Creating look alikes or adding prosthetics to visually create a whole new person altogether with similarities has been the new trend in filmmaking. The recent Hollywood Film, Central Intelligence features the creation of a young, fat and stout Dwayne Johnson for a certain portion.
The visual effects delivered by studios Rodeo FX, Weta Digital, Cantina Creative and Factory VFX have created what may have seem impossible to produce practically.
The plot focussed the creation of a middle aged Dwayne Johnson into a high school buddy who is bullied by other mates. So, the extra fat shown in the trailer has not been created but another plump Vine star Sione Kelepi has been shot.
The face of Dwayne Johnson has been digitally tweaked to fit into the body of young Sione. In fact, even the hair of Sione is maintained though tweaked a bit.
The most difficult part was maintaining the look of wrestler turned actor The Rock and the distinct look of his eyes. All the facial expressions, lip movements, eyebrows contractions and skin tone had to be matched digitally.
Face tracking and animation softwares were used to produce the accurate expressions of Dwayne Johnson in the Vine star’s body. Even Kevin Hart was digitally aged to create a younger high school version of the actor.
VFX has been used extensively to recreate personalities in different forms or just by references in various films like digital creation of Paul Walker in Furious 7, younger version of Iron Man in Captain America: Civil War for a brief sequence, young Shah Rukh Khan in Bollywood film FAN, three different avatars of Suriya in Telugu film 24 and so on.
Check out the video of the creation of the plump Dwayne Johnson:
