r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/padfoony • 3h ago

Christopher Nolan avoided CGI and used 7ft stuntmen to portray Laestrygonians in The Odyssey. The giant leader, King Antiphates, is portrayed by actor Josh Stewart, while Matt Damon’s stunt double is Devyn Dalton, who is just under 5ft.

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u/siraolo 3h ago

Forced perspective really does a lot here. 

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u/AmIWhatTheRockCooked 3h ago

Pretty strange exclusion from the title since it’s a classic technique that enhances the casting choice they are talking about

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u/Not-a-Bot_1968 2h ago

Nah, mate, hobbits are real

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u/Deaffin 2h ago

They were, and they fought dragons and giant birds.

Homo Floresiensis was extreme.

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u/Not-a-Bot_1968 2h ago

Mega fauna in general is frightening, but the giant birds really freak me out 

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u/Elaphe82 59m ago

They should, the idea of giant birds is kind of terrifying. They don't really hold back and tend to bite first questions later when it comes to food or investigating things.

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u/Daxx22 2h ago

Yeah, and then humanity and it's ancestors were all "WE GONNA EAT THAT!".

Humans are the true mythical horror here.

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u/Deaffin 2h ago

At least in the case of Madagascar, humans were all like "We gonna eat that even bigger elephant bird that the giant scary raptors eat, which will ultimately wipe out the goddamn terrifying ones that fly!"

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u/murmuring511 2h ago

I knew it, Kim Kardashian is real!

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u/peon2 2h ago

Right, like Patton Oswalt

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u/Not-a-Bot_1968 2h ago

I won’t stand for the slander of an American treasure. 

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u/peon2 2h ago

Slander? Hobbits are awesome. Just chill, food loving, gardeners that can save the world when they feel like it.

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u/Not-a-Bot_1968 1h ago

And they love to smoke that herb

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u/PaintLicker745 1h ago

I mean I think it's pretty easy to assume. The title leaves out the fact that they use cameras and makeup too but I think we all understood. 

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u/darybrain 1h ago

WHAT‽‽‽

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u/denseplan 2h ago

Title is already pretty long.

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u/HairyArthur 2h ago

The title is factually correct.

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u/TeamRedundancyTeam Interested 1h ago

How long are you imagining titles can be?

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u/ctaps148 25m ago

Sure let's make a long title even longer by including a trivial detail that is plainly obvious from the picture

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u/Manjorno316 27m ago

Titles can't be too long.

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u/Ellimis 1h ago

Everybody wants to harp on "CHRISTOPHER NOLAN HATES CGI" which just isn't true. But that headline sells.

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u/FriendofFlounder 1h ago

Forced perspective isn’t cgi. 

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u/tayl0559 2h ago

that's not how forced perspective works. you can't use forced perspective to make something close to the camera look smaller than something far from the camera. it only works the other way around. if anything, the perspective is acting against the intended illusion here

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u/Ok-Gur-349 2h ago

Isn't this more of a focal length thing. Like the tilt shift zoom effect.

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u/tayl0559 2h ago edited 2h ago

yes, it's using a narrower focal length to make the farther away subject appear larger than they otherwise would due to foreshortening

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u/Deaffin 2h ago

So what you're saying is they use the focal thingy to force your perspective into shifting?

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u/Zauberer-IMDB 2h ago

Forced perspective has a more specific meaning as an in-camera effect. The forced perspective shot requires scaled objects to change perception of size. In this case, the people are actually a larger and smaller person, it's just the lens doing the work to make a real difference in size seem bigger. A classic forced perspective shot is like the cart scene in Lord of the Rings where Frodo's half of the cart was literally larger than Gandalf's.

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u/Lou_C_Fer 1h ago

Someone tried to get semantic on you over a technical term. It's the second time I've seen it today. It drives me nuts. Words have meaning, but it seems that a segment of us have decided that words mean whatever they want them to mean. Ugh.

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u/Whyskgurs 1h ago

Like in the Fast ant Furious movie with Dwayne and Vin in a scene together, it's meant to have em look similar in size while squaring up to each other.

But the actual size difference results in Dwayne standing back and off to the side by like, 6 feet, and it's quite noticeable how much they tried and failed to stretch it in that scene.

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u/PhilxBefore 1h ago

Don't you dare force your perspectives on me, NERD!

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u/sikyon 1h ago

The lens does not do the work - focal length lenses and forced perspective are actually the same physics.

The relative size of 2 objects on the camera sensor (without distortion) are entirely controlled by how far the camera sensor is from the 2 objects.

Focal length lenses and forced perspective are 2 parts of the same coin because if you want to make A look bigger than B, you simply get closer to B for the shot.

With the wrong lens, however, object B can be larger than the camera sensor and therefore out of the framing. Or the 2 objects can be very small in your frame, and need to be cropped (and therefore lose resolution).

What changing the focal length on your lens does is simply allow the camera to be closer or father away from your subjects, while still allowing your subjects to fill the sensor of your camera the way you want.

In forced perspective shots the focal length of the lens (or the sensor size) must be adjusted so that the subjects are maintained in frame, when comparing to the focal length of a lens used from farther away.

TL;DR not exactly the same thing but very heavily related and incorrect to say that focal length changes relative size of objects

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u/SeveralArcaneRats 1h ago

Narrow isn’t the normal term referring to focal length just FYI. It’d be Long Focal Length/telephoto (which has a narrow viewing angle).

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u/implode573 1h ago

If we want to get really perspective the compression achieved from the long focal length is moreso caused by the distance from the subjects. The long focal length just makes the frame smaller. The farther you are from the subjects, the closer they are together relative to you, which means they will appear closer to their actual relative sizes. So you can use this trick to make objects in the background appear larger than it would if you were closer, such as this actor or the mountains or the moon. But the limitation is that it just makes those two subjects more accurately proportioned; it's as if you're moving the two subjects to where they are standing next to each other. And that means with that alone, you can't make the further subject appear relatively larger than it already is, only closer to the actual relative size.

But combined with other techniques used, such as forced perspective, framing, and a little use of cgi, you could make it appear as if the further subject is actually even further than it is, which would trick your brain into thinking it's a bit larger than it is. This second paragraph is my best guess anyway.

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u/FullHouse222 1h ago

Also the low angle shot. The way this shot shoots up at the giant makes him look a lot more imposing. They do this a lot with villain shots paired with the lighting going top down so that it creates the shadow effect that makes them look much more dramatic.

https://www.studiobinder.com/camera-shots/camera-angles/low-angle-shot/

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u/Themountaintoadsage 2h ago

It’s a bit of both

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u/Acrobatic_Wrap_9971 48m ago

I think it's more about CBT

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u/Paddy_Tanninger 2h ago

Not only that but forced perspective usually involves props and differently scaled parts of a set to make it so that the person in the background looks much smaller than they are.

ie: Bilbo sitting at the table with Gandalf where it looks like they're talking to each other, but really Ian Holm is 5ft down the table and working with a set of props that are 3x bigger than the ones Ian McKellen has.

As you said, you cannot do it the reverse where you somehow make the foreground person look smaller than the background person.

In fact to prove this point...in the scenes in Bree where the Hobbits go to the inn, to make them look tiny when they're in the foreground, they needed to use massive human-looking puppets walking by in the background.

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u/Porcupineemu 2h ago

Yeah, the best example of forced perspective I can remember is in Elf

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u/-InconspicuousMoose- 1h ago

can't talk about forced perspective without talking about Lord of the Rings imo

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u/ChestSlight8984 1h ago

Another good example is Hagrid from Harry Potter. They used several techniques for him, but one of them was forced perspective, filming his shots from an upward angle.

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u/MechanicalTurkish 2h ago

No, Bob Newhart just isn’t very tall.

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u/fuck_ur_portmanteau 1h ago

ET the bicycle passing in front of the Moon.

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u/SandpaperTeddyBear 2h ago edited 2h ago

You kinda can actually, and I think they did it here.

If you use a longer focal length to generally compress things, get yourself further back, and put the thing you want to be larger closer to "smaller thing" and the camera than one would "expect" from the other visual cues (such as having the actors look over each other's heads), it works fine. I'd guess they can probably move their props around mid-shot and between shots, which I can't really do when it's just me messing around with my camera.

There used to be "Mystery Spot" tourist traps that would use tilted floors and weirdly shaped rooms to do similar things, and I imagine Nolan's production designer knows all those tricks.

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u/jamincan 1h ago

Maybe forced perspective is a very specific technique though? But you're right that you can trick the eye using cues. All of the men in this image are the same height: https://therealweeklyshow.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/walking-men-size-illusion.jpg

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u/SandpaperTeddyBear 1h ago

That's still forced perspective. All forced perspective is just "tricking the eye using cues."

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u/jaxmp 2h ago edited 1h ago

you can

your eyes are used to having a certain angle so things get smaller at a rate that matches that

if you move a camera really far and set it to high zoom, it will make things in the background look bigger than they would look to your eyes

look at the grass in the background of this thumbnail for a visual example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8za1NOr8B0

2nd edit (moved from child comment): guess i'll add links and definition (from wiki):

Forced perspective is a technique that employs optical illusion to make an object appear farther away, closer, larger or smaller than it actually is. It manipulates human visual perception through the use of scaled objects and the correlation between them and the vantage point of the spectator or camera.

like i mentioned, it's super duper broad

the thing we that usually comes to mind when one hears "forced perspective" is usually some version of the ames room, or what's listed in the wiki article under "in motion"

the specific technique being used in the OP is Telephoto compression (also known as lens compression or perspective compression)

more interestingly, the usage of a smaller stunt double paired with a taller person also falls under the super wide umbrella of forced perspective, much like making windows/decorations smaller on distant structures is used to make those structures look larger

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u/tayl0559 2h ago edited 2h ago

that isn't forced perspective though, that's focal length. notably, focal length changes can't make something that is ordinarily smaller than the focus appear larger than it, it can only reduce the effect foreshortening has on the scale of the background, which is what they're doing in the OP image to reduce the effect foreshortening has on making the background subject look smaller.

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u/Paddy_Tanninger 2h ago

Exactly. The technique used here is to legitimately have a huge size difference in your actors, but then also shoot it on a telephoto lens to help preserve and accentuate that size difference.

You do this shot on a 24mm lens and it could lose a ton of the magic unless you bring the camera way closer to the actress and put it way lower down so that it's looking up at the massive dude towering above.

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u/jaxmp 2h ago edited 1h ago

it's using focal length to force the perspective

forced perspective is an umbrella term that covers different camera manipulations, whether location, rotation, or lens adjustments (including tilt-shift, my beloved), to make things seem differently scaled than they would to the human eye

or as you noted:

>what they're doing in the OP image to reduce the effect perspective has

(i do understand the umbrella is *super* broad but that's just how it do)

edit: i mostly emphasize this clarification because it "widens the possibilities" of what forced perspective can be in the reader's mind, we tend to think of it as one specific technique

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u/Sardoodledome 3h ago

It really show the genius of the production - no cgi can beat the real thing.

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u/tunesmiff 2h ago edited 2h ago

No cgi is really just invisible cgi. I guarantee there was CGI deployed in those scenes in addition to what was captured in camera.

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u/RedHawk_94 2h ago

CGI and VFX are not the same thing

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u/DShepard 1h ago

Idk, they're pretty interchangeable in a lot of contexts. I've heard "could we make that with CG" and "could we do that with VFX" about the same exact tasks pretty often.

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u/ctaps148 24m ago

VFX adds dramatic flair, CGI invents what was never there

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u/RedHawk_94 1h ago

They're not interchangeable. To people who don't understand the difference, sure, and they are used together when editing a movie, but they're not the same thing

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u/DShepard 1h ago

CGI is a form of VFX, which makes them interchangeable in a lot of contexts. Even Nolan movies have plenty of CG, but it'll be subtle particle effects and background elements more than characters and props.

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u/RedHawk_94 1h ago

It is not a "form of VFX". Layering different shots to make 1 shot is VFX, creating the character model for the Hulk is CGI, putting that character model in a scene with real people is VFX, taking a particle/fire/smoke effect over an existing shot that didn't have that element is VFX.

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u/DShepard 53m ago

You're just describing compositing in your first and third example, which again is a form of VFX, but is not all it is.

But I guess how you view it also varies from what area if the industry you're in and what your educational background is. I know a lot of film and art schools are real sticklers when it comes to certain topics.

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u/RedHawk_94 48m ago

Exactly, not all VFX is CGI. Compositing is VFX with 0 CGI included, but people would call that CGI. Removing wires or compositing one shot (Odysseus with the cyclops puppet) removing the puppet and overlaying the shots of the physical cyclops actor is not CGI. An areal stunt with wires being shot then removing the wires is not CG either. Green screening a persons performance onto a new background shot is not CGI either

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u/TheWatersOfMars 2h ago

Absolutely, but the more you capture in camera, on set, the easier it is down the line so you don't have to David Fincher your budget on CGI. 

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u/Sardoodledome 2h ago

there is a lot of cgi in the movie. Cgi is really a lazy way out - I like how they chose to use perspective in this scene, like they did in LOTR with Gandalf scenes. It just fools your eye and brain, while cgi always is " ah .... not real" ...

Edit:

Also in this scene where they have to show Matt Damon's face you can see that the "giants" ain't gianting ... :)

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u/MonitorPowerful5461 2h ago

Watch Dune, research the CGI they used, and then tell me that CGI is a "lazy way out". CGI is art; sometimes art is bad, but sometimes it can be beautiful.

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u/PhilxBefore 1h ago

Hate to be that guy, but you're absolutely wrong.

The sandworms in Dune were locally sourced from Beetlejuice, and just given a handy-sandy paint-job, IIRC.

/s

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u/polite_alpha 2h ago

As a vfx artist it always amuses me that people cite shows as little to none CGI that have literal THOUSANDS of VFX shots.

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u/Tipop 1h ago

while cgi always is “ ah …. not real”

No, BAD CGI is “ah, not real”. Good CGI is indistinguishable from reality. You’ve probably seen thousands of CGI shots and didn’t even realize that’s what they were. The only CGI you notice is bad CGI.

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u/Outrageous-Wait-8895 1h ago

while cgi always is " ah .... not real"

lol

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u/BulbusDumbledork 59m ago

cgi is the lazy way out, because laziness is recreating every pixel of the real world in the shot from the lighting, to modelling every single prop and character, to animating everything that moves on purpose, to doing physics simulations for everything else, to making photo-real surfaces and materials, to compositing it into real footage so seamlessly you think there isn't cgi at all. you only notice obvious or bad cgi and think that's all it is.

those thousands of vfx artists spending thousands of hours expertly mixing art and technology to make modern movies possible are just so lazy

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u/Exciting-Cancel6468 34m ago

I think its easier than commanding several hundred people march in a forest where the ground isnt level and run a camera that can only run for 3 minutes at a time to where you have to tell the hundred people to reset their cues and do it all again all while making sure your aperture is right and your angle is right and no one accidentally left a coffee cup in a shot.

CGI is definitely easier than that.

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u/bdubwilliams22 2h ago

CGI is different from VFX. VFX still uses shot video, but using computers it’s stripped in. CGI is completely computer generated. The only obvious CGI that I saw was the cyclops scene and that creature by the whirlpool. Off the top of my head. Nolan really doesn’t like to use CGI, he does however utilize VFX quite frequently.

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u/Ellimis 1h ago

Go watch Inception or Dark Knight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFLcP-t0-kI

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u/pokerstar420 2h ago

Except when you use flame to depict a nuclear explosion instead of CGI

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u/CorrectPeanut5 2h ago

Eh, the Atomic bomb blast in Oppenheimer wasn't anything like the real thing. It's the key scene to the whole movie and he should have used CGI.

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u/Independent-Bug-9352 1h ago

Completely agree. That scene was so anticlimactic. Should've just aimed for making the best CGI recreations with consultation from physicists that was as accurate as possible.

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u/Flimsy_Category_9369 2h ago

I love this sort of stuff, Peter Jackson used similar tricks in Lord of the Rings to make the hobbits look small

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u/LastButtInspector 11m ago

Jackson essentially did the opposite of this. You can’t use forced perspective to make what’s closer to the camera appear smaller.

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u/ExpFilm_Student 2h ago

Lotr did it well 25 years ago as well. It’s a great practical technique.

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u/Kotrats 2h ago

Works both ways. She looks taller on the right pic because of the angle.

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u/hyliantelligent 2h ago

The size difference between the two makes the forced perspective even greater.

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u/MasterLurker000 1h ago

That armor looks like ass and thats all i see

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u/DustyVinegar 12m ago

Yeah, telephoto lenses, flattening the depth of field etc, cool in camera tricks

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u/RedManMatt11 2h ago

Yea it’s a combination of both

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u/thissexypoptart 2h ago

And, contrary to what the title says, so does CGI. It’s just used in an enhancing way around tons of practical effects—like in early 2000s movies that still stand up well, like LOTR—instead of super heavy handedly.

But saying there is no cgi here is just false.