When I am the increasingly demented ruler of Earth

[james_davis_nicoll]

There will be terrible consequences for filmmakers who cannot justify their poorly lit films. Terrible consequences.

Once they are dealt with, all the gratuitous jerky-cam users can also expect a midnight visit from the James Got a Headache Trying to Watch Your Damn Film Police.

Something I realized watching Snow White and the Huntman: today, CGI means movies don't have to hire Little People any more, as regular actors can just be morphed through special effects. I wonder how long it will take for CGI to be used to eliminate other groups from casting calls?

Comments

[zibblsnrt.livejournal.com]

For the most part the height differences in those were conventional forced perspective - camera and actor positioning created the effect rather than CGI.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

IIRC there was still quite a bit of unhappiness from little actors about the decision to handle it that way - as mmegaera notes they got some body-double parts, but it's not much of a substitute.

[blpurdom.livejournal.com]

True, it's not a substitute. Added to that is that I think I recall hearing that some of the body-doubles were actually children. You have to wonder how cost-effective it is also when, evidently, they had to create both "regular" and large sets for some of the scenes and do extra takes, some with the actors playing Hobbits being depicted in oversized (to them) environments, and then with the actors playing average-sized humans on the same set. They also had to do additional filming in a smaller version of Bilbo's home to get Gandalf banging his head on the ceiling, but of course that wouldn't have been helped by casting, unless they had found an actor 40-50% taller than McKellan to body double him for that shot, in order to use the same set designed for the actors playing Hobbits.