The makers of the latest Fast and Furious announced they are going to finish/release the movie, despite the untimely death of its star, Paul Walker. The problem they faced was not a new one. One notable instance was Gladiator, during the filming of which Oliver Reed died unexpectedly of a heart attack. According to Wikipedia, they used digital wizardry to provide two minutes of scenes involving Oliver Reed after his death.
Question: Which scenes include the synthetic Oliver Reed? They did a pretty good job. I knew about this issue many years ago, but I never could pinpoint which Reed scenes were put together after his death.
The most obvious (once you see it) are the scenes where Oliver Reed goes to release Maximus at the climax of the film.
As Reed is moving around you’ll notice that he’s not well lit at all, only moving in shadows. This is because a body double was used.
When Reed approaches Maximus’ cell you can see his face, but there is no movement in the face because Reeds image was superimposed over the face of the body double walking towards the cell.
Shortly before Reed’s character dies he says something like “shadows and dust” - if you look closely you’ll notice it’s actually taken from a much earlier scene when the gladiators first went to the Colosseum. The lighting has been adjusted so it’s not completely obvious until you know what to look for.
This was done in '94 for The Crow after Brandon Lee died before it was completed. *Gladiator *didn’t really make use of a truly ‘fake’ fully computer generated Reed. The technology doesn’t really exist even today to convincingly replicate a well-known actor via photorealistic, full motion CGI. Not yet anyway.
Yeah, but if you watch that scene they only show his actual CGI face very sparingly. Still, given how frustratingly disappointing T4 was that was probably the best scene in the whole crummy movie (complete with Brad Fidel’s original score!)
The practice pre-dates Shemp – Saratoga (1937). Jean Harlow died in the middle of filming, and a body double was used for several scenes (shot from behind).
Ironically (in regards to Brandon Lee) Bruce Lee also died suddenly before finishing a movie. Being the mid 70s they had to resort to rather crude methods to finish the film (they hired an Asian guy who wore dark sunglasses and didn’t talk!) In one scene they even showed him standing in front of a mirror with a photo cut-out of Lee’s face glued onto it!
