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redgiraffe
Rohan
Dec 24 2014, 2:48am
Post #26 of 27
(71 views)
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Some months later we had a second round of design on Dain when Peter asked us to conceive him without the restrictions of costume and make-up. What had been achieved on Actor Billy Connolly with the prosthetic make-up and costume was cool, but it hadn't given Peter, Fran and Philippa exactly what they wanted from the character and we all felt that Billy had become a bit lost under it all. Paradoxically, if Dain were entirely digital we could bring more of Billy to the front of the new design brief. At the same time we could shift his proportions in subtle ways that costume could only achieve to a certain degree. We were able to broaden him, enlarge his head in relation to his body and make him feel chunkier, without encumbering Billy's performance the way a heavy costume, armor and prosthetics had.
I know this is going to sound harsh, so everyone please keep in mind this is all just my opinion. But honestly, I'm quite dumbfounded that's the reason he was CGI. It's not that I don't believe them, it's just that it seems silly that they went the CGI route given the final product. To me, this is just more evidence that PJ has gotten lost with his over reliance on CGI.
I can understand using CGI on characters like gollum, and the great goblin. Those are characters that have a major amount of emoting and would be very difficult to bring on screen without CGI. I can even understand the same thing being done with Azog and Bolg (though I would have rathered prosthetics with them). The same thing all of these characters have in common is that they are all very far away from resembling anything like a human. So CGI is much more likely to work with these characters.
But Dain is a dwarf. They are very similar looking to humans. And when you CGI a dwarf like that it just doesn't work. And it's not like we really got to see much emoting or acting from Dain in the first place. He was barely in there. Really PJ? You couldn't achieve that design with prosthetics and costumes? Or at least come up with a design that doesn't "require" you to step out of the realm of realism that you have to CGI it? If the design was so difficult to achieve realistically maybe there's a reason for that.
I apologize for my whining and ranting, everyone, but this just seems really silly to me.
Okay I'm done with my rant. I'll try to be more positive next time.
-Sir are you classified as human
-Negative, I am a meat-popsicle
(This post was edited by redgiraffe on Dec 24 2014, 2:49am)
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DigificWriter
Lorien
Dec 24 2014, 3:29am
Post #27 of 27
(69 views)
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... that Billy Connolly's Parkinson's Disease may have been a contributing factor in the filmmakers feeling that his performance had 'gotten lost' under the costuming and practical makeup. They're probably not comfortable saying this, but there's just something about what we know about Parkinson's Disease that leads me to believe that it was a mitigating factor in their decision to proceed as they did and digitally replace his character after-the-fact.
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