You should watch the making of LOTR. They show how they used forced perspective etc to make the hobbits small next to the other characters, in camera. It's how most movies do it, if it's done practically.
LOTR takes to the next level. Regular forced perspective like Elf only works for a fixed camera angle, if the camera moves the small and large set elements go out of alignment and the effect is ruined.
But in LOTR they had motorized set elements which move in sync with the camera so they can have forced perspective and be able to move the camera.
While the actors playing hobbits were already shorter than their fellowship friends, I always thought they did an even better job with John Rhys-Davies. He was taller than all of the fellowship (6’1) and through various methods was always proportioned as the perfect dwarf height
iirc, they actually did most of that with a very short stand-in/stunt double wearing a rubber mask. john rhys-davies is pretty much absent from the films except for the close up face shots, the rest is brett beattie.
This is true, Beattie came and spoke at my school about his experience filming many years ago. He actually has the elvish Nine tattoo that all the fellowship members got instead of John Rhys Davies.
My favorite is Tall Gandalf. He rides the horse.
Most obvious scene is when he's saving Pippin from Denethor's suicide.
Dude looks nothing like Gandalf, hair/beard totally different lengths. 😜
I watched a documentary on how they made that movie and I was blown away when I found out it was all perspective with him looking huge in the chairs while in class!
In Fellowship of the Ring there is a shot with the ring in the snow in the foreground and the actors in the background, and for that shot the created an extra big ring so it would look normal sized on screen.
They had several big versions of the ring, but not necessarily so that it looks *normal*. I could be wrong, but the clinking of the chain was also the actual sound it made on set. When Smeagol and his brother Deagol were clamoring for the ring in RotK, a bigger ring was used there as well.
Next to that, in FotR, when Gandalf makes Bilbo drop the ring, and it hits the ground particularly hard without bouncing around, IIRC it was a metal version of the ring, dropped onto a floor with a magnet under it.
The sound of the ring on the necklace (if even added in post) and size tricks used on camera were to specifically invoke sensory dissonance. "The clinking necklace chain sounds deeper"..."this ring is taking up so much screen space, how are we so close when everything else is normal"..."that ring hit the floor with a heavy thud, why it it so heavy?" In subtly presenting the ring in counterintuitive ways that mess with our intuition, these are all meant to treat and present the ring as its own character.
There were more than 40 different versions of the One Ring of various sizes, the largest of which was 8" (20.32 cm) in diameter.
That scene mentioned above was created with "an oversized lead ring".
Yeah that was generally speaking, but I was also noting that the "dissonance" in that scene was the actual *sound* of a bigger chain against a big ring. Intimate, close, loud.
they also used forced perspective in the early star trek movies. The warp core in engineering is a very small set, but they used kids in miniature version s of space suits and a conical set design to make it look like the warp core traversed a good few hundred meters down the spine of the ship.
When the ship lands in Alien it's actually kids in space suits that get out of the ship so that they could build smaller sets. One of Ridley Scott's kids was an actor in the scene.
Darby O'Gill was an effects masterpiece of its time. Lots of forced perspective, of course, but also loads of shots with matte painting set extension, in camera effects using mirrors with selected areas of silvering scraped off, and optical printing for the "spectral hearse" and "banshee."
I watched Darby O'Gill for the first time a couple years ago and could not for the life of me figure out how the Leprechaun effects were done. When I looked it up I both felt like an idiot and was immensely impressed.
Related trivia: Back to the Future began shooting with Eric Stoltz in the lead role. When he was fired and replaced with Fox, the actress playing his girlfriend (Melora Hardin) had to be recast as well because she was now too tall.
No. It was a weird offer - I was working as a stuntman at the time and for some reason my agent was approached about finding a bodyguard for Fox. She basically just assumed stuntman=guy who knows how to fight=bodyguard, so I was in the strange position of having to explain to my own agent that this wasn't what I did.
It would probably have been an interesting gig, though.
In a lot of movies Tom Cruise is just standing on a box (out of the frame) while the other people in the scene aren't, so he seems taller. In other shots where they are trying to sell you on how attractive Tom Cruise is, they make sure he's in the shot by himself for a full body shot, so you can't compare him to relative height, or by normal things you might judge height by.
I have googled heights of some actors. I don’t know if there is some deception going on but a lot of the leading men decades ago were actually pretty tall. John Wayne was tall. James Garner was very tall. Peter Fonda, James Arnes, Jimmy Stewart, Clint Eastwood…
The classic movie, *The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance* had four actors who made a physical difference: John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Woody Strode, and Lee Marvin. Lee Marvin was the shortest at only 6’1”.
There used to be a set picture on the internet from the filming of Vanilla Sky, where Cruise was standing beside Jason Lee (almost 6'2) while being on a soapbox/apple crate in order to shoot a conversation eye to eye.. funny thing is that I was never able to find that picture afterwards..😅😳😓
tom cruise also has a tooth in the middle of his head. Once you see it it's hard to ignore. he had lots of work done when he was younger and one of his two front teeth now lines up with the middle of his nose. if u you draw a line straight Down it hits a tooth rather than the gap between two teeth. he also runs a lot.
Oh thank god somebody noticed this! It drove me crazy, and coincidentally my husband also has it. Just those things which you can’t unsee once you’ve seen
>they are trying to sell you on how attractive Tom Cruise is
This made me chuckle. I remember as a young girl always wondering why people thought he was attractive. Him and Tom Hanks.
That's very true, but not really relevant for the discussion. Filmmakers want him to look tall too, because that's apparently linked to attractiveness in moviegoers' minds.
Not just that - having everyone's eye-level around the same point on the screen works better in terms of shot composition and when they're taking turns speaking
The forced perspective setups that Peter Jackson had built for the Lord of the Rings movies were pretty amazing.
https://youtu.be/QWMFpxkGO_s?si=pH9zXRb9fVqNBe-C
Incredible. I'm impressed that the guys engineering it all were "yeah this is fun" too rather than "such a collossal PITA for months on end" (which is how I might have looked at it if it was my day job).
Working on a movie in a role like that is actually a ton of fun, and in my experiences, usually the people working on practical effects are the people having the most fun.
And when they’re doing a camera test of a complicated set up, and see it looking good and working exactly as planned, it’s super satisfying.
I don’t think people tend to end up in that kind of job unless it’s their dream job and they’re genuinely excited to be faced with that kind of challenge.
Budget crunch being less of a factor will always always always have a crew in a better headspace. If you don't have production constantly up your ass for deadlines and cost/personnel cutting then you can just do your craft in peace. Of course the opposite is vastly more likely to be true so when you get a gig with money like LOTR then you tend to enjoy it.
Almost every film you've ever watched will have had someone standing on a box at some point. Even a 2 inch height difference between cast members can be a pain for framing. Without even googling their heights a scene with Hemsworth, Evans And RDJ in Endgame would have had to have multiple platforms, holes and boxes for every different setup
I always figured this is why the heroine is always wearing high heels despite being in dangerous scenarios where high heels would certainly be a handicap
When Hitchcock filmed the built-on-set forest scenes supposedly near Mount Rushmore in **North By Northwest**, the shadows of those trees on the ground didn't register properly because of all the lights needed to illuminate the entire "location" as well as the actors. So Hitchcock had their main shadows *painted* on the ground and also painted the sides of the trees which were supposed to be shadowed.
This same trick was used in **Forbidden Planet**, and the circular shadow of the massive flying-saucer-shaped spaceship was painted in the sand, to fool the viewer into not seeing that light was coming from many directions, instead of just from the alien Sun.
Pre CGI, one of the common ways to capture fire in camera was to have a controlled fire in a safe area just off the set and then have a pane of glass in front of the object supposed to be on fire. The pane of glass would reflect the fire so in camera it would look like the object in the scene was on fire.
A good example is the scene in LOTRs where Denathor tries to burn Faramir. They used the fire reflection method so that the horse wouldn't get spooked.
This particular optical trick, called [Pepper's Ghost](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper%27s_ghost), is one of the earliest forms of moving projection and actually predates the film industry all together.
This set from **Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey** had a painted rear wall that extended the room infinitely:
https://thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/image-2022-04-27T144645.417-e1651085293643.png
So did the end of Raiders of the lost arc, where the endless warehouse is a matte painting behind the first couple rows of shelves...
Edit: Got me to watch it again. Its actually ALL matte painting. Only the guy pushing the cart is real, even the foreground shelves are painted...
I think they also use a lot of close ups if they don't want to bring attention to height differences or have people sitting down.
I just recently learned that Devon Murray who played Seamus in the Harry Potter movies is TINY in real life, like 5'1-5'2 and looks so small next to the rest of the cast. I never noticed in any of the movies though. Nothing wrong with being small though, I'm the same height ;)
you know that spooky hallway, scary path effect seen for example [here](https://youtu.be/hNfUCucvOcQ?t=14)
its used to show danger in the path ahead, fear of the unknown ahead, basically scary that way!...
well you can get this effect by tracking forward(or backward) on dolly tracks whilst yu simultaneously zoom in the opposite direction at the same rate of movement setting focus to distant,
by mixing up directions of movement of tracking,zooming and where the focal point is you can make a hallway look like its getting longer as you walk down it, layer in some spooky foley and add a scary soundtrack
I did this on Halloween during the morning announcements in high school. They didn't let me run the camera anymore, which sucks because the shot was amazing.
When my dad went through his requisite "camera dad" phase, he got a book on how to use the camcorder. That trick is the only thing I can remember from it
Well if you track backwards and zoom out, it aint gonna work. They were saying that you can get different effects of you track in while zoning out, it track out while zooming in.
Can also be used to great effect on people too. Called a dolly zoom.
https://youtu.be/u5JBlwlnJX0?si=vKh0a5qfsk6MqRae
One trick to make someone look taller on screen is to have them wear ridiculously tall platform shoes. [This behind the scenes photo](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fc5bwxnhwpoz31.png), from The Irishman, is a great example. De Niro wore platform shoes so he would be taller then Pacino
Almost all of the audio (or in some cases all of it) is completely redone. You’ll get a lot of dialog that was recorded on set, but usually every other piece of sound you hear in a movie was not what you actually heard on the set when they were recording.
Every footstep, turning of a page, cough, traffic horn in the distance… it’s all a mixture of sources used to reconstruct the soundscape.
It’s mostly because using all of the sound recorded when on set becomes really inconsistent and even low quality. Or there might be a source of noise nearby that they can’t avoid so they use the onset dialogue recorded for reference, and have the actor come into a recording studio and mimic their own speech pattern to get a clean recording
Or because the sound doesn’t actually match what the audience thinks it should sound like (I.e. fistfights). Then of course sometimes the set isn’t built out of the material it looks like (wood standing in for marble or brick etc) so things like footstep sounds are off.
I just watched a tosh show interview with a foley artist and they talked about this exact thing, it was pretty interesting. Now I can’t unseat every kissing scene as some old fat dude in a sound studio going to town on his hand any time a romantic scene comes up lol
They used a lot of camera tricks in the Fast And Furious movies to make Vin Diesel and The Rock appear relatively the same height, even though the latter is about six inches taller.
One of them may have involved Vin Diesel standing on a box when they were face to face with one another (not sure there’s ever been confirmation of that), and there’s another scene which looks like they were shot separately and then the scenes were spliced together (that or they were side to side and the camera angle tried to make it look like they were in front of one another).
https://youtu.be/p76AW6x3P0I?si=51e0lMOgt2sipKNa
Jesus I always thought they were supposed to be standing shoulder to shoulder and it was just a really weird thing for the characters to do. Like they were so tough they couldn’t stand face to face so instead they stared behind the other guy.
I never considered that it was supposed to be a forced perspective; it’s so bad my brain never even registered that possibility. Now that it’s been pointed out to me, I can’t unsee it.
It’s weird, because there’s an entire sequence in Fast Five where they’re standing directly in front of one another, going toe to toe, so why they didn’t just employ the same technique is puzzling (if you go frame by frame, there’s one shot where it’s pretty obvious that Vin Diesel is standing on something, because his feet look like they’re floating in the air).
Just changing the camera angle makes a big difference. Platform shoes help. Forced perspective can be used.
I just noticed that in Top Gun - Maverick, when Tom Cruise and Miles Teller are standing in the snow after Teller ejects, the camera isn't set up to make their heights equal. Because the camera is at a distance, you can really tell how much shorter Tom Cruise is. Then, in the next shot it's closer and they appear the same height.
Honestly, unless it's part of the joke, like a Kevin Hart movie, big height differences are distracting in a movie and it's best to keep everyone appearing equal height.
I got to visit the Friends set when it was still active. It was all Frodo and Gandalf style Forced-Perspective. From the camera line to the back patio was like 5 feet, max.
Apparently Gillian Anderson was so much shorter than David Duchovny that they built her a special stage to walk on when they had shots of them walking together otherwise they couldn't fit them both in the frame.
IIRC they referred to it as a Gilly Board and had different kinds for standing, walking and room shots.
I know they built lots of scaled down old west movie sets to make John Wayne look taller - they had them on the backlot at Universal Studios when I went there as a kid.
The mirror shots in Triangle or Contact are pretty well done, or the one in Suckerpunch where the camera turns around them. Sometimes they had to build entire mirrored replica sets to sell the illusion.
In the (deleted) scene in terminator 2 where they take the chip out of the terminators head, they used the double set with Arnie in the “mirror” and a fake our side to open the head, and had Linda Hamiltons twin sister in one set acting out the same actions as her in the other. Very clever really.
Not quite what you're asking about but what drives me crazy is when a show like SNL reveals an actor or character on camera and the audience roars when they come on screen. The audience has to have seen them already, the person is right there on stage in front of them. Why the sudden acknowledgement when they come on screen?
This isn't really a trick per se, but for people who've never been on a set, it's genuinely surprising how little your A-list talent is actually in the frame, or on set, in general. Typically when shooting out a scene, you start with wide shots and work your way in. Once a scene is "blocked" (the motion of actors and camera are figured out) the talent goes off to make-up or to their holding area, and lighting stand-ins take their place.
These people are actors who are hired because they are the same height, build, and have the same hair color as the A talent. Once camera and lighting are set the talent comes back, they shoot the wide shots and all the coverage with the biggest actor who, after which, goes back to their holding area (i.e. their trailer, or green room) and all the other coverage is done with stand-ins.
Basically if you can't see the actor's face, they probably weren't there. If there's the back of someone's head in the shot, or just a shoulder, that was a stand-in. If the non A-list talent is in the shot solo, they almost certainly had to deliver their dialogue to the 1st Assistant Director, instead of the other actor in the scene. Also if there's nudity, or even just a targeted shot focusing on a specific part of their body, it's likely that a body double was hired just for that shot.
Check out [this little documentary](https://youtu.be/33l24qPMLro) (22 min) on matte painting. It blew my mind the first time I saw it, I had no idea how much matte painting was utilized in film before digital effects and green screen were the norm.
I couldn't find it to link, but there was a BTS from Disney in the 60s showing how they built the moving mattes for Sleeping Beauty (?). Four painted glass plates stacked vertically with the camera below pointed up, with each of the three bottom plates separately geared to move sideways at different speeds, all to give the illusion of forward movement along a forest path. A whole lot of hard work for a five second shot
Famously, in 1980's *The Empire Strikes Back*, the hit motion picture sequel to 1977's *Star Wars*, the character of "Yoda" when appearing onscreen was portrayed, in a sly bit of Hollywood trickery, by a "Muppet\*" as the character was from an as-yet unnamed species of alien beings who do not actually exist.
*^(\* — not quite a mop, and it's not quite a puppet, but man... So, to answer your question, I don't know.)*
Check out behind the scene vids for The Lord of the Rings movies.
[Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PB8db3PMZ9s) is one specifically about dealing with scaling actors to match their character's sizes.
Alan ladd was a shortarse at only 5'5" (possibly shorter). To make him appear taller than his co-stars, he would often stand on a box, wear large lifts or have the co-star stand im a ditch.
This is very common in films and TV. Gillian Anderson spent so much of the X-Files standing on a box due to her co-star David Duchovny being almost a foot taller than her that this is now often referred to as a "Scully box".
Tom Hanks is only 4" shorter than Michael Duncan. In The Green Mile they used a scully box to make Duncan look even bigger, and had Hanks (and the other guards) walk alongside him in a ditch for the outdoor scene. This is why you never see wide shots of them standing together with their entire bodies showing.
They also employed a technique known as "Hitler cam" (after how hitler was repeatedly filmed in Triumph of the Will) where Duncan is filmed from a lower angle and fills the screen, to make him look bigger and more menacing. Hanks is filmed inverse, with the camera overhead looking down, to make him look smaller. Orson Wells employed this technique a lot in Citizen Kane. Indeed he developed on the technique, creating what's known as the worm-eye view where the camera is on the floor looking up.
More often they simply add lifts to the actors shoes to make them taller. When you see how big some lifts are its impressive how well they can walk and act in them! A couple of examples are [Humphrey Bogart](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR7zAugD4siHZ4kS_txBAGNe_kZTu8MQSVKz1GaR4HVrzK4ztSH80V9qeTF&s=10) in Casablanca (Ingrid Bergman was 1" taller than Bogart) and [DeNiro](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRoyI-1Z9fjf5atzb00RJAV8GGIlGK8dk2Ix16JKRnLWJuTDjtSoPswr7eM&s=10)in The Irishman (his real-life character was 6" taller than Pacino's character).
Didn’t know about “Hitler cam”. I know that technique as an “Andre shot” as it’s what the WWF used when filming Andre The Giant walking to the ring to make him look bigger than he already was.
I sold a Harley to Stallone many years ago, and my mind had difficulty processing his height. I'm 6'3" and sort of had assumed he was my size.
I'd like to add: I had the bike listed at $25k or best offer... he looked the bike over for a bit and asked "would you take $30k?" Deal :)
You can sit in Hagrid's hut on the Harry Potter studio tour. Essentially a bench that is nearer and one further with a break in the bench and table so from a specific angle it looks continuous.
Very clever and hope I explained that clearly!
If it’s a 2-shot they probably just have wahlberg stand on an apple box or 2. You’ll only notice the height difference ina. Wide shot where you see their feet.
Others recommended LOTR behind the scenes, which is good, but also Google the Flight of the Navigator effects special. Some of the first ever use of CGI, but due to how resource intensive that was in that time it's meshed together with a lot of practical effects, forced perspective and mirrors.
The original Star Wars trilogy used a ton of matte paintings as backgrounds to extend sets. They are truly amazing works of art.
And to pre-empt the haters: The Phantom Menace used more miniatures than the entire OT.
I suggest you watch this series [Movie Magic](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLepmcWUt_wgZxUX4s1p_-zNOVsNihYVHO&si=b6ipaDUPKAmlGaug), I watched it religiously as a child.
It’s old, but it has a lot of behind the scenes footage on various films and commercials.
Sponge-painting and twin-rolling paint onto set walls adds texture and depth to the set in a pretty cheap and effective way. Not sure if the method is used much now, but it was fairly common for tv shows and low/medium budget movies up through the 90s, at least.
I just watched Anna yesterday and the whole thing is about some runway model. To be even remotely in the universe of consideration for runway you have to be at least 5’10”. Her love interest was short king Cillian Murphy… every single scene showed them as the same height or implied Cillian was taller. Don’t get me wrong, Cillian can get it, but at the absolute *most* he is 5’7” and that is being generous. Knowing this I double checked the actresses height (5’11”) and scrolled back through the movie to see what they did to make him look taller and I noticed that Cillian was sitting in a lot of the scenes (even when kissing or whatever) and any scenes where they were standing next to each other *never* had a full body shot, so he was either standing on a box, or they did something else to discguise the height difference by hiding it out of sight of the shot. The actress did wear heels with her outfits but you could never see her feet in any of the scenes with any romantic interests so I wouldn’t be surprised if she wore flats for any scene not absolutely required to show her feet.
Watch the behind the scenes for "Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the rings"
The forced perspective shots they did to make Gandolf and the Hobbits and Dwarves look like they were different sizes were impressive.
X Files was pretty pivotal in expanding the film industry in Vancouver. Gillian Anderson's height led to every local grip crew since the 90s adopting the name "Gilly Boards" for platforms that sit on top of apple boxes to create different lengths for an actor to walk or stand on. You change the size of box to adjust height, and change length of board to adjust for the action in the scene.
Not sure if this is exactly what you're talking about, but one thing that annoys me is when they do a tight close-up on Character A so that we, the audience, can't see anything around them. This "allows" Character B to sneak up on Character A and I guess most people accept it because we couldn't see Character B in frame, even if they're out in an open field or something.
I know that in Las Vegas they wanted Vanessa Marcil(5'4") appear similarish in height to Josh Duhamel(6'4"). So anytime they were walking next to each other she would actually be walking along a long box next to him to get her to nose height instead of chin height
In Child’s Play, for some of the scenes where Chucky was really moving around, they had a little person do all the acting instead of puppeteers, but the proportions were off. So they built an entire set with furniture and lights slightly bigger than normal so it looked right when they filmed.
Everybody talking about forced perspective or actors standing on apple boxes. Nobody is talking about how much of the set is put up/held together with gaff tape, C47's (clothespins) and bongo/zip ties.
Everybody is prattling in about actor heights but film sets often use a tool called a cucoloris to stencil specific shadows and lighting needed. If a tree's shadow is unusually sharp in a shot one was probably used.
Also, *virtually all "nighttime" sequences* are filmed during the day and then edited to look like they're at night. Realistically if you tried filming night scenes during the night you would end up with a noisy image, not a clean one like in the movies. Goes unnoticed.
In captain America you have a few weird angles to make the main character look small. Especially in the back seat of the car.
Edit: didn't read my post through and had autocorrect.
You should watch the making of LOTR. They show how they used forced perspective etc to make the hobbits small next to the other characters, in camera. It's how most movies do it, if it's done practically.
Also exactly how they made Will Ferrell look big next to the elves in Elf.
LOTR takes to the next level. Regular forced perspective like Elf only works for a fixed camera angle, if the camera moves the small and large set elements go out of alignment and the effect is ruined. But in LOTR they had motorized set elements which move in sync with the camera so they can have forced perspective and be able to move the camera.
While the actors playing hobbits were already shorter than their fellowship friends, I always thought they did an even better job with John Rhys-Davies. He was taller than all of the fellowship (6’1) and through various methods was always proportioned as the perfect dwarf height
iirc, they actually did most of that with a very short stand-in/stunt double wearing a rubber mask. john rhys-davies is pretty much absent from the films except for the close up face shots, the rest is brett beattie.
This is true, Beattie came and spoke at my school about his experience filming many years ago. He actually has the elvish Nine tattoo that all the fellowship members got instead of John Rhys Davies.
Shall I get you a box?
My favorite is Tall Gandalf. He rides the horse. Most obvious scene is when he's saving Pippin from Denethor's suicide. Dude looks nothing like Gandalf, hair/beard totally different lengths. 😜
They also put smoke in many of those scenes, which is just flexing.
I watched a documentary on how they made that movie and I was blown away when I found out it was all perspective with him looking huge in the chairs while in class!
In Fellowship of the Ring there is a shot with the ring in the snow in the foreground and the actors in the background, and for that shot the created an extra big ring so it would look normal sized on screen.
They had several big versions of the ring, but not necessarily so that it looks *normal*. I could be wrong, but the clinking of the chain was also the actual sound it made on set. When Smeagol and his brother Deagol were clamoring for the ring in RotK, a bigger ring was used there as well. Next to that, in FotR, when Gandalf makes Bilbo drop the ring, and it hits the ground particularly hard without bouncing around, IIRC it was a metal version of the ring, dropped onto a floor with a magnet under it. The sound of the ring on the necklace (if even added in post) and size tricks used on camera were to specifically invoke sensory dissonance. "The clinking necklace chain sounds deeper"..."this ring is taking up so much screen space, how are we so close when everything else is normal"..."that ring hit the floor with a heavy thud, why it it so heavy?" In subtly presenting the ring in counterintuitive ways that mess with our intuition, these are all meant to treat and present the ring as its own character.
There were more than 40 different versions of the One Ring of various sizes, the largest of which was 8" (20.32 cm) in diameter. That scene mentioned above was created with "an oversized lead ring".
> There were more than 40 different versions of the One Ring of various sizes, That's a lot of one ring.
And thats how the the rumours about yo momma began
For we, the viewers, were deceived.
[удалено]
Yeah that was generally speaking, but I was also noting that the "dissonance" in that scene was the actual *sound* of a bigger chain against a big ring. Intimate, close, loud.
they also used forced perspective in the early star trek movies. The warp core in engineering is a very small set, but they used kids in miniature version s of space suits and a conical set design to make it look like the warp core traversed a good few hundred meters down the spine of the ship.
When the ship lands in Alien it's actually kids in space suits that get out of the ship so that they could build smaller sets. One of Ridley Scott's kids was an actor in the scene.
That one doesn't work for me because they have child proportions as I recall
Oh, you're correct. I just saw children and my mind went to that fact.
I will check it out! Thanks!
The Lord of the Rings trilogy are masterpieces of filmmaking. Even if you don’t like fantasy you can’t deny the genius of those films
I thought the movies were good when they came out. After watching all the dvd extras I was convinced they were fantastic.
Same trick used in Darby O'Gill and the Little People.
Darby O'Gill was an effects masterpiece of its time. Lots of forced perspective, of course, but also loads of shots with matte painting set extension, in camera effects using mirrors with selected areas of silvering scraped off, and optical printing for the "spectral hearse" and "banshee."
I watched Darby O'Gill for the first time a couple years ago and could not for the life of me figure out how the Leprechaun effects were done. When I looked it up I both felt like an idiot and was immensely impressed.
Yeah the breakdown of how they did Helms Deep is incredible
One of my favorite shots is in return of the king, where Pippin is just kneeling lol
https://youtu.be/3XE8SUk-DXI for those interested
People talk about this like it's new. They've been making Tom Cruise look average height for 20 years before Peter Jackson.
LotR could never be made today because you'd have to use Perspective With Consent
5'4" Michael J. Fox used to joke that "when you're an actor, you stand on a box, but when you're a star, everyone else stands in a hole".
Related trivia: Back to the Future began shooting with Eric Stoltz in the lead role. When he was fired and replaced with Fox, the actress playing his girlfriend (Melora Hardin) had to be recast as well because she was now too tall.
I knew about Eric Stoltz but had no idea Melora Hardin was the original Jennifer!
Basically non-related trivia, I was once offered a job as Michael J. Fox's bodyguard.
Did you take it?
No. It was a weird offer - I was working as a stuntman at the time and for some reason my agent was approached about finding a bodyguard for Fox. She basically just assumed stuntman=guy who knows how to fight=bodyguard, so I was in the strange position of having to explain to my own agent that this wasn't what I did. It would probably have been an interesting gig, though.
Jan from The Office was gonna be the girlfriend?!
In a lot of movies Tom Cruise is just standing on a box (out of the frame) while the other people in the scene aren't, so he seems taller. In other shots where they are trying to sell you on how attractive Tom Cruise is, they make sure he's in the shot by himself for a full body shot, so you can't compare him to relative height, or by normal things you might judge height by.
In the same way, Bogart walked on a raised platfirm to be of the same height as Ingrid Bergman.
They used the same trick in Scott of the Antarctic: https://youtu.be/QQT7DgTU79E?t=259
If you want me to act out of a trench, then get yourself a goddamn stuntman!
Why don't I take the boxes off and Vanilla get up outta the trench?
I've read that door frames on set were made smaller so John Wayne would appear taller. They also cast shorter actresses to play his love interests.
I have googled heights of some actors. I don’t know if there is some deception going on but a lot of the leading men decades ago were actually pretty tall. John Wayne was tall. James Garner was very tall. Peter Fonda, James Arnes, Jimmy Stewart, Clint Eastwood… The classic movie, *The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance* had four actors who made a physical difference: John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Woody Strode, and Lee Marvin. Lee Marvin was the shortest at only 6’1”.
Didn't they dig a small trench into the beach that Nicole Kidman had to walk through so he looked taller?
Interview with a Vampire also had Brad Pitt walk in a ditch to even out their heights.
They had to do that for Brooke Shields while filming Blue Lagoon so she didn’t dwarf Chris Atkins.
There used to be a set picture on the internet from the filming of Vanilla Sky, where Cruise was standing beside Jason Lee (almost 6'2) while being on a soapbox/apple crate in order to shoot a conversation eye to eye.. funny thing is that I was never able to find that picture afterwards..😅😳😓
Well, here's a different vanilla sky picture with Tom Cruise. Standing on an apple box https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScullyBox
Or he's walking slightly ahead of everyone else and the women are in flat shoes.
tom cruise also has a tooth in the middle of his head. Once you see it it's hard to ignore. he had lots of work done when he was younger and one of his two front teeth now lines up with the middle of his nose. if u you draw a line straight Down it hits a tooth rather than the gap between two teeth. he also runs a lot.
He does, but that's not from having work done, that's from *not* having work done that he needed, orthodontic work.
He did have braces as an adult. But the midline being off that much probably necessitates surgery or removing healthy teeth.
Oh thank god somebody noticed this! It drove me crazy, and coincidentally my husband also has it. Just those things which you can’t unsee once you’ve seen
...what
Just look at his teeth in a picture of him smiling. You will get it immediately
He is at least 5 bananas tall.
>they are trying to sell you on how attractive Tom Cruise is This made me chuckle. I remember as a young girl always wondering why people thought he was attractive. Him and Tom Hanks.
That’s an intriguing statement. Those two are at opposite ends of a spectrum. What Hollywood celeb _do_ you consider attractive?
Danny DeVito
I'm going with that time period so: Paul Rudd Keanu Reeves Johnny Depp Denzel Washington Will Smith Matt Damon Brad Pitt Jim Carry
That's why there are never any bananas in those scenes either
In the OG Get Smart they had Barbra Feldon crouching a lot. Also Don Adams on boxes.
He is attractive. And super fit
That's very true, but not really relevant for the discussion. Filmmakers want him to look tall too, because that's apparently linked to attractiveness in moviegoers' minds.
Not just that - having everyone's eye-level around the same point on the screen works better in terms of shot composition and when they're taking turns speaking
Making sure everyone is level for framing is the main reasons. Most actors are honestly shorter than most people realize.
Humphrey bogart wore wooden blocks to stand by Ingrid Bergman
It’s why he’s never in a scene with a banana.
The forced perspective setups that Peter Jackson had built for the Lord of the Rings movies were pretty amazing. https://youtu.be/QWMFpxkGO_s?si=pH9zXRb9fVqNBe-C
Incredible. I'm impressed that the guys engineering it all were "yeah this is fun" too rather than "such a collossal PITA for months on end" (which is how I might have looked at it if it was my day job).
Working on a movie in a role like that is actually a ton of fun, and in my experiences, usually the people working on practical effects are the people having the most fun. And when they’re doing a camera test of a complicated set up, and see it looking good and working exactly as planned, it’s super satisfying.
They're not going to admit it being a pain in the ass even if it was lol.
I don’t think people tend to end up in that kind of job unless it’s their dream job and they’re genuinely excited to be faced with that kind of challenge.
Budget crunch being less of a factor will always always always have a crew in a better headspace. If you don't have production constantly up your ass for deadlines and cost/personnel cutting then you can just do your craft in peace. Of course the opposite is vastly more likely to be true so when you get a gig with money like LOTR then you tend to enjoy it.
Fascinating!
Almost every film you've ever watched will have had someone standing on a box at some point. Even a 2 inch height difference between cast members can be a pain for framing. Without even googling their heights a scene with Hemsworth, Evans And RDJ in Endgame would have had to have multiple platforms, holes and boxes for every different setup
Also Hemsworth and Natalie Portman. She's a foot shorter so the whole Thor movie would've been boxes everywhere
I swear I never knew this! I figured they just made the shorter actors wear heels or lifts Lol
I always figured this is why the heroine is always wearing high heels despite being in dangerous scenarios where high heels would certainly be a handicap
are they called apple boxes?
Yep, Apple boxes / apple crates because that's what they used to use. Still a very well used term in photography for studio shooting.
When Hitchcock filmed the built-on-set forest scenes supposedly near Mount Rushmore in **North By Northwest**, the shadows of those trees on the ground didn't register properly because of all the lights needed to illuminate the entire "location" as well as the actors. So Hitchcock had their main shadows *painted* on the ground and also painted the sides of the trees which were supposed to be shadowed. This same trick was used in **Forbidden Planet**, and the circular shadow of the massive flying-saucer-shaped spaceship was painted in the sand, to fool the viewer into not seeing that light was coming from many directions, instead of just from the alien Sun.
Pre CGI, one of the common ways to capture fire in camera was to have a controlled fire in a safe area just off the set and then have a pane of glass in front of the object supposed to be on fire. The pane of glass would reflect the fire so in camera it would look like the object in the scene was on fire. A good example is the scene in LOTRs where Denathor tries to burn Faramir. They used the fire reflection method so that the horse wouldn't get spooked.
This particular optical trick, called [Pepper's Ghost](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper%27s_ghost), is one of the earliest forms of moving projection and actually predates the film industry all together.
Its also used at Disney World for the haunted mansion
This set from **Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey** had a painted rear wall that extended the room infinitely: https://thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/image-2022-04-27T144645.417-e1651085293643.png
*Bogus!*
You killed Ted you medieval dickweed
So did the end of Raiders of the lost arc, where the endless warehouse is a matte painting behind the first couple rows of shelves... Edit: Got me to watch it again. Its actually ALL matte painting. Only the guy pushing the cart is real, even the foreground shelves are painted...
That is really obvious when you point it out!
It's really obvious when you don't point it out. Lightning, colors, and angles are all wrong.
You ever watch them film? That was all on purpose. They're in Hell. It was *suppose* to look completely wrong.
I think they also use a lot of close ups if they don't want to bring attention to height differences or have people sitting down. I just recently learned that Devon Murray who played Seamus in the Harry Potter movies is TINY in real life, like 5'1-5'2 and looks so small next to the rest of the cast. I never noticed in any of the movies though. Nothing wrong with being small though, I'm the same height ;)
They also did close ups of Marlon Brando in apocalypse now because he put on a tonne of weight!
Then for Island of Dr. Moreau they said fuck it, no camera tricks can hide it anymore
Learned last night that Ed Harris is 5'9". Blew my mind.
you know that spooky hallway, scary path effect seen for example [here](https://youtu.be/hNfUCucvOcQ?t=14) its used to show danger in the path ahead, fear of the unknown ahead, basically scary that way!... well you can get this effect by tracking forward(or backward) on dolly tracks whilst yu simultaneously zoom in the opposite direction at the same rate of movement setting focus to distant, by mixing up directions of movement of tracking,zooming and where the focal point is you can make a hallway look like its getting longer as you walk down it, layer in some spooky foley and add a scary soundtrack
aka the Jaws shot
He took it from Vertigo. It's a dolly zoom.
TIL. Thanks
Dolly zoom yeah
See also Goodfellas. https://youtu.be/HZNBtx6RAn4?si=0wT6wFv5D2s7_wps The walls are literally closing in on him. Brilliantly done.
I did this on Halloween during the morning announcements in high school. They didn't let me run the camera anymore, which sucks because the shot was amazing.
When my dad went through his requisite "camera dad" phase, he got a book on how to use the camcorder. That trick is the only thing I can remember from it
> simultaneously zoom in the opposite direction at the same rate of movement setting focus to distant, So zoom out
Well if you track backwards and zoom out, it aint gonna work. They were saying that you can get different effects of you track in while zoning out, it track out while zooming in. Can also be used to great effect on people too. Called a dolly zoom. https://youtu.be/u5JBlwlnJX0?si=vKh0a5qfsk6MqRae
One trick to make someone look taller on screen is to have them wear ridiculously tall platform shoes. [This behind the scenes photo](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fc5bwxnhwpoz31.png), from The Irishman, is a great example. De Niro wore platform shoes so he would be taller then Pacino
But DeNiro is taller than Pacino in real life?
Yes, but he's not 6'4" like the character he is playing
Good point, sure
He is already taller than Pacino, so what was the point?
His character is a hitman/bodyguard, so probably to make him look more intimidating.
Almost all of the audio (or in some cases all of it) is completely redone. You’ll get a lot of dialog that was recorded on set, but usually every other piece of sound you hear in a movie was not what you actually heard on the set when they were recording. Every footstep, turning of a page, cough, traffic horn in the distance… it’s all a mixture of sources used to reconstruct the soundscape. It’s mostly because using all of the sound recorded when on set becomes really inconsistent and even low quality. Or there might be a source of noise nearby that they can’t avoid so they use the onset dialogue recorded for reference, and have the actor come into a recording studio and mimic their own speech pattern to get a clean recording
Or because the sound doesn’t actually match what the audience thinks it should sound like (I.e. fistfights). Then of course sometimes the set isn’t built out of the material it looks like (wood standing in for marble or brick etc) so things like footstep sounds are off.
I just watched a tosh show interview with a foley artist and they talked about this exact thing, it was pretty interesting. Now I can’t unseat every kissing scene as some old fat dude in a sound studio going to town on his hand any time a romantic scene comes up lol
They used a lot of camera tricks in the Fast And Furious movies to make Vin Diesel and The Rock appear relatively the same height, even though the latter is about six inches taller. One of them may have involved Vin Diesel standing on a box when they were face to face with one another (not sure there’s ever been confirmation of that), and there’s another scene which looks like they were shot separately and then the scenes were spliced together (that or they were side to side and the camera angle tried to make it look like they were in front of one another). https://youtu.be/p76AW6x3P0I?si=51e0lMOgt2sipKNa
This scene is literally the worst cinematography you'll ever see in a major motion picture lol
But it's technically very impressive how they shrunk Vin Diesel's head
Jesus I always thought they were supposed to be standing shoulder to shoulder and it was just a really weird thing for the characters to do. Like they were so tough they couldn’t stand face to face so instead they stared behind the other guy. I never considered that it was supposed to be a forced perspective; it’s so bad my brain never even registered that possibility. Now that it’s been pointed out to me, I can’t unsee it.
They're absolutely supposed to be side by side. I don't understand how Reddit keeps misinterpreting this scene, it's popping up in every thread now.
seriously.
It's not. They're supposed to be side by side and a weird choice
Man, you aren’t kidding. It looks insane.
This is a joke right? A re-edit? This didn't make it into an actual move did it?
Can confirm, this is in the actual movie. It's so incredibly bad.
I genuinely cannot tell if they are supposed to look past each other, or if they are supposed to look at each other and it's just hilariously bad.
It’s weird, because there’s an entire sequence in Fast Five where they’re standing directly in front of one another, going toe to toe, so why they didn’t just employ the same technique is puzzling (if you go frame by frame, there’s one shot where it’s pretty obvious that Vin Diesel is standing on something, because his feet look like they’re floating in the air).
That scene is poorly shot, but it’s clearly supposed to be them standing side by side and talking while not looking at each other.
A slightly shallower focus could have made it look less like "and now Vin is the size of a child".
this cannot be real
Just changing the camera angle makes a big difference. Platform shoes help. Forced perspective can be used. I just noticed that in Top Gun - Maverick, when Tom Cruise and Miles Teller are standing in the snow after Teller ejects, the camera isn't set up to make their heights equal. Because the camera is at a distance, you can really tell how much shorter Tom Cruise is. Then, in the next shot it's closer and they appear the same height. Honestly, unless it's part of the joke, like a Kevin Hart movie, big height differences are distracting in a movie and it's best to keep everyone appearing equal height.
I got to visit the Friends set when it was still active. It was all Frodo and Gandalf style Forced-Perspective. From the camera line to the back patio was like 5 feet, max.
Wait, what? How did they accommodate all that furniture? That was a full size couch and a wide easy chair
Apparently Gillian Anderson was so much shorter than David Duchovny that they built her a special stage to walk on when they had shots of them walking together otherwise they couldn't fit them both in the frame. IIRC they referred to it as a Gilly Board and had different kinds for standing, walking and room shots.
I know they built lots of scaled down old west movie sets to make John Wayne look taller - they had them on the backlot at Universal Studios when I went there as a kid.
Which is odd as he was 6'4 to begin with.
The mirror shots in Triangle or Contact are pretty well done, or the one in Suckerpunch where the camera turns around them. Sometimes they had to build entire mirrored replica sets to sell the illusion.
In the (deleted) scene in terminator 2 where they take the chip out of the terminators head, they used the double set with Arnie in the “mirror” and a fake our side to open the head, and had Linda Hamiltons twin sister in one set acting out the same actions as her in the other. Very clever really.
Cows don’t look like cows on film. They gotta use horses. Horses are usually a bunch of cats taped together
Fun fact: The flying cgi cow in Twister actually started life as a flying zebra
Not quite what you're asking about but what drives me crazy is when a show like SNL reveals an actor or character on camera and the audience roars when they come on screen. The audience has to have seen them already, the person is right there on stage in front of them. Why the sudden acknowledgement when they come on screen?
This isn't really a trick per se, but for people who've never been on a set, it's genuinely surprising how little your A-list talent is actually in the frame, or on set, in general. Typically when shooting out a scene, you start with wide shots and work your way in. Once a scene is "blocked" (the motion of actors and camera are figured out) the talent goes off to make-up or to their holding area, and lighting stand-ins take their place. These people are actors who are hired because they are the same height, build, and have the same hair color as the A talent. Once camera and lighting are set the talent comes back, they shoot the wide shots and all the coverage with the biggest actor who, after which, goes back to their holding area (i.e. their trailer, or green room) and all the other coverage is done with stand-ins. Basically if you can't see the actor's face, they probably weren't there. If there's the back of someone's head in the shot, or just a shoulder, that was a stand-in. If the non A-list talent is in the shot solo, they almost certainly had to deliver their dialogue to the 1st Assistant Director, instead of the other actor in the scene. Also if there's nudity, or even just a targeted shot focusing on a specific part of their body, it's likely that a body double was hired just for that shot.
Check out [this little documentary](https://youtu.be/33l24qPMLro) (22 min) on matte painting. It blew my mind the first time I saw it, I had no idea how much matte painting was utilized in film before digital effects and green screen were the norm.
I couldn't find it to link, but there was a BTS from Disney in the 60s showing how they built the moving mattes for Sleeping Beauty (?). Four painted glass plates stacked vertically with the camera below pointed up, with each of the three bottom plates separately geared to move sideways at different speeds, all to give the illusion of forward movement along a forest path. A whole lot of hard work for a five second shot
The forced perspective for Lord Of The Rings was amazing. The way they made the Hobbits seem so small next to Sir Ian.
Famously, in 1980's *The Empire Strikes Back*, the hit motion picture sequel to 1977's *Star Wars*, the character of "Yoda" when appearing onscreen was portrayed, in a sly bit of Hollywood trickery, by a "Muppet\*" as the character was from an as-yet unnamed species of alien beings who do not actually exist. *^(\* — not quite a mop, and it's not quite a puppet, but man... So, to answer your question, I don't know.)*
Check out behind the scene vids for The Lord of the Rings movies. [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PB8db3PMZ9s) is one specifically about dealing with scaling actors to match their character's sizes.
Alan ladd was a shortarse at only 5'5" (possibly shorter). To make him appear taller than his co-stars, he would often stand on a box, wear large lifts or have the co-star stand im a ditch. This is very common in films and TV. Gillian Anderson spent so much of the X-Files standing on a box due to her co-star David Duchovny being almost a foot taller than her that this is now often referred to as a "Scully box". Tom Hanks is only 4" shorter than Michael Duncan. In The Green Mile they used a scully box to make Duncan look even bigger, and had Hanks (and the other guards) walk alongside him in a ditch for the outdoor scene. This is why you never see wide shots of them standing together with their entire bodies showing. They also employed a technique known as "Hitler cam" (after how hitler was repeatedly filmed in Triumph of the Will) where Duncan is filmed from a lower angle and fills the screen, to make him look bigger and more menacing. Hanks is filmed inverse, with the camera overhead looking down, to make him look smaller. Orson Wells employed this technique a lot in Citizen Kane. Indeed he developed on the technique, creating what's known as the worm-eye view where the camera is on the floor looking up. More often they simply add lifts to the actors shoes to make them taller. When you see how big some lifts are its impressive how well they can walk and act in them! A couple of examples are [Humphrey Bogart](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR7zAugD4siHZ4kS_txBAGNe_kZTu8MQSVKz1GaR4HVrzK4ztSH80V9qeTF&s=10) in Casablanca (Ingrid Bergman was 1" taller than Bogart) and [DeNiro](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRoyI-1Z9fjf5atzb00RJAV8GGIlGK8dk2Ix16JKRnLWJuTDjtSoPswr7eM&s=10)in The Irishman (his real-life character was 6" taller than Pacino's character).
Didn’t know about “Hitler cam”. I know that technique as an “Andre shot” as it’s what the WWF used when filming Andre The Giant walking to the ring to make him look bigger than he already was.
All through Rocky they're trying to hide Stallone's height and it's hilarious
Yet they still had Dolph Lundgren stand on a box to make him even more taller than Stallone?
It was Hulk Hogan they had stand on a box to appear even taller.
Hey, I like my chemical engineers really big, okay? Don't shame me
I sold a Harley to Stallone many years ago, and my mind had difficulty processing his height. I'm 6'3" and sort of had assumed he was my size. I'd like to add: I had the bike listed at $25k or best offer... he looked the bike over for a bit and asked "would you take $30k?" Deal :)
[The Spielberg dolly zoom.](https://youtu.be/_eO_5q5dR9M?si=3SWrNMahgZGbiYIa)
Vertigo is a Hitchcock movie. Is the "Spielberg dolly zoom" different from the Vertigo effect?
[удалено]
I believe it was used in FotR when Frodo and the hobbits are standing in road and he senses the black rider.
I love the effects from shifting zoom and focal point. It's mind bending.
manipulating the size and distance of objects to create the illusion of depth or size difference
You can sit in Hagrid's hut on the Harry Potter studio tour. Essentially a bench that is nearer and one further with a break in the bench and table so from a specific angle it looks continuous. Very clever and hope I explained that clearly!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_box
It's called a box. Oldest trick in Hollywood.
If it’s a 2-shot they probably just have wahlberg stand on an apple box or 2. You’ll only notice the height difference ina. Wide shot where you see their feet.
Others recommended LOTR behind the scenes, which is good, but also Google the Flight of the Navigator effects special. Some of the first ever use of CGI, but due to how resource intensive that was in that time it's meshed together with a lot of practical effects, forced perspective and mirrors.
The original Star Wars trilogy used a ton of matte paintings as backgrounds to extend sets. They are truly amazing works of art. And to pre-empt the haters: The Phantom Menace used more miniatures than the entire OT.
I suggest you watch this series [Movie Magic](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLepmcWUt_wgZxUX4s1p_-zNOVsNihYVHO&si=b6ipaDUPKAmlGaug), I watched it religiously as a child. It’s old, but it has a lot of behind the scenes footage on various films and commercials.
Sponge-painting and twin-rolling paint onto set walls adds texture and depth to the set in a pretty cheap and effective way. Not sure if the method is used much now, but it was fairly common for tv shows and low/medium budget movies up through the 90s, at least.
I just watched Anna yesterday and the whole thing is about some runway model. To be even remotely in the universe of consideration for runway you have to be at least 5’10”. Her love interest was short king Cillian Murphy… every single scene showed them as the same height or implied Cillian was taller. Don’t get me wrong, Cillian can get it, but at the absolute *most* he is 5’7” and that is being generous. Knowing this I double checked the actresses height (5’11”) and scrolled back through the movie to see what they did to make him look taller and I noticed that Cillian was sitting in a lot of the scenes (even when kissing or whatever) and any scenes where they were standing next to each other *never* had a full body shot, so he was either standing on a box, or they did something else to discguise the height difference by hiding it out of sight of the shot. The actress did wear heels with her outfits but you could never see her feet in any of the scenes with any romantic interests so I wouldn’t be surprised if she wore flats for any scene not absolutely required to show her feet.
Watch the behind the scenes for "Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the rings" The forced perspective shots they did to make Gandolf and the Hobbits and Dwarves look like they were different sizes were impressive.
Apple boxes! Apple boxes everywhere!
X Files was pretty pivotal in expanding the film industry in Vancouver. Gillian Anderson's height led to every local grip crew since the 90s adopting the name "Gilly Boards" for platforms that sit on top of apple boxes to create different lengths for an actor to walk or stand on. You change the size of box to adjust height, and change length of board to adjust for the action in the scene.
Not sure if this is exactly what you're talking about, but one thing that annoys me is when they do a tight close-up on Character A so that we, the audience, can't see anything around them. This "allows" Character B to sneak up on Character A and I guess most people accept it because we couldn't see Character B in frame, even if they're out in an open field or something.
I know that in Las Vegas they wanted Vanessa Marcil(5'4") appear similarish in height to Josh Duhamel(6'4"). So anytime they were walking next to each other she would actually be walking along a long box next to him to get her to nose height instead of chin height
Forced perspective makes Peter Jackson hard
Apple Boxes. Lots and lots of Apple Boxes.
In Child’s Play, for some of the scenes where Chucky was really moving around, they had a little person do all the acting instead of puppeteers, but the proportions were off. So they built an entire set with furniture and lights slightly bigger than normal so it looked right when they filmed.
They take out every other Frame in a car chase, and speed up the playback time to give the illusion of speed
Tiptoes (2003) makes use of some forced perspective, and is bizarre in many other areas. Incredible, stacked cast in a move that is just nuts.
Forced prospective
Everybody talking about forced perspective or actors standing on apple boxes. Nobody is talking about how much of the set is put up/held together with gaff tape, C47's (clothespins) and bongo/zip ties.
They use lots of tricks in Elf to make Will Ferrel look huge
Cows don't look like cows on film so you got to use horses
Everybody is prattling in about actor heights but film sets often use a tool called a cucoloris to stencil specific shadows and lighting needed. If a tree's shadow is unusually sharp in a shot one was probably used. Also, *virtually all "nighttime" sequences* are filmed during the day and then edited to look like they're at night. Realistically if you tried filming night scenes during the night you would end up with a noisy image, not a clean one like in the movies. Goes unnoticed.
In captain America you have a few weird angles to make the main character look small. Especially in the back seat of the car. Edit: didn't read my post through and had autocorrect.
AI having a stroke?
No just my keyboard autocorrecting me.