See The FURIOUS 7 Shots That Used a VFX Paul Walker
There's a great piece in Variety today about the visual effects work Weta Digital did to create some of Paul Walker's performance in Furious 7 following the actor's tragic death in a car accident in the middle of production. It's worth reading in full, but I'll pull out a few notable quotes from the company's senior VFX supervisor, Joe Letteri, as well as embed a gallery of images at the bottom of this piece so you can see the results of what he talks about:
Unlike the motion-capture work that Weta had done on earlier films, there were no scans of Walker to create a digital double. So the team went through old footage, building a reference library of Walker as Brian O’Conner by using outtakes from “Furious 7” and previous films in the franchise. But those moments had been filmed in one lighting environment and the Weta team “essentially had to relight his performance” digitally for each new scene, said Letteri.
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The filmmakers scanned Walker’s brothers Cody and Caleb, as well as actor John Brotherton (who has a role in the film and whose build and coloring are similar to Walker’s). The three men tried to capture the timing and direction that director Wan wanted. Weta essentially motion-captured the work of the three men, and then reapplied that to Walker digital models they had created.
Those digital models included extensive work on Walker’s hair and skin — how his facial muscles moved if he frowned or raised his eyebrows, how his coloring would flush after exertion or how the hair changes depending on the light or the wind. They even worked to make sure he blinked in character.
And while I thought a few of the shots in which Walker's face is digitally added or altered were obvious in the theaters, it's a testament to the filmmakers that there are SO MANY MORE of those shots than I noticed. They really did an excellent job, especially given the terrible circumstances. Check out this gallery of images and see if you noticed these when you saw the film in the theater:
Via: Uproxx