Or a little dude to make a normal dude look big like in LotR.
These special effects are inconceivable
15 hours ago by The Picard Maneuver to c/whitepeopletwitter
galacticbackhoe 14 points 11 hours ago
I thought a lot of their work was camera tricks. Jonathan Rhys-Davies was 6'3.
chiliedogg 15 points 10 hours ago
They used every trick out there at some point. They even invented a new technique for 2 shots in Bag End where they had motion-controlled cameras, tables, and benches synched up so they could do the only ever forced-perspective shots with moving cameras ever really used.
Everything since then went digital in the following years, the technique was never really used again.
In the Hobbit films, they had to lean more into digital because they were in 3D, so forced perspective shots wouldn't work.
13igTyme 3 points 6 hours ago
The fact that Jonathan Rhys-Davies is 6'3 actually made it so shots with him and the hobbits could just be normal shots. They needed the camera tricks only when he was with others.
k0e3 1 point 5 hours ago
They replaced the hobbits with doubles who were little people on some scenes.
Not that I disagree with what you're saying. I'm pretty sure most of it was camera trickery, but my earlier comment was more about three specific scenes where doubles (halves?) were used.
tatterdemalion 3 points 11 hours ago
Or both little dudes and big dudes to make the big dudes look even bigger. Worked well in The Odyssey.
TheTechnician27 26 points 15 hours ago
See: Hagrid's behind-the-scenes.
negativenull 7 points 12 hours ago
And Lord Of The Rings in Bilbo's house
EggInDisguise 10 points 11 hours ago
Honestly seeing the camera shift in a MAKING OF clip for some of the angles made my brain work overtime, because when watching the movie so many times over the years, my brain just goes "yeah, hobbit next to man riding on a wagon" or "hobbit and man at a table across from each other" but then you see them from a different angle and it's just... Wrong.
NoForwadSlashS 3 points 10 hours ago
Is that the porno remake?
lobut 18 points 13 hours ago
VFX artists react look at these things all the time:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Wf8NgICk3ng
Some really cool 90s tricks with forced perspective.
GalacticGrapefruit 11 points 12 hours ago
This is one of the reasons why I love love love cinema history. The lengths that the crew and creative team went to in order to make an illusion work is just mind-boggling. One of my favorite things to do as a kid was watch the DVD extras about Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Labyrinth, all that.
One of my favorite forced perspective tricks ever was Darby O'Gill and the Little People. That old Irishman playing a fiddle above a cavern full of leprechauns, galloping around a pile of ancient treasure on tiny horses, and then rushing off to hunt foxes through a magical crack in the wall?
Literally, one of the most incredible feats of practical film illusion ever concocted, right up there with the velociraptors of Jurassic Park and the chest-burster from Alien.
nomy 1 point 7 hours ago
I used to love this show called Movie Magic where they went really in depth into SFX, it was when CGI was just becoming a thing so most of the episodes really focus on practical and in-camera effects.
monotremata 5 points 10 hours ago
I sort of think everyone should have a chance to play with an Ames Room at least once in their life.
DagwoodIII 1 point 10 hours ago
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HCSOThrowaway 1 point 5 hours ago
Yep, lots of clever camera tricks to accomplish making the hobbits in LoTR look much smaller than their fellow actors.
DarrinBrunner 72 points 12 hours ago
Arnold is six feet tall
DagwoodIII 20 points 10 hours ago
One time, Arnold and Andre went out for lunch.
When the check came, both men reached for it. Andre decided the issue by picking Arnold up and carrying him away.
BigDiction 12 points 8 hours ago
Holy shit that’s Wilt Chamberlain??
nomy 16 points 7 hours ago
It is!
To put this photo in perspective Wilt "The Stilt" was 7'1" and 250lbs (216 cm/113 kg). Andre was 7'4" and 520lbs (224 cm/236 kg). Almost twice Wilts overall size, just an absolutely massive unit of a human being.
They both make Arnolds impressive 6'2 & 210lb (190cm/95kg) seem relatively dwarf-like.
GalacticGrapefruit 57 points 12 hours ago
Andre had a lot of joint problems related to his gigantism, as well as physical injuries from his wrestling career. He self-medicated with alcohol, and became addicted to it.
It was really sad.
ContriteErudite 31 points 11 hours ago
I'm sorry I am not authorized to give refunds, but I hope that the following Andre the Giant facts will help: he was widely known as the "Gentle Giant" because his real-life personality was exceptionally kind, friendly, and generous. He was soft-spoken and gentle around children, lifting them up and being patient so they wouldn't be scared. He disliked arrogance and mean-spirited people, and would physically "reprimand" bully coworkers in the ring.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA 5 points 9 hours ago
pay attention after your next (first?) colonoscopy. they pump you full of air and most of it comes out the same direction it came in.
just don't hold it. my mother was feeling too dainty to fart (we had back to back colonoscopies with the same gastro. even did the prep together. what a bonding experience) so she ended up with trapped gas. and then did not get enough dilaudid and only got to the gut clench phase of the drug and ended up in more pain.
then she farted the long fart and all was right in the world again. but her gut was still clenched from the drug so it was not so pleasant.
cantstopthesignal 1 point 5 hours ago
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Thebeardedsinglemalt 1 point 5 hours ago
Iirc it takes like 50+ cans of beer to get him drunk
driving_crooner 71 points 15 hours ago
How does his parents knew he was going to be giant as a baby? Or it was just luck that he was named Andre the Giant, and grew up to be giant?
shittydwarf 48 points 15 hours ago
Manifest destiny, you name a kid "the Giant" and they'll grow
Quetzalcutlass 36 points 15 hours ago
Nominative determinism.
absGeekNZ 1 point 7 hours ago
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ParadeGrotesque 7 points 12 hours ago
He was enormous at birth, if I remember correctly.
WanderingThoughts 6 points 14 hours ago
Some cultures give their children a temporary name, a milk name, and only give their definitive name later on. But in this case, it's just a nickname.
thoughtfuldragon 2 points 15 hours ago
wrestling name
MutantTailThing 54 points 15 hours ago
To be fair, André was one especially Big McLargehuge beefy specimen of mountainous manmeat.
West_of_West 25 points 14 hours ago
I never realized Inigo was himself tall. Wild
atomicbocks 21 points 14 hours ago
If 6 inches is ‘a little bit’ then sure.
danekrae 6 points 14 hours ago
@West_of_West@piefed.social lifted me up, @grue@lemmy.world brought me back down again.
Earthwormjim91 6 points 13 hours ago
He was billed at 7'4, but was really around 7'0-7'1. Same height as Shaq.
Lumidaub 21 points 15 hours ago
Why would they ask "how" they made him big? Wouldn't they simply assume the usual CGI or forced perspective? (I'm assuming here dad has sat them through all 286 hours of Lord of the Rings Making Ofs)
Edit: ah. see below.
Secret_Music 18 points 14 hours ago
I mean, it is a movie from the 1900s, so how did they do it?
Lumidaub 7 points 14 hours ago
Oh you mean the question isn't just "how did they do that" but rather "how did they do that, that's impossible without CGI (which is a modern thing)". That... makes sense.
Edit: since this is apparently not entirely clear: everything inside quotation marks is a hypothetical quote, including everything inside parentheses.
atomicbocks 3 points 13 hours ago
The first use of CGI was in 1958…
drcobaltjedi 1 point 11 hours ago
I mean, have you seen early CGI? A raspberry pi running blender can produce sharper CGI than any computer from the 50s. Sure it was impressive at the time but nothing even remotely passable today
village604 23 points 7 hours ago
He's 7ft tall. Even being 6'3, my reaction to a 7ft tall person is, "Holy shit, that's one tall dude."
village604 1 point an hour ago
It's so rare to have to look up at someone. But I now understand how my wife feels
ArmchairAce1944 4 points 6 hours ago
Forced perspective is how they made the hobbits look so small in LOTR.
mushroommunk 19 points 15 hours ago
I mean, they might be cooked but that seems like a reasonable question for a kid who doesn't know all the tricks and hasn't seen it before. This feels like "I'm going to bash the youth because I'm old" boomer humor
GraniteM 12 points 6 hours ago
I still struggle with how animators in 1937 were able animate the ripples in the water in Snow White at about 1:36.
buddascrayon 3 points 3 hours ago
They did it by hand. Frame by frame.
bitteroldcoot 9 points 15 hours ago
I ran across a study a while back how social media is causing brain damage in kids.
AI, social media and internet is becoming the lead poisoning of this generation.
Geth 1 point 9 hours ago
But this particular example is far from a cooked brain situation. I had the same questions when I was a kid about how they make cartoons and movies. There are many practical and in camera effects that were used to make people bigger or smaller and are very interesting to learn about. Nothing cooked about it.
raman_klogius 8 points 14 hours ago
Today with Robert Bobroczkyi. What an absolute unit. Singular. Unique.
DagwoodIII 3 points 10 hours ago
joyjoy 7 points 10 hours ago
But can you explain this scene?
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA 4 points 9 hours ago
they found some very small old people.
exasperation 4 points 6 hours ago
Still happening today. Backrooms did some numbers this year on a low budget, and relied on a 7'7"/2.3 m actor (with prosthetics and makeup) for one of the freakier looking characters in recent film.
Funkt4st1c 2 points 4 hours ago
The Wizard of Speed and Time is a very interesting 2026 movie when you realize it was made in 1988 (or 1979, depending on which part) without computer animation. Someome asked how he filmed the train sequence, where he outran a train. His answer? "I just ran faster than the train was moving"
whitepeopletwitter
@sh.itjust.works
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People tweeting stuff. We allow tweets from anyone.
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go to feed...
whitepeopletwitter
@sh.itjust.works
10338
1987
7167
People tweeting stuff. We allow tweets from anyone.
RULES:
- Mark NSFW content.
- No doxxing people.
- Must be a pic of the tweet or similar. No direct links to the tweet.
- No international politcs
- Be excellent to each other.
- Provide an archived link to the tweet (or similar) being shown if it's a major celebrity, figure or any politician. If you replace the "x" at their site with xcancel (so it beomes xcancel.com), and you're not on mobile, it will save video. https://web.archive.org/save is another great option. Archive.is is no longer recommended because they remove/alter content.
- If a tweet (or similar) makes a statement of fact, either mark it as "satire" in the body or provide the original source link backing up the statement
go to feed...
You could also play with camera angles, but dimensionally, yeah, no substitute for a big dude.
save