Watch VFX Artists Drop Tig Notaro into 'Army of the Dead'
How do you add someone into a movie?
When Zack Snyder decided to remove Chris D'Elia from Army of the Dead after some allegations against him, he was up to an incredible task. His VFX team not only had to digitally scrape the actor from scenes that were already shot, but then they had to go back and shoot exact camera movements and angles with a new actress, Tig Notaro.
Zack Snyder told Vulture, “I had to do this incredibly technical experiment, re-creating every scene, shot for shot. My visual-effects supervisor, Marcus Taormina, did the work of taking Chris completely out of the movie so Tig could have freedom [to move] within the scenes.”
This is a collection of some of the most complex visual effects shots from Army of the Dead including how Tig Notaro was digitally inserted into the movie!
Check out the video from Netflix below.
Army of the Dead follows a team of mercenaries led by Dave Bautista that infiltrates zombie-infested Las Vegas to recover millions of dollars from a casino vault, but it turns out the hardest part of all that might have been adding Notaro to the movie.
In the video, you can see two versions of adding the actor. You have one that's all CGI. They scanned her body and then were able to create digital versions of her for the effects scenes. The other version is just her acting, alone, in a studio in California, surrounded by green screens.
To get the shots right, Snyder had to direct her to talk as fast as the person she was replacing, and even had to do multiple takes to make sure he exactly mimicked his own camera movements.
Snyder told Vulture, “Some of the trickiest shots were where she’s walking in the group—I had to match the [camera] pans, and it was difficult to get the perspective to match. It was a few months to get all the individual effects and make it seamless. Marcus was able to fudge it around and get it to work, and [her footage] went in surprisingly easily.”
It looks smooth to me. Let me know what you think in the comments.
Source: Netflix
