages right? Either way, both stories were adapted to the screen by Roth, and Button was basically written by Roth since the source material was so little.

Some of the similarities I noticed:

-Present time narration of a life long story about a main character of particular/very different nature who unwittingly becomes apart of many people's lives as well as historical events/references.

-Love interest met early childhood (or elderhood?). Female leaves...becomes estranged from main character...some kind of awkward confrontation (Black Panther Party/dance party in Button). Eventually come together..both relationships have a bittersweet end.

-Hummingbird reminded me of the feather.

-On the technical side; both films seamlessly incorporated cutting-edge VFX technology for the time, and it wasn't used as a spectacle.

I'm sure there are more..but those are the glaring similarities I found. Just to be clear, I wouldn't criticize the film at all for this; obviously these storytelling elements work well and provide an excellent canvas for dramatic material.
 
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