How the Movie Made Tom Hanks and Robin Wright Look Younger

Dramatic film by Robert Zemeckis Here uses all-new VFX technology to age its stars, Tom Hanks and Robin Wright – that’s how the technology’s AI feature works. Here takes place on a single piece of land and chronicles the lives of its inhabitants, from the distant past to the distant future. It’s shown primarily through the eyes of a couple, played by Hanks and Wright, growing old together in the same house. It marks a meeting of the key creatives behind Forest Gump as Zemeckis, Hanks, Wright and screenwriter Eric Roth collaborated on the project.

Digital aging is nothing new; has become quite common in big-budget films in recent years, especially in productions that aim to play on the audience’s nostalgia. It’s been seen in everything from the Marvel Cinematic Universe to Martin Scorsese’s The Irish. At times it looks genuinely impressive, as if the filmmakers stumbled upon some lost footage from the actor’s early career (see: the opening flashback in Indiana Jones and the Fate Dial), but more often than not, it goes into uncanny valley territory. But Here uses an all-new technology to create aging effects like never before.

Metaphysic Live does all the effects in the camera in real time

The producers of Here used an all-new VFX technology called Metaphysic Live to reduce the ages of Hanks and Wright to the ages they needed for each scene. Metaphysic Live is presented as a VFX technology that does not require post-productionbecause it uses AI to instantly place effects into each scene as it is being filmed. Almost every VFX application on the market requires some touch-up to fix errors after the fact. But with Metaphysics Live, the effects arrive fully formed. The “live” aspect refers to the fact that the effects are done in real time.

All aging effects are done in camera. When Zemeckis is filming Hanks and Wright performing a scene as twenty-something versions of their characters, they appear as young people on the video village monitors. It’s not just about collecting information for visual effects artists to use later; includes fully rendered effects in each photo. This is quite an innovative development in VFX-based film production. Zemeckis didn’t need to use his imagination to imagine what the final scene would be like. He could see the finished photos the day he captured them.

Metaphysic Live is essentially face-swapping technologybut it’s better than virtually every other face-swapping technology out there. Face swapping has been pretty easy for AI for a few years now – it can even be done by a Snapchat filter – but it’s rarely as seamless as Metaphysic Live’s film-quality effects. While Most deepfake technology fails when the subject turns their head or their hair gets in the way or something gets in front of them, Metaphysic Live handles these obstacles with aplomb. It gave Hanks and Wright complete freedom in their performances.

How the aging technology here is different from other CGI

Other aging methods require extensive post-production work

Aging effects are typically achieved by digitally editing an actor’s image to appear younger or using CG overlays and retouches to smooth out skin wrinkles. When visual effects artists are aging an actor with prolific work dating back decades, like Al Pacino in The Irish or Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Fate Dialso they will use footage from your old movies as a reference point. In some cases, artists even create de-aged digital actors from scratch or use a combination of stand-ins and CGI.

What causes the effects of aging in Here so different is that they were made fresh. No one needed to consult old footage of Hanks and Wright from their previous films to create convincing CG models of their younger selves, because Metaphysic Live’s AI already did it for them. When it came time for Zemeckis to edit the film, he didn’t have to wait months for visual effects artists to de-age his actors in each individual scene.; he could go straight to the editing room and start working on the footage.

When Michael Douglas Got Old Ant-Manthe director had to wait until he was deeply involved in the post-production process just to see what these scenes would look like. When Carrie Fisher Got Old Rogue One: A Star Wars StoryA younger stand-in had to be brought in for some of the filming and the final scene ended up being a hodgepodge of different takes. When Zemeckis did HereHe didn’t have any of those problems. Your finished photos appeared instantly on the day of the shoot and he never had to replace Hanks or Wright with a replacement.

What Robert Zemeckis said about using aging AI to do here

Zemeckis tested all available VFX technologies before deciding on Metaphysic Live

Zemeckis only has positive things to say about the effects provided by Metaphysic Live. Even before making the film, he was passionate about technology. While he was getting ready to shoot Herehe said in a statement (via The Hollywood Reporter) that he is always looking for new types of “technology that helps me tell a story.“When it came to the story of Herehe said the film “it just wouldn’t work” if they weren’t able to seamlessly transform the actors into their old selves during filmingand Metaphysic Live’s AI technology does “exactly that.”

According to Zemeckis, what Metaphysic Live is capable of doing was “previously impossible.“He said that while he was getting ready to do Herehe “tested every type of facial replacement and anti-aging technology available today,” and I discovered that nothing else on the market compares to Metaphysic Live. He called them “the global leaders in feature-quality AI content” and considered them the ideal choice to bring the emotional plot of Here for life. Without Metaphysic Live, it would not have been possible for Zemeckis to tell the story of Here the way he wanted to tell it.

Here used CGI or AI to make Tom Hanks and Robin Wright look older too?

Aging seems to have been done in practice

Here not only does it age Hanks and Wright; it also ages them. After making them look younger for the scenes set in the past, it makes them look older for the scenes set in the future. But it doesn’t appear that Metaphysic Live or any other VFX technology was used in the de-aging process. This appears to have been done in practice. There may have been some CGI involved for retouching, but based on behind-the-scenes photos, the effects of aging appear to have been caused only with time-tested techniques of makeup and prosthetics.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter