You could also play with camera angles, but dimensionally, yeah, no substitute for a big dude.
Or a little dude to make a normal dude look big like in LotR.
I thought a lot of their work was camera tricks. Jonathan Rhys-Davies was 6’3.
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.
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.
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.
Or both little dudes and big dudes to make the big dudes look even bigger. Worked well in The Odyssey.
See: Hagrid’s behind-the-scenes.
And Lord Of The Rings in Bilbo’s house
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.
Is that the porno remake?
“Oh no! He’s entering my chamber of secrets.”
VFX artists react look at these things all the time:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Wf8NgICk3ng
Some really cool 90s tricks with forced perspective.
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.
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.
I sort of think everyone should have a chance to play with an Ames Room at least once in their life.
Yep, lots of clever camera tricks to accomplish making the hobbits in LoTR look much smaller than their fellow actors.
Arnold is six feet tall
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.
Holy shit that’s Wilt Chamberlain??
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.
Now is where someone better at storytelling than me would talk about the time Andre the Giant drunkenly passed out in a hotel lobby and nobody could move him so they just left him there.
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.
Hello sir, yes hi. I came for an amusing anecdote, but instead I was shown nothing but sadness and pity. I’d like a refund please.
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.
He was a good guy. I’m ashamed to admit that I believed some lies about him for a long time.
Or the time he let out a fart for, like, 3 minutes straight and someone asked “Andre, are you okay?” to which he replied “I am now, boss.”
I think I’d feel better than okay after a fart like that.
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.
And covered him up with a piano blanket!
Iirc it takes like 50+ cans of beer to get him drunk
Not cooked, they just don’t know.
I’m pretty sure I also wondered “holy crap is that guy really that big?” When I watched it
To be fair, André was one especially Big McLargehuge beefy specimen of mountainous manmeat.
Mandy (Inigo) is 6 foot (1.83m), Wallace (Vizzini) is 5 foot 2 inches (1.57m)
I never realized Inigo was himself tall. Wild
6 ft is only a little bit above average.
If 6 inches is ‘a little bit’ then sure.
Hey! 6” is above average.
“Western” nations average 5’9" to 6’, so yeah, Mandy (Inego) is about average height, like 2.5" taller than average for Spanish people.
That just depends on your geographical location and gender. He’s not even above average where I come from, he’s perfectly average. I feel pretty short at 5’10".
Average is 5’10". 6’ is 2" above that, not 6".
You’re going to need to specify what demographic you’re talking about when you say average. The global average is 5‘6“.
Men in the U.S. (Mandy Patinkin is American, despite playing a Spaniard in that movie.)
The global average includes a bunch of Asian countries that are significantly shorter. Average in the west is taller than that.
Your people are 0" tall?
@West_of_West@piefed.social lifted me up, @grue@lemmy.world brought me back down again.
Don’t worry, you’re well past the 75th percentile and near the 95th worldwide, you’re plenty tall.
The army put me at 6’4 20 years ago, barefoot. My last Drs appointment said I was 6’3 while wearing New balance with a fat cushy sole.
You should watch Dead Like Me.
He was billed at 7’4, but was really around 7’0-7’1. Same height as Shaq.
He’s…a giant
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?
Manifest destiny, you name a kid “the Giant” and they’ll grow
Nominative determinism.
He was enormous at birth, if I remember correctly.
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.
wrestling name
I feel like the right thing to do is show them a movie from the early to mid 80s that used early CG and then show them Legend from 1985 point at Darkness and be like “That’s a dude in a suit. 5 and a half hours of makeup every day for him to look like that.” Then pull out Clue and point at Wadsworth and be like “This is the same dude.”
Then get a mop because you have to clean up after their heads explode.
I still struggle with how animators in 1937 were able animate the ripples in the water in Snow White at about 1:36.
They did it by hand. Frame by frame.
It’s an astonishing accomplishment, what with how realistic it looks.
I remember watching Snow White as a kid and wtf’ing at those ripples.
You could project it on a white background, put a piece of glass in between the projection and the camera. Put some water and create a ripple.
The irony is that he’s actually not that tall. It was practical effects. Not digital.
He’s 7ft tall. Even being 6’3, my reaction to a 7ft tall person is, “Holy shit, that’s one tall dude.”
It’s crazy being a tall(ish) person and seeing someone a full head/shoulder above you. If I notice a tall person they’re tall.
It’s so rare to have to look up at someone. But I now understand how my wife feels
Forced perspective is how they made the hobbits look so small in LOTR.
i don’t remember ever questioning his size. WWF and arnold were so popular that it was normal to see huge, roided out dudes in pop culture.
andre the giant was just slightly bigger.
Arnold is 6’2" and was ~250 pounds in his peak body building days. Andre was 7’4" and ~500 pounds. There were lots of huge dudes at the time but Andre really was kind of in a league of his own.
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.
I mean, it is a movie from the 1900s, so how did they do it?
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.
The first use of CGI was in 1958…
Do you think these hypothetical kids know that?
I don’t care about the hypothetical kids, I was responding to you who put ‘which is a modern thing’ in a parenthetical.
I was quoting the question that I assume the hypothetical kids were actually asking instead of “how did they do that”. The whole scenario only makes sense to me if they think CGI didn’t exist back then, in ye olden thymes, when The Princess Bride was made, and they can’t fathom how anything was done without CGI.
The parentheses are just making that super confusing.
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
One thing to point out about that was the image quality itself. You could have a person “fly” by hanging by ropes but with the poor image quality at the time you couldn’t see the ropes. On a 8k modern screen it would be incredibly obvious.
Also worth noting that while home playback was possible it wasn’t really ubiquitous until the 70s and 80s, so most people only saw the film once or maybe twice before they’d have to wait for it to come to theaters again.
True, i was a 80s baby so not sure on times before that
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
Lmao these idiot children don’t understand the intricacies of filmmaking. Bet they don’t know shit about 3-point lighting and ADR either. Stupid kids need to spend less time on the tick tocks and more time studying cinema!
Stupid kids need to spend less time on the tick tocks and more time studying cinema!
Listen, until they’ve tried making their own full claymation stop motion to fully understand onion skinning and editing I don’t want to see their faces at the dinner table
Gonna ground my kids if they can’t tell me the difference between diegetic and non-diegetic music
And for summer reading there’ll be no “Redwall” or “Goosebumps” or whatever, only “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock ’n’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood” and the like
Yeah and also like, they’re your kids. If you want them to watch older media, then show them older media. How is it their fault they have never seen something they don’t know about?
The biggest dude of all. A giant!
Does twitter-op not know about practical effects? I never watched the movie, but im gonna guess stuff like low filming angles, stools, plateau-shoes existed back then
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”
