- [Narrator] Jordan Peele's
"Us" had the best opening
of any original horror
movie in box office history.
It also enjoyed glowing reviews,
with critics raving about Lupita
Nyong'o's dual performance.
But how exactly did she
share scenes with herself?
To find out, we spoke to
Oscar-nominated VFX supervisor
Grady Cofer.
He explained how his team at
Industrial Light and Magic
made the doppelgänger
scenes in "Us" so realistic.
Plus, he let us in on how the film's
most memorable shots came to life
and what they really mean about the movie.
Beware, some spoilers ahead.
Grady's studio, ILM, has
worked on a long list of
blockbusters including "Black Panther,"
"Aquaman," and "Avengers: Infinity War."
While those films are
known for the scope of
their VFX, "Us" required a lighter touch.
- [Grady] You know, there's no robots.
There's no kind of big space
battle at the end, you know,
all of the kind of big
summer blockbuster kind of
movie tropes that we're
kind of used to doing,
that's kind of in our wheelhouse,
this isn't a movie about kind of showy,
kind of grandiose effects.
In fact, they all kind of live in the
world of subtlety.
- [Narrator] In a film where
pretty much every actor
played two roles, ILM couldn't rely on the
split screen technique
long used in twin movies
going back to the original "Parent Trap."
Instead, they went through
the exacting process of
piecing together parts of different shots,
often doing extensive head and face swaps.
So in some scenes, you might
be seeing a hybrid of, say,
Winston Duke's face with parts of
his stunt double's body.
To get all the footage that
ILM's artists would need
for source material, the actors
had to perform scenes twice,
once for each of their roles.
Lupita, for instance, would first play Red
with her body or photo
double playing Adelaide.
- [Grady] When that was done,
they would switch places, right?
She would go to costume and wardrobe, and
everyone would reset.
We took very, very
careful notes about what
the camera was doing,
what the light was doing,
and we would essentially
recreate the shot, right?
So in effect, you're almost
making the movie twice.
Where it really becomes
a challenge is when
the characters are interacting,
and that happened a lot.
- [Narrator] The most
dramatic of these scenes is
the final battle between Red and Adelaide.
- [Grady] The climax of
this movie is not only
the confrontation between
the two versions of Adelaide,
but it's also this kind of
pinnacle moment in their past
when they were both these
expressive kind of artists,
and they were expressing
what they were going through,
through dance.
Even the fight is a dance,
and so this was extremely
careful and, like,
methodical choreography of
how they would interact together.
We really had to plan it out,
you kind of figure out,
OK, who is kind of the
hero of this shot meaning
who is the one who's kind of
controlling the action most.
- [Narrator] Based on those factors,
they decide which parts
of the shot would need to
get swapped, painted, or
grafted in postproduction.
- [Grady] It often was
a head replacement, or
sometimes we had to have
the arm of one character
because it was, you know,
attaching to the neck of Lupita.
- [Narrator] After weeks of rehearsing,
they shot the fight over
a period of two days.
- [Grady] And then they
kind of end in some kind of
embrace, this incredibly
difficult shot to pull off.
I just have really good artists at ILM,
people that were rotoing parts of bodies.
They were painting in a lot
of things there were occluded,
and they kinda pieced
it all back together,
and at the end of day, you know,
you just had to buy it.
These were two people that
were actually grappling together.
- [Narrator] They filmed the fight inside
their underworld set, which
was designed with movable walls
that could be rolled away at any point
to reveal a green screen.
This meant that ILM could
digitally extend the hallway,
making it look like an
endless tunnel whenever Jordan wanted.
- [Grady] But he waited
till this one moment
at the very end, at the
kinda pinnacle of that fight,
and you come behind both of them, and
you see that hallway kind
of extend to infinity.
And of course at the same time, the song,
that "5 On It" kind of remix,
it's like its loudest moment, you know,
and the whole theater was kind of shaking.
- [Narrator] It's a hair-raising climax.
Of course, we learned soon after that
that this wasn't the first time
Red and Adelaide faced off.
They had their first encounter
as little girls inside
the Hall of Mirrors.
For this flashback, Jordan
was clear that he didn't
want the two girls to look like
mirror images of each other.
- [Grady] Instead of having
them face each other, right,
they've actually got to go back-to-back.
There's something really
uncanny about looking at
the back of someone's head like that, so
he kind of holds on that for a second.
- [Narrator] Adelaide
then turns around, and
Red reaches out to strangle her.
At first, they tried
shooting this struggle with
the actor, Madison Curry,
opposite a photo double.
But to get a truly terrifying shot,
Curry needed something that
she could really grab onto.
So they had her grip a
paper cup, which was wrapped
in green so that it could get
digitally replaced later on.
- [Grady] Different action,
in that case we are using
different hands than the arms.
That is actually a head
replacement as well.
You wouldn't know it,
but it's another kind of
part of the shot that makes
it slightly unnerving,
that you're actually seeing
something that's kind of pieced together.
- [Narrator] Peele is known
for his attention to all
of these tiny visual details.
Throughout "Us," he slipped
in imagery of mirrors,
breaking glass, and refracted light,
evoking the film's
central theme of duality.
Grady's team worked with the
director to sneak these clues
into every frame.
One example is when Adelaide
is pushed into a glass table,
and her face lines up perfectly with
Red's reflection in the glass.
Jordan noticed this
splitting image when Lupita
was playing the role of Red.
So they framed down on her reflection, and
ILM superimposed it right
next to Adelaide's face.
- [Grady] What really drew
me to this material was
that the premise was so
intricately tied to visual effect.
For this story and this movie to work,
all of that has to be incredibly seamless.
