If an actor dies in the middle of a film shoot, it presents the film industry with a completely different problem: How do you deal with it on film?
Film series such as “Star Wars”, “Fast & Furious” or “Harry Potter” are often filmed over years. In the case of “Fast & Furious,” new films continued to be released for over 24 years. But the actors are people and especially if they were a little older when filming began, such as the first Dumbledore, Richard Harris, it can also happen that an actor’s life comes to an end during filming. In some cases this has to do with age, in others the actors left us unexpectedly prematurely. The directors also have to be able to deal with such a tragic case in their project and there were various ways to bring the deceased actor back for the role.
Substitutions & body doubles
Table of Contents
Probably the most noticeable way to deal with such a stroke of fate is to replace the actor. That’s what happened in Dumbledore’s example
Michael Gambon portrayed after the second part. The technical possibilities to reshoot some scenes with Harris’ face already existed, but the technology was not yet fully developed at the time. Since the series was intended for several more films in which Dumbledore would play a more important role, it would not have been possible to fully animate Harris for further films, which is why the decision to recast the character was made.
In the tragic case of
Brandon Lee in “
The Crow“, who was shot on set by an unnoticed loaded gun, a body double was used. Originally the film release was withheld out of respect, but the family wanted the film to appear. Many scenes of the film had already been shot, but a lot was still missing. The missing material was then completed with the help of body doubles, script changes, and also CGI.
Computeranimation
What would also be possible as an alternative is computer animation of the actors, but only since 1990. Coca-Cola initially used CGI to bring back stars like Humphrey Bogart for their commercials. Back then, existing recordings were used as a starting point and inserted into the new scenes. Body doubles have already been used, as in the case of Brandon Lee, for “Gladiator” and “The Sopranos” in conjunction with CGI to bring back Oliver Reed and Nancy Marchand. Paul Walker was also brought back in “Fast & Furious” with the help of his brother. This possibility alone triggered major ethical debates, with different opinions.
Robin Williams, for example, had his contract confirmed that he could not be depicted in animation until 25 years after his death. However, there are also some points for this. Two authors from TVSpielfilm.de have already argued this. You will find Pro here and there are cons this article.
Paul Walker’s final “Fast and Furious” scene
New possibilities through deep fakes
What was once only possible with complex special effects can now be done by anyone at home using AI. So-called deep fakes are now commonplace. It used to be easy to see that they couldn’t be real, such as unnatural movements, unclear fingers and teeth or meaningless inscriptions, but now there are videos in which you can almost no longer see the AI. This is also a great opportunity for the film industry, because films can continue to be shot despite a death without a large budget. A new company is said to be using the technology in the “Finding Jack” project RND put to the test by bringing back James Dean.
But there are also big protests about this. A big example is the strikes Actors’ Union in the USAwho advocate for better AI regulations to preserve the art form. In the end, it’s not just the viewer who benefits, for example by being able to say goodbye to Paul Walker’s character, but also, above all, the production companies, who may continue to make money from the deceased actor.
This content first appeared on tvspielfilm.de
