How do films make old actors look young again?
For The Irishman, three actors in their seventies played men decades younger, with no markers on their faces and a three-headed camera rig.
▶ Start the storyBy filming the actors normally and then replacing their faces with digitally younger versions. De-aging is a visual effects technique that makes an actor look younger, especially for flashbacks, often by digitally editing the image or using computer-generated overlays or touch-ups. Sometimes the young version is a virtual actor: a combination of CGI, a , and a voice double or .
The Irishman is the showcase. Its de-aging made Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci look younger, and the scenes were filmed with a custom three-camera that the crew called the three-headed monster. Martin Scorsese and De Niro decided against on the actors, because the actors would want to be in the moment on set. So the effects team at Industrial Light & Magic had to capture the performance without them. They spent two years analyzing old films to decide how the actors should look at various ages, and a posture coach taught the actors to carry themselves like much younger men.
The cost was huge: the film's budget was reported to have ballooned from $125 million to $140 million, due in large part to the visual effects. IndieWire said the de-aging became the tech centerpiece, with 1,750 shots for two and a half hours of footage.
1,750
Not everyone loved the result. Time's critic Stephanie Zacharek found the de-aging distracting at first but hardly a deal breaker, and thought it probably added to the movie's mythological vibe.
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Recap
De-aging combines filming the real performance, studying the actor's younger self, and digitally rebuilding the face, with the actor's own body doing a lot of the work.
💡 A trick to remember it · A three-headed camera watches the old face, and a computer paints on the young one.
Surprising fact · On The Irishman, the actors wore no markers, and a custom three-camera rig called the three-headed monster captured their faces.
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