Originally published at: Inflatable extras: How fake crowds are fooling you in blockbuster films - Boing Boing
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Wow!
Never seen so many plane autopilots all together!
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I like the “Q-tip and fan” crowd technique, personally.
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How long before the Trump campaign comes calling?
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I’m honestly shocked they’re still using such clever and crafty techniques instead of CGI, but especially for that movie, which seemed content to cram CGI into every corner. It’s kind of nice to see practical effects still thriving in these unexpected ways.
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This probably feels more recent than it was. Phantom Menace came out 25 years ago.
Before my current job I was working in the special effects business at an interesting time, about 18 years ago. The effects house that I worked for specialized in practical effects and, although it was certainly possible to use CGI to create fairly realistic car crashes, for example, it was still faster and cheaper to do it for real, which is obviously a lot more fun. Unfortunately the type of effects where that’s still the case is getting more limited all the time.
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I’m aware. I mean that I’m surprised the inflatable crowds are still a thing now, and surprised that Phantom Menace had anything real in it that wasn’t strictly required, even if most of the industry back then was still using practical effects.
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Aw man, beat me too it!
My son was an extra in “I, Tonya” a few years back. The crowds for that were done by having real extras fill up about a third of the skating arena, then using digital cloning to fill up the rest of the seats. He said Margot Robbie did a fair amount of the skating, btw.
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Boing Boing ran this about the same company in 2005 [Photos: Film Production Blow Up Dolls - Boing Boing] (Photos: Film Production Blow Up Dolls - Boing Boing)
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As long as it’s relatively inexpensive and low-effort it makes a lot of sense to save an extra step in post-production for any scenes that are shot on location. Theoretically you could use CGI for the actors’ costumes too, and sometimes studios do, but most of the time there’s no need.
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That’s technically what we call a ReBoing!
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These inflatables could help fill the many empty seats at a certain short-fingered maniac’s political rallies.
Probably raise the average IQ of the joint, too.
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THE HOLLOW MEN, T.S. Eliot
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour.
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
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