We have probably all seen the Fast and Furious movies. This series is not only one of the most popular in the world, but Furious 7 made $384 million just on opening weekend! This puts them at about fourth place behind Harry Potter and The Avengers.
Myself, along with millions of other were saddened from the news of Paul Walker's death. Occurring right in the middle of filming, everyone was asking the question, how can they finish filming Furious 7?
The whole time in the theater I was on edge and trying to figure out the parts where Paul Walker wasn't actually Paul Walker. It really shows how truly brilliant technology is these days. They did Walker's role justice by completing his work using the latest technology to make a digital body double.
This same kind of technology was used in other movies such as The Gladiator and The Hunger Games: Mockingly. In these movies I couldn't tell the difference with Oliver Reed and Philip Seymour Hoffman's faces being used on a body double. And this isn't a cheap fix up either. It costed Gladiator an additional $3 million!
For those of you who don't know the process of continuing Paul Walker's character, here is a quick explanation. Paul Walker has a brother Caleb Walker. Caleb was used to film the final scenes for the movie. Now they're not identical twins, so this is where technology and digital editing. Paul Walker's face was edited on to his brother's body and his voice was taken from past scenes he's shot and put together to form words to fit his script. Amazing right?! It blows my mind what we can do these days.
This proves how much these multibillion-dollar franchises are willing to pay for the work they create and to please the audiences that are willing to spend the money and the time. This is just one part of new media today. I continue to be surprised at what new technology comes out next and I look forward to see what the future hold for the media.
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