From 2010 to 2019,
technology changed in major ways,
which had a huge impact
on the movies we watched.
From realistic environments
to convincing fake animals,
to aging and de-aging actors
and even doubling them,
it almost felt like there
was nothing CGI couldn't do.
Let's take a look at some
CGI from the past decade
that took movies to the next level.
Who would have thought that a biopic
about Facebook cofounder Mark Zuckerberg
could also be a CGI marvel?
Armie Hammer played twins
Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.
Tyler Winklevoss: I'm 6-5,
220, and there's two of me.
Narrator: Actors playing
double is nothing new.
Typically, when an actor plays
two characters that interact,
filmmakers use techniques
like split screens
and over-the-shoulder shots,
which this movie certainly used.
Just look at this shot, where
the twins are walking together
but we don't see either of their heads.
That's because the movie
used two different actors.
Actor Josh Pence served as
Armie Hammer's body double.
Hammer's face was then
grafted onto Pence's body
in post-production.
The two would switch
off who would be Cameron
and who would be Tyler
from scene to scene.
Face replacement didn't start
with "The Social Network,"
but this movie was, at the time,
the first truly convincing
version of the technology,
especially since it was a
movie with no sci-fi elements.
Armie Hammer wasn't the
celebrity he is today,
and for a while people actually thought
he was two different people.
These techniques paved the
way for an entire movie
about doubles in the form of "Us"
and for Chris Evans to fight
himself in "Avengers: Endgame."
This feat also involved face replacement
from Lola Visual Effects,
which took what it learned
on "The Social Network"
and applied it to the
Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Prior to his transformation
into Captain America,
Steve Rogers is small and scrawny,
nothing like actor Chris Evans.
For some shots, actor
Leander Deeny doubled
as the skinny Steve Rogers.
For others, the VFX team
replaced Deeny's entire head
with Evans' head.
Evans would shoot the
scene looking like himself.
Deeny would watch Evans perform the scene
and precisely mimic his every move.
The crew would shoot a clean
plate with no character at all.
Then, VFX artists would place
Evans' face over Deeny's.
But for most of these scenes,
the VFX team digitally shrunk Evans down.
For this, Lola Visual Effects
invented a new method for shrinking,
which it called "Steve slimming."
Lola Visual Effects' artists
said they learned a lot
from this experience,
like how to highlight
an actor's performance
without letting CGI get in the way.
That's a lesson they applied when de-aging
Samuel L. Jackson in "Captain Marvel."
Chris Evans wasn't the only Marvel hero
who went through a CGI transformation.
"Captain America: Civil War"
featured a de-aged Robert
Downey Jr. as Young Tony Stark.
Lola Visual Effects once
again stepped in here.
Some cases of de-aging
involve a body double,
and others involve replacing the actor
with a digital double.
However, new technology allowed Downey
to perform the scene normally as himself.
VFX artists used digital
compositing to de-age the actor.
This way, Downey could still
perform the scene as usual
and the VFX team wouldn't
lose the actor's many nuances,
which is a technological achievement
that helped three years
later in "The Irishman,"
which we'll get to in a bit.
De-aging has become an essential process.
Changes can be as big as lifting skin
and as subtle as increasing
light reflecting off skin.
One of the biggest challenges of de-aging
a well-known star is that
audiences are familiar
with how they looked
when they were younger,
especially with an actor like Downey,
who has been in movies
since he was a child.
So the VFX team analyzed
old footage of him
in 1987's "Less Than
Zero," which helps explain
why this young version of
Tony Stark was so convincing.
De-aging was not invented in this decade.
An early use came in 2006's
"X-Men: The Last Stand."
But looking at the results
from that decade to this one,
you can see just how
much better it's gotten.
Technology can both
de-age and age an actor.
Hayley Atwell was aged
up for a pivotal scene
where she plays a much older Peggy Carter.
Once again, thank Lola Visual Effects
for this transformation.
Every movie is just an excuse
for visual effects artists
to build on the visual
effects work done before
and get better.
In an interview, Lola VFX
artists said they believed
they spent so much time
perfecting Carter's neck
that they didn't spend nearly
enough time on her face.
Five years later, Captain America
would finally get to act his
age in "Avengers: Endgame,"
as Chris Evans was aged
up using a mix of CGI,
makeup, and a body double.
But this time, Evans wore neck prosthetics
so the VFX artists could
spend even more time
perfecting his older face.
Thanks to motion-capture technology,
actors could show their
full range of emotions
while being transformed into
basically any kind of creature.
Mo-cap was honed in the 2000s
in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy,
"King Kong," and "Avatar."
It became commonplace in the 2010s,
hitting its stride over the course
of the "Planet of the
Apes" reboot trilogy.
Much of the work on all of these movies
was done by the famed visual
effects studio Weta Digital.
By the time of "Rise of
the Planet of the Apes,"
cameras were able to capture
the most subtle of movements and details,
which made the apes more believable.
And "Rise" was also the first movie
to ever shoot motion capture
in a live-action location,
as opposed to just a bare soundstage.
This development would later help them
to shoot in even more
challenging locations,
like the Vancouver rainforest
in "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes"
and on beaches and in deep snow
in "War for the Planet of the Apes."
It wasn't Andy Serkis'
only big motion-capture
character of the 2010s.
Serkis played the menacing
Supreme Leader Snoke.
He showed up as a hologram
in "The Force Awakens"
and then in person in "The Last Jedi."
According to Industrial Light & Magic
creative director Ben Morris,
they didn't even have the tools
to make Snoke look this
realistic in "The Force Awakens."
By the time "The Last Jedi" rolled around,
they were able to add so
many details to the skin,
like age spots and veins.
The visual effects team shot Serkis
with high-resolution cameras
positioned at every conceivable angle
to create a digital clone of him.
As Serkis performed,
they could automatically
capture every subtle facial move,
from how he smiles to
how he furrows his brow.
They even studied the
elderly to see how light
would realistically hit Snoke's skin.
The technology ILM
developed in collaboration
with Disney Research has been
used to capture many actors.
One of the most prominent:
Josh Brolin as Thanos.
Look closely and you can see every crease,
every pore, of the
"Avengers" villain's skin.
In the live-action "Jungle Book" remake,
actor Neel Sethi played Mowgli
and was the only human
character in the film.
He acted on a completely empty soundstage,
besides these puppets
and creature performers
that would then be digitally replaced
with the actual CGI characters.
The biggest breakthrough on
this movie: muscle movement.
MPC Film developed new software
for animating an animal's
muscle structure.
All of MPC Film's work
directly contributed
to its work on 2019's "The Lion King."
The VFX artists perfected
their already developed
muscle and movement simulations.
They also added more joints
and bones under the skin
as a way to make the characters'
movements more natural.
Otherwise, CGI creations run the risk
of being either too bouncy
or too stiff when they move.
And the environments created
for "The Jungle Book"
were made in virtual production,
which required virtual reality techniques,
allowing filmmakers to step
foot in these environments
and better place their characters in them.
This was also used to
a more advanced degree
in 2019's "The Lion King."
But with great CGI comes
great responsibility.
This "Star Wars" prequel
brought back the Empire's
sinister Grand Moff Tarkin.
However, actor Peter Cushing died in 1994.
So Industrial Light & Magic used CGI
to bring him back to life.
Another actor, Guy Henry,
stood in as Cushing
and did his best Tarkin impression.
A mounted camera rig captured
his facial movements.
Then, ILM used this performance as a guide
to digitally recreate Cushing.
The whole process took
about 18 months to complete.
While Cushing's estate gave its blessing,
the decision was still controversial.
Should you bring back
an actor from the dead?
This issue isn't going anywhere.
The upcoming Vietnam
War-era drama "Finding Jack"
caused an uproar with news that it "cast"
a CGI-version of long-deceased
Hollywood legend James Dean.
In "Blade Runner 2049,"
the VFX wizards at MPC Film
created a digital double
of actress Sean Young
so she could reprise her role as Rachael
from the original "Blade Runner."
It may be the most convincing
digital double yet.
To create the digital Rachael,
they 3D-scanned Young and aged her back
to how she looked in the
original "Blade Runner."
Like with muscles and
joints in "The Jungle Book,"
the most crucial CGI here is
what you don't see: the skull.
To create a CGI skull,
they combined the 3D scan
with a life cast done of Young
shortly after the original "Blade Runner."
Focusing on building
this character's skull
allowed the artists to
build the character's
de-aged features around it.
In addition, they focused on
subtleties in Young's face
and even how makeup was done in the 1980s.
Actress Loren Peta doubled on set
before being replaced
by the de-aged Young.
VFX supervisor John
Nelson also said he team
closely studied the character's emotions
in the original "Blade Runner"
and incorporated them into the double,
helping to make real and fake
almost indistinguishable.
Digital doubles got so realistic
that they would eventually
allow Will Smith
to act alongside a younger
version of himself,
while performing both parts,
in 2019's "Gemini Man."
But creating digital doubles
won't cause actors to lose their jobs.
In Martin Scorsese's mobster
epic, Robert De Niro,
Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci were de-aged
to play Frank Sheeran, Jimmy Hoffa,
and Russell Bufalino during
various times in their lives.
There was no need for the
actors to wear helmets,
tennis balls, or dots on their faces.
The tracking marks were invisible.
Scenes had to be captured
with three cameras at once.
There was one central camera.
The two additional witness
cameras were infrared,
which removed all the
shadows from a given shot.
A new software called Flux
revealed a lot more details
in the actors' faces, like
how their faces are shaded
and the way the lighting hits them.
For additional reference,
the VFX team studied
the cast's filmography.
This allowed the actors to
focus on their performances
and the visual effects artists
to focus on the de-aging.
But there are some things
CGI still can't do,
like make an actor's
movements look younger.
So a posture coach came
to the set to make sure
the actors were moving appropriate
to the ages for a given scene.
Perhaps de-aging an actor's movements
is a CGI breakthrough for the 2020s.
