MovieChat Forums > In the Line of Fire (1993) Discussion > Nifty face change special effects scene....

Nifty face change special effects scene. How did they do it?


When Malkovich's character is about to get ready for his final attempt there is a slow shot that pushes closer into his face while he stays completely still and things keeps changing like his hair, nose, glasses, etc to show that he is altering his appearance. Was a pretty nifty way to illustrate that. Any behind the scenes info on how they did that? Is that easy to do?

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It was done even earlier in Terminator 2: Judgement Day, although it became a more regular, mainstream thing after Michael Jackson's 'Black or White' song, which also preceded this movie. Just digital editing for visual effects I guess.

There's more info on it in Wikipedia.

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What scene are you referring to in Terminator 2?

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The scene where Arnold saves Edward Furlong in the canals from the T1000's truck and the robot walks out of the burning debris a bit later, changing from metallic to Robert Patrick. Also in the end when it goes from looking like Linda Hamilton to itself after the real LH shoots it while it's impersonating her to lure EF.

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I'll have to look again but that seemed like a different type of effect

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Pretty sure they used a motion control rig for the camera move, then simply dissolved between different makeup stages.

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I just checked, it was an early and simple form of "morphing". As mentioned before, a very great early version is Michael Jackson Black or White (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5b_nIzdvfI). But the scene is really blurry, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was actual just a classic crossfade transition (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOOYHT9L5KA) where one scene gets overlayed over the other.
This article confirms btw that they used back then quite a lot of CGI (https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/how-10-of-in-the-line-of-fire-s-budget-went-to-computer-effects/)

Here are scenes from Terminator 2 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37YrnLbQda0), it is also morphing, it just have the silver surfer transition step as artistic choice.

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Thanks for the awesome information links!

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