The Avengers... Behind The Scenes

Today we are going for a more fantasy like movie. This time I will be talking about the Avengers! We all know about this movie's great special effects and action scenes but what exactly do the actors have to do in order to achieve the great superheroes on camera?

First off, the majority of the movie is filmed in green screen. The crew does create some realistic scenery for the actors to use like in this photo where Black Widow is riding a Chitauri (alien) she is riding a replica of what the alien ship looks like in the movie and an actor in a CGI costume and Hawkeye shooting his arrows from a very tall skyscraper when in reality he is shooting from the replica of the skyscraper that is only 3 feet tall. These green and blue screens are represent different parts of New York, buildings, streets, or the city in general.

Photo credited to Google

Second, the movie uses CGI in order to achieve anything from lightning coming out of Thor's hammer to the Hulk coming to life. The Hulk for example is basically Mark Ruffalo in a CGI suit just making expressions and moving very exaggerated for the camera in order to achieve the Hulk going on a rampage. The actors have to sometimes pretend to fight something that is not there. Imagine that! They have to do their action scenes basically alone. Of course, there are times where just like Ruffalo there are people dressed in CGI suits in order to help the actor. Usually those people are the stunt people.

Photo credited to Google

Lastly, the actors have to practice practice practice! What I mean about practice is that the actors have to specialize themselves in some form of marital art in order to do their famous fighting scenes. It's not always that the actor has a stunt double to do all their scenes. Jeremy Renner specializes in four different fighting styles to achieve his action roles. Scarlett Johansson specialized in Wushu Style to get a lean physique while learning how to fight. She actually trained for months in order to get Black Widow to where she is now. For fight scenes Robert Downey Jr. isn't in the Iron Man suit, most of the time it is a stunt double. Chris Hemsworth just focused on his muscle build rather than fight since what he does is mostly with Thor's hammer. Mark Ruffalo luckily doesn't have to do much because the Hulk does all the action scenes and for that there is CGI. This photo is Jeremy Renner practicing a fight scenes with stunt people.

GIF credited to Google

American Sniper... Behind The Scene

  Photo credited to Google

Probably all of us know who the American war hero United States Navy SEAL Chris Kyle is, if not he is the deadliest sniper in American history with a total of 150 confirmed kills. Bradley Cooper and director Clint Eastwood bring the biographical war film American Sniper to life as they show Chris Kyle before and after the war. However, what challenges did the movie have? What did the actors go through to achieve this great film.

At first, Chris Kyle didn't really approve of Bradley Cooper to play him because he was too pretty. According to Cooper, Kyle told him he would tie him in the back of his truck and drag him a little to knock some of the pretty off of him. Because Chris Kyle was heavier and bigger in physique Cooper had to bulk up 40 pounds of pure muscle. Imagine eating 5 full meals in one day! That's a lot of food. Kyle was from Texas so Cooper had to meet with a dialect coach to teach the actor the Texan accent Kyle had which he described as learning a new language. Cooper watched countless of films and chewed "fake" tobacco in order to stay true to Kyle. Former Navy SEAL sniper Kevin Lacz was hired to train cooper on how to hold and shoot different kinds of weapons and hit targets 600 yards away.

The film was going to have Steven Spielberg as its director but because the film only had the budget of $60 million he dropped out and Eastwood picked it up. Kyle was partly involved with the writing portion of the film but was sadly murdered a year before they started filming.  Kyle's wife, Taya, called him after Kyle's death and told Hall, the writer, to film this movie to best of his ability because her children were going to remember their father the way he portrays Kyle. Eastwood likes to shoot his scenes with little or no rehearsal so part of the movie was filmed once and without rehearsal which is pretty amazing because most directors take up to 35 takes maybe even more. 

The Theory of Everything... Behind The Scenes

                    Eddie Redmayne & Stephen Hawking (photo from google)

So most of us have heard about the genius bound to a wheelchair speaking through a machine, Stephen Hawking. If you haven't The Theory Of Everything starring Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones, is a biographical drama film based on Stephen Hawking's personal life and his struggles with ALS. This film was nominated for best picture, best actor (Redmayne), best actress (Jones), best adapted screenplay, and best original score at the 87th Academy Awards. Eddie Redmayne was the only one to win on both the Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award. However, what are the challenges? What did the actors go through in order to achieve such great film?

Based on countless interviews from the actors and director, on of the biggest challenges was Eddie Redmayne's physical preparation to portray Stephen Hawking's progress from a healthy young man to where he is at right now. Redmayne had to first get himself educated about the condition so he visited ASL hospitals in order to get himself familiarized with what he was going to be portraying. After that he had to go to a dance instructor in order to show Redmayne how to control his muscles individually and how to shorten them. Since the filming is not done in sequence, Redmayne was jumping from when Hawking was first diagnosed with ASL to when ASL was very advanced in his body so Redmayne had to learn how to change his muscles completely in that same day. 

Both Redmayne and Jones met the actual Stephen Hawking and Jane Hawking with their children. For both actors that was an unforgettable experience and also a nerve wrecking experience because they were in instances performing in front of the actual people they were portraying. Redmayne says that when he first met Stephen Hawking he spent the first 40 minutes talking to Stephen Hawking about Stephen Hawking. In order to achieve his role Redmayne Spend months preparing for his role and did countless studying on Hawking and his life. He studied every video there was of him and every photograph in order to grasp what Stephen was going through.  

Dallas Buyers Club- Behind The Scenes

Picture taken off of Google

The movie that I am going to be discussing this week is Dallas Buyers Club. This movie came out in 2013 but I think the preparation the actors went through to achieve the characters of this movie is worthy to mention and write about. This movie  won best motion picture at the 71st Golden Globes. In the 86th Academy Awards and 71st Golden Globes, Matthew McConaughey won best actor and Jared Leto won best supporting actor. However, what were the challenges to make this movie? What did the actors go through to achieve their characters goal?  

To start off, I once again watched countless of interviews and read many articles to truly find the obstacles the director and actors went through, and the first one I found was that it took 20 years for anyone to take on the movie, it was rejected a total of 137 times. When it was finally done the film was faced with the budget of only $5 million, with that the makeup artists only had $250 to turn the actors into their real life counterparts. To top that off, the cast and crew had only 25 days to film the entire movie. 

As for Matthew McConaughey, who plays a homophobic man that was diagnosed with HIV and Jared Leto, a transsexual with HIV that turns into AIDS, both had to lose an immense amount of weight. McConaughey lost nearly 50 pounds by restricting his diet to only 5 ounces of fish and a cup of vegetables twice a day. He exercised each day burning 1,800 calories each day for two weeks straight. The actor himself had to invest his own money to carry out this movie. 

 Leto lost 30 or 40 pounds by simply not eating. Leto admitted it left him very fragile because his body changed drastically, his final weight was about 114- 116 lbs. He really wanted to get into his role of a transsexual woman that he went to hang out with transgender community to understand them and so he could his into the right mindset of his charactor Rayon. In order to stay in character Jared Leto spoke and acted like Rayon even when they weren't filming so as each day passed he could grasp his character even better. The change was so drastic that both actors made headlines everywhere after pictures of both of them in character surfaced. 

The Revenant- Behind The Scenes

So most of us have all heard about the spectacular movie The Revenant starring Leonardo DiCaprio and director Alejandro Inarritu. If you haven't it's based on the life of real of Hugh Glass an American Explorer of the late 18th century. The Revenant has a very real and violent appearance to it and have heard about the challenges there were to film such a complicated film. However, what are the challenges? What did the actors go through in order to achieve such great film?

Based on countless interviews from both the actors and the director, they named the weather to be the most challenging. Director Alejandro Inarritu said that it was hard to film because he faced changing weather patterns every day. He filmed the majority of the film in Alberta, Canada but by the end of the film the snow wasn't there so they had to relocate all the way to the southern tip of Argentina. Because of the harsh weather conditions, he only had one hour and half to film each day! The majority of his day, however, was spent walking with the cast & crew from one location to the other. Some of the crew members actually quit halfway of the shooting. Director Inarritu decided to film the movie in sequence of events because he wanted the actors to follow through with the emotions they were feeling the day before.

For the actors, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Will Poulter, Domhall Gleeson, and more had to go through very harsh temperatures to film the movie. For instance, the temperature was sub zero the majority of the time for the whole 9 months it took to record the movie. Leonardo DiCaprio and Will Poulter had to actually go into these freezing waters several times in order to get the perfect shot. The actors rehearsed for 4 months prior to the first shooting of the movie. However, they rehearsed one scene all day long until that hour and half window to shoot as much as they could, i.e. taking advantage of the natural lighting. Both DiCaprio and Hardy were taught the Arikara Indigenous Language  They had all the actors meet with several advisers in order to understand the people that actually lived in that time period, especially Hugh Glass, in order to have the right mindset and achieve the right approach to each character. Leonardo DiCaprio actually had to eat raw fish and raw bison liver in order to portray his character more realistically. He took six months to grow his beard like Hugh Glass as much as possible. DiCaprio had to rehearse 3 weeks to do that iconic bear scene where his back and throat gets ripped right open.

Credit: Twentieth Century Fox