13 Shots That Were Actually A Digital Paul Walker In Fast & Furious 7 - And How They Were Made
You won't believe how many were VFX.
Could you tell which Fast & Furious 7 scenes were created using VFX after Paul Walker’s sudden death?
Us neither.
The star had filmed about half of the movie before his tragic passing away in November 2013. And that left the filmmakers with the challenge of having to put together Walker’s acting in scenes he never even shot.
Finally, the studio who created the amazing VFX for the film, Weta Digital, have revealed how they used totally new technology to honour and complete Paul Walker’s performance.
Variety spoke to Weta Digital’s senior VFX supervisor, Joe Letteri, to explain just how the actor’s digital double was created:
Weta ended up doing a whopping 350 shots, most of them involving Walker’s character… Unlike the motion-capture work that Weta had done on earlier films, there were no scans of Walker to create a digital double. So the team went through old footage, building a reference library of Walker as Brian O’Conner by using outtakes from Furious 7 and previous films in the franchise. But those moments had been filmed in one lighting environment and the Weta team “essentially had to relight his performance” digitally for each new scene, said Letteri.
Walkers brothers Cody and Caleb were used to film scenes too.
The filmmakers scanned Walker’s brothers Cody and Caleb, as well as actor John Brotherton (who has a role in the film and whose build and coloring are similar to Walker’s). The three men tried to capture the timing and direction that director Wan wanted. Weta essentially motion-captured the work of the three men, and then reapplied that to Walker digital models they had created.
Those digital models included extensive work on Walker’s hair and skin — how his facial muscles moved if he frowned or raised his eyebrows, how his coloring would flush after exertion or how the hair changes depending on the light or the wind. They even worked to make sure he blinked in character.
The result is stunning. Take a look for yourself – the scenes below were shot with the VFX Paul Walker and the realism is MIND-BLOWING.
13 Shots That Were Actually A Digital Paul Walker In Fast & Furious 7
- By Bex May @bexlectric
15 Times Paul Walker Melted Our Hearts
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We miss Paul Walker. Sure, Tom Hardy’s got a cracking beard and Zac Efron’s guns are mighty impressive but does either of them look like a cartoon All-American Boy in human form? No. -
Paul Walker did. Hair the colour of a Nebraska cornfield, eyes as blue as a California sky and a smile that screamed positivity, patriotism and Mom’s Apple Pie. -
It would have been Paul Walker’s 42nd birthday this week, but for the tragic car crash that claimed his life in 2013. As we raise a commemorative glass to the Fast & Furious icon, here are 15 times he was brilliant. -
I’m Telling: Look at his adorable little face! Aged only 14, Paul appeared on this 80s game show (basically like Mr. & Mrs. but with kids – and less weird than that sounds) with his younger sister Ashley. -
Varsity Blues: Paul’s quarterback character Lance battles past a knee injury and a straying, whipped-cream-bikini-wearing girlfriend to become a successful coach. U-S-A! U-S-A! -
She’s All That: A move into baddie mode for Paul as his smirking surfer dude bets Freddie Prinze Jr (remember him?) he can’t turn geeky-but-actually-gorgeous Rachel Leigh Cook into the Prom Queen. -
The Skulls: Paul teamed with Joshua Jackson – at the height of his Dawson’s Creek fame – for this 2000 college thriller. Our favourite thing about the film? Paul’s character is named Caleb Mandrake. Amazing. -
The Fast & The Furious: Nitrous-enhanced races, manly glares and when Paul’s undercover cop lets Vin Diesel’s street racer Dom escape at the end, confirmation that it’s Bros Before Po-Po. -
2 Fast 2 Furious: Want to catch the drug lord bad guy and impress an undercover agent played by Eva Mendes in one fell swoop? Simple. Ignore all logic and drive you car off a cliff, ONTO A YACHT. -
Into the Blue: This 2005 thriller has a brilliantly obvious tagline – ‘Treasure has its price’. It also features a performance from Our Paul that seems influenced by Will Ferrell in Blades of Glory; ‘Clothing optional’. -
Eight Below: How to make a boyishly handsome action hero even more likeable? Surround him with eight heroic and loveable sled dogs for this incredible retelling of a remarkable survival story. -
Fast & Furious fight: A return to living life a quarter mile at a time and a demonstration of how men deal with complex emotional issues. By fighting. -
Shark Men: Paul realised a lifelong dream in 2010 when he was part of a crew tracking Great White Sharks for National Geographic. That face above could be used in the dictionary definition of ‘happiness’. -
Charity work: Having founded humanitarian group Reach Out Worldwide, Paul travelled to Chile, Haiti and Indonesia to help earthquakes and tsunami victims. Not just a movie star but also a damned hero. -
His daughter’s tribute: Meadow Walker, just 15 at the time of her father’s sad death in 2013, posted this touching message after the car crash that claimed his life. Heartbreaking. -
That FF7 montage: A good way to tell if your friends have a heart is to sit them in front of the closing scene of Paul’s final film, soundtracked by Wiz Khalifa’s See You Again, and see if they can make it through without collapsing into sobs. -
His legacy: Vin Diesel named his daughter Pauline in memory of his Fast & Furious brother, saying ‘it felt like, you know, a way to keep his memory a part of my memory, a part of my world.’ -
Ride or die: Excuse us… we’ve just got something in our eye.
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