# making someone legless \[in movies\] **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 9, 2013, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-someone-legless-in-movies/673521 "2013-11-09T19:46:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ydaltak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ad7895/32.png) [@ydaltak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ydaltak)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2013, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-someone-legless-in-movies/673521/1 "2013-11-09T19:46:48Z")
how do movies/television make a 2-legged actor look like a 1-legged character, like in The Walking Dead or Forrest Gump? ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2013, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-someone-legless-in-movies/673521/2 "2013-11-09T19:50:01Z")
Since this is about special effects in movies, let’s move it over to Cafe Society. Colibri General Questions Moderator ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2013, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-someone-legless-in-movies/673521/3 "2013-11-09T20:01:16Z")
It’s pretty easy if video is your production medium, which includes most visual processes today. although it can be done with film, too. Video lends itself to layering, which isn’t much different from traditional film layers, where something is covered up by something else, like a matte painting. Someone’s real leg is covered up by a shot of the chair he is sitting on. I use a very simple version of this principle for video sometimes. I set up a camera on a tripod and shoot the scene without any actors. Then, being careful not to move the camera, I have the actor walk into the scene and start acting. In post production, I fade the first shot into the second, and it looks like the actor is appearing out of nowhere. Or I can fade him in only 50% and it looks like he is a ghost. Now do this with only part of the image, and you can erase a limb or make it look ghostly. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2013, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-someone-legless-in-movies/673521/4 "2013-11-09T20:41:30Z")
Forrest Gump was made in 1993 I believe, so how did they do it with 20 year old computer and CG technology? It is just shooting 2 versions of the film, then layering the version that removes the limbs as was said? ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2013, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-someone-legless-in-movies/673521/5 "2013-11-09T20:57:10Z")
If you visit a Bubba Gump shrimp restaurant (yes, they _do_ exist), you can see photos taken on the set of the film. Among them you will see Gary Sinise sitting on the edge of a bed (or a shrimp boat) with his lower legs wrapped in lime-green material. nothing else that you see in the photo is that shade of green. When the images are processed, the computers doing the processing can be directed to ignore everything of that color. Basically, it’s why you never see a TV weatherman wearing a blue suit or shirt or tie. If he has any idea what he’s doing. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2013, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-someone-legless-in-movies/673521/6 "2013-11-09T20:57:55Z")
For a single leg, you just strap it to the actor’s butt. Clothing does the rest. The technique dates from the earliest days of film and may even have been done on stage. **Forrest Gump** indeed did CGI, though it could easily have been done earlier. An epsidoe of **Quantum Leap** used the technique of masking a year previously. For video, it could have been don in the 1960s. You just painted the leg blue (setting it up so the pants leg ended above it) and used a chroma key to make the leg invisible (nowadays, that’d be what’s called a green screen, but blue was used in the 70s and before). No computers are needed – the chroma key just ignored the key color and a projected background shows up on the let. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2013, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-someone-legless-in-movies/673521/7 "2013-11-09T21:06:03Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#): > > Basically, it’s why you never see a TV weatherman wearing a blue suit or shirt or tie. If he has any idea what he’s doing. There’s a way around that. If he wants to wear a green tie, you use a blue screen. Likewise, a green screen for a blue tie. There’s no reason why a red screen could’t be used if necessary. > [@RealityChuck](#): > > For video, it could have been don in the 1960s. You just painted the leg blue (setting it up so the pants leg ended above it) and used a chroma key to make the leg invisible (nowadays, that’d be what’s called a green screen, but blue was used in the 70s and before). No computers are needed – the chroma key just ignored the key color and a projected background shows up on the let. In all fairness to special effects dudes, there is often some careful, frame by frame retouching needed to eliminate what the computer didn’t get perfectly, but in the professional movie world, a few seconds of that is affordable. For that matter, Steve Allen did something like this in B&W TV days, superimposing his image over a shot of the outside of the Vine Street studio, making it look like he was sitting on a lamppost or a mailbox in real time. Since this was not color TV, I can only guess he was sitting in front of a white or black screen, and the composite image wasn’t perfect. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2013, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-someone-legless-in-movies/673521/8 "2013-11-09T22:38:19Z")
Depending on your shot, you can also hire body doubles that are amputees. John Carpenter did this in **The Thing** (1982) when he needed a double-hand amputation scene. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2013, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-someone-legless-in-movies/673521/9 "2013-11-09T23:12:28Z")
The Walking Dead uses a variety of techniques. I’m not sure exactly what techniques they have used for Hershel. When they chopped his leg off I know they had his real leg tucked underneath and had a fake leg that actually got chopped. I think they have used CGI for some shots. They have given him a new prosthetic leg for this season so he can wear regular pants, which makes shooting a lot of scenes a lot easier (though the actor needs to learn to walk a little more like a real amputee for those scenes, IMHO). The actor playing Hershel isn’t an amputee, but they have used amputees in many scenes. In last week’s show (or was it the week before) a zombie sticks his arm out through a bunch of vines and leaves and Michonne hacked it off. The actual actor was an amputee and the arm was a fake. They also had a bunch of zombies stuck under a car. They filmed the scene without a wheel on the car and added the wheel later with CGI so that they could get a lot of the splatter effects coordinated with the wheel spin properly. When they went to add the CGI they noticed that one of the zombie actors had stuck his hand up where the wheel would be if a real wheel had been there. So they edited the actor’s arm out with CGI so that when he reached up into the spokes of the wheel his arm got ripped off. The famous “bicycle girl” from season one used the same techniques as they did for Gary Sinise in Forest Gump. They covered her legs with green material and added digital trailing guts in their place with CGI. ---
**Author:** ![Shoeless](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shoeless/32/7099_2.png) [@Shoeless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shoeless)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2013, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-someone-legless-in-movies/673521/10 "2013-11-09T23:27:15Z")
Here’s an article I found that explains how they did some of the Lt. Dan effects in “Forrest Gump”. > **[F/X : More 'Gump' Effects: The Gary Sinise Illusion](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-07-10-ca-14048-story.html)** > > One of the most amazing illusions in "Forrest Gump," a movie chock-full of special effects that opened Wednesday, has nothing to do with old newsreel footage--but with Gary Sinise playing a Vietnam veteran with both legs amputated. I knew that a lot of it was green-screen type of effects, but I always wondered how they did the scene where he swings himself over the side of the boat. ---
**Author:** ![Pine\_Fresh\_Scent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/43a26b/32.png) [@Pine\_Fresh\_Scent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pine_Fresh_Scent)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2013, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-someone-legless-in-movies/673521/11 "2013-11-09T23:34:38Z")
To get [this shot](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqAbjHKO5jM&feature=player_detailpage#t=33)when Lt. Dan swings his stumps over the side of the _Jenny_, there was a gap in the bulwark for his lower legs to pass through that they digitally painted back in later (as **Shoeless’** link says). ---
**Author:** ![ydaltak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ad7895/32.png) [@ydaltak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ydaltak)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2013, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-someone-legless-in-movies/673521/12 "2013-11-10T00:02:44Z")
thanks for the replies. i have a better idea of it now. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2013, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-someone-legless-in-movies/673521/13 "2013-11-10T00:23:39Z")
The remake of “True Grit” that came out a few years ago did not use an actress who was an amputee for the final scenes; they used a “regular” woman and digitally edited out her arm. How do I know this? They didn’t do it in every frame, and her arm flashes on and off. That was really weird to see. There’s an indie flick called “Sunshine Cleaning” which features a one-armed character, and this actor also has two arms. Creative camera angles and slings kept his “missing” arm out of view. ---
**Author:** ![Banksiaman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banksiaman/32/3334_2.png) [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2013, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-someone-legless-in-movies/673521/14 "2013-11-10T00:48:37Z")
In the olden days they’d employ [this bloke](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbnkY1tBvMU) ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2013, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-someone-legless-in-movies/673521/15 "2013-11-10T02:10:30Z")
By the way, I found this on youtube. It shows a lot of the CGI effects used in the Walking Dead. Bicycle girl (that I mentioned above) is at about the 1:24 mark. There’s a guy having his entire body removed so he’s just a zombie head at about 1:17. It uses the same basic technique. [![]( " - YouTube") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4GlY1HAjYE) And in this clip you can see how they made the zombie lose his arm at about the 5:03 mark. [![]( " - YouTube") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DozlVnD9Yqs) And here’s an example of them using an amputee at about the 2:57 mark. [![]( " - YouTube") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSGYBcJ_XME) ---
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2013, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-someone-legless-in-movies/673521/16 "2013-11-10T03:23:48Z")
I thought they did a pretty good job in Breaking Bad, where the cousin in the hospital bed sees Walt in the door window and drags himself across the floor. ---
**Author:** ![Eonwe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eonwe/32/240_2.png) [@Eonwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eonwe)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2013, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-someone-legless-in-movies/673521/17 "2013-11-10T03:48:54Z")
Just always shoot them stationary, in profile. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2013, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-someone-legless-in-movies/673521/18 "2013-11-10T12:53:22Z")
This is a hijack but it’s on topic with the subjects of amputees and special effects. I watched the movie _The Best Years of Our Lives_ with my mother. It was her first viewing, I’d seen it two or three times. She wondered how the “special effects” were done to make it look like the sailor (played by Harold Russell) had no hands. I had to tell her he really did have no hands, being a veteran who had lost them in a training accident explosion. ---
**Author:** ![42fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/4/b487fb/32.png) [@42fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/42fish)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2013, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-someone-legless-in-movies/673521/19 "2013-11-10T17:07:02Z")
Also regarding Forrest Gump, for the scenes of Lt Dan in a wheelchair, Gary Sinese’s legs were hidden by a mirror arrangement designed (in part) by magician Ricky Jay. (Source: Roger Ebert’s “Questions for the Movie Answer Man,” p. 202) ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2013, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-someone-legless-in-movies/673521/20 "2013-11-10T20:14:00Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#): > > …Basically, it’s why you never see a TV weatherman wearing a blue suit or shirt or tie. If he has any idea what he’s doing. Exhibit A (at 2:14): [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VdGI5-z\_hg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VdGI5-z_hg) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-someone-legless-in-movies/673521.md?page=2)