Three of the main characters were the same actor, and yet there are shots with all of them in the same scene. When I saw this as a young adult I didn’t even notice that Mike Myers was playing three roles and was genuinely dumbfounded years later when I found out.

How did they do those scenes so seamlessly?

  • dwindling7373@feddit.itEnglish
    1736·
    8 days ago

    Compositing has been a thing for, like, forever, going from cutting and gluing film together to, well, having lookalike instead of the real actor in certain shots…

    I’m mostly weirded by how you found out only now. I guess go and have fun looking up “Captain Disillusion” youtube channel.

    • tetris11@lemmy.mlOP
      413·
      8 days ago

      I love Captain D, the way he takes apart a scene in Blender is an art form in itself.

      I guess the question I’m asking is, normally when editing comes into play you can sort of notice it through one way or another. There’s an uncannyness to it that makes it jarring, whereas in Austin Powers I never once clocked on that I was watching the same person. Did they use really sophisticated techniques for this? Was the campiness and comedic tone of the film itself a good distraction from any editing goofs?

      If it was a more sombre film, would I notice it more I wonder?

      Edit: @Aurenkin mentions the ping-pong scene in the 2019 Moon film, which has a more mature tone and the editing there was definitely flawless.

      • snooggums@lemmy.worldEnglish
        26·
        8 days ago

        Was the campiness and comedic tone of the film itself a good distraction from any editing goofs?

        That really helps by distracting the viewer away from the small give aways.

        They also did a really good job with the interactions and editing so it flows smoothly.

      • dwindling7373@feddit.itEnglish
        13·
        8 days ago

        I personally have never noticed flaws when such tecniques are employed, but it may be just immersion doing its job. I’ve never heard of Austin Power being singled out for its special effects…

      • lost_faith@lemmy.ca
        8·
        8 days ago

        Red Dwarf was doing same actor multiple roles for a long long time. There are many episodes to check out, but one of the best examples is Stasis Leak (3 of each character on screen), another good example is Me2 (Rimmer and Rimmer). They were doing this in 1988.

      • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
        81·
        8 days ago

        My guess: For the first version of the scene they’ll have someone saying the other character’s lines the way they should be played so that dialogue looks natural. Once one version has been filmed it’s not hard to play that version’s audio while filming the second version so the actor is actually hearing himself play the other character.

  • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
    851·
    8 days ago

    A few different film techniques.

    they could film the actor in different costumes on the same set without moving the camera, and then they put those performances together.

    so you can have the profile of Austin powers on the left talking to the profile of Dr. evil on the right, and those were separate performances pasted together so it looks like they’re responding to each other even though Mike Myers was performing those conversations separately during different recordings.

    If evil and Austin are in the same shot and it’s an over-the-shoulder, the actor facing the camera is the real actor and the guy not facing the camera is a body double with the same hair or bald mask

    so if you were looking at Austin and Dr. evil in the same shot, either those are two separate performances put together and you’ll see that they never touch each other, or if they do touch each other, you’ll notice that you never see the frontal face of one of the actors, which is actually a body double.

    and you can see these two techniques and others used in Eddie Murphy’s movies, or pretty much any body double move movie.

  • taiyang@lemmy.world
    801·
    8 days ago

    Wow, dumbass kid I was I never realized he played both roles. I guess he did a great job acting.

    Edit: also still trying to figure out who the third character the was, lol

    Edit 2: oh, it’s Fat Bastard isn’t it.

  • imPastaSyndrome@lemm.ee
    411·
    8 days ago

    With a gun, I assume

    But to be serious the same way they shot freaky Friday and all those other twin movies. One person two different scenes splice it together

  • irotsoma@lemmy.worldEnglish
    40·
    8 days ago

    Assuming it’s not just using body doubles which is the easiest way, usually you film the same actor twice with the camera left in place and then splice the two films together either by physically cutting and pasting the film or more recently with software. The software also has the advantage that it can blend things better, and fix lighting differences, and differences in film exposure which isn’t as big of an issue now with film quality being more consistent. Often in older films you can often see an obvious difference between the two shots.

    There’s also some films where they take a much easier approach where they film one scene and then use a green screen for the second take. This allows for doing the takes at different times since the camera might get moved or other small changes that are difficult to work around in a single day and allows for multiple camera angles to be used more easily, but it can be difficult to get the aspect ratios and depth just right, so it often looks less natural if the first take has the character along the same or too similar of a plane of depth as the second.

  • ytsedude@lemmy.world
    191·
    8 days ago

    Look up “Visual FX Artists React” on YouTube. And Captain Disillusion. You’ll learn A TON about stuff like this from them!

    • moody@lemmings.world
      7·
      8 days ago

      Orphan Black was great. The most insane part was how you could tell which character was pretending to be another character even though they look the same. Tatiana Maslany did fantastic work on that show.

  • SplashJackson@lemmy.ca
    13·
    8 days ago

    I think they shot it with cameras.

    Just wanted to say I would love an Austin Powers 4, honestly, I loved the series growing up.