Martin Scorsese on Getting The "Youthification" CGI Work in THE IRISHMAN To Look Right

Martin Scorsese’s next film is The Irishman and it is going to feature a lot of CGI work and that CGI work involves making stars Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci and Harvey Keitel look years younger. The story for the film spans decades, and instead of re-casting younger actors to plays these characters, Scorsese opted to de-age them with CGI technology.

During a recent interview on the A24 Podcast, Scrosese opens up about the issues that he’s been having with this “youthification” process.

“There’s a great deal of CGI because we’re doing this ‘youthification’ of De Niro, Pesci and Al Pacino, and so they had to be CGI. There had to be a camera with three lenses and [it] was just crazy.”

He wants to make sure that the final result of this youthification looks right and it sounds like it’s driving him a little crazy, especially when it comes to the little details:

“What I’m concerned about…what we’re all concerned about, is that we’re so used to watching them [with] the older faces. When we put them all together and there are cuts back and forth…now I’m seeing [that] certain shots need more work on the eyes…the wrinkles and things have changed. So it’s changed the eyes. If that’s the case, then [what] was in the eyes that I liked? Was an intensity, was a gravitas. Was it threat…I don’t know.”

Yeah, I can see some of that stuff being lost in the process of de-aging so trying to find that performance and bring it back into the actors face while making them look younger is sure to be difficult.

Marvel has done a great job de-aging their actors in their films, especially the work they did with Samuel L. Jackson in Captain Marvel. Hopefully, Scorsese and his team will be able to pull it off effectively with Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci and Harvey Keitel.

The Irishman is based on Charles Brandt’s book, I Heard You Paint Houses: Frank ‘The Irishman’ Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa, and there's a lot of controversy surrounding the story as it's based on the deathbed confession of Frank "The Irishman” Sheeran.

"The hit man claimed to tell the real story of the disappearance of former Teamsters boss Hoffa. However, the account Sheeran told to Brandt has been disputed. Still, the FBI actually thought enough of Sheeran’s confession to pull up several floor boards from a house where he said he shot and killed Hoffa to look for DNA evidence. Latter the bureau said that the samples found weren’t from Hoffa."

The Irishman has no release date yet, but will come out in late 2019.

Via: /Film

GeekTyrant Homepage