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Can I just say that no amount of movie-making money thrown at a Photoshop job on a family photo prop is a guarantee that it will work! (A thread). https://twitter.com/rosstmiller/status/1253641031842779136
I’ve made quite a few fake family photos for movies over the years, although you won’t find any of them on my website or in my book because they’re ALL terrible!! I think I’ve done a handful of passable ones and the rest are shocking.
Most films I work on are set in the past, and the photos that dress a “family home” set have to look about ten or even twenty years older, too. Old wedding photos on the mantelpiece etc. Set decorators love having fake family pics to dress a fake home with.
First of all, you have to ask the producers to recruit personal pics of the actors, from when they were young. I have photos from Tom Hanks which are quite cute. Him on holidays with his pals, etc. You can’t use just anything you find online, you need permission.
Secondly you have to do the same with their co-star. Then thirdly you have to find a genuinely old photo of a couple on their wedding day, or whatever, and get permission to use it, minus their faces. (We usually ask crew members for pics of their grandparents).
Fourthly, you then have to photoshop the actor’s faces on top of them despite them having been shot from completely different angles, different camera lenses, different film stock, in different light etc.
Fifthly, you then have to completely change the man’s facial hair as it will be entirely wrong for the era you are already botching.
Sixthly, you have to get it past the prop master, the set decorator, the production designer, and the director. Everyone will have a completely different opinion as to exactly why what you’re doing isn’t working, even though you’re crew on a multi-million-dollar Hollywood movie.
Seventhly, you have to ask the producers to recruit more private photos from the actor’s personal albums and go through the whole process again, only for them to begrudgingly go with the first one you sent them anyway on the understanding that they’ll probably “fix it in post”
The fixed-in-post one is just as bad as your one, but in a myriad of different ways ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
I wish I could add a pic here as an example, but I’m not allowed to use any photos to promote my book without permission, and no producer in their right mind would ever permit such a thing to leak from a film.
If you like behind-the-scenes stories like this from movie design, please consider buying my book! https://www.amazon.co.uk/Letters-Forged-Telegrams-Prison-Escape/dp/071487938X
