She's not breathing! (Except she is, obviously.)
July 24, 2024 7:38 AM Subscribe
What are some interesting techniques used for hiding the breathing of "dead" characters on TV and film? I am looking specifically for nitty gritty accounts of the mundane or maybe not so mundane techniques used to tackle what must be a very common issue.
I want to make clear: I am not in disbelief that this can be done, nor am I completely mystified about how it can be done. I am not a thick-witted person who cannot hazard a few guesses. This is obviously a matter handled very, very often. I am interested though in the various ways it can be done, particularly less obvious ones I might not guess. I mean, I know how bullet squibs work, but videos and interviews explaining the various techniques and mechanics are cool. I'd like to learn those kind of things about how they make it look like someone isn't breathing.
There are some tricks that would be obvious, yes. Obviously, people can hold their breath to some extent. And in some cases, they maybe hide the person's chest behind something. Or, a shot can be optically frozen. Or they cut around the breathing. Or a prosthetic person/head/chest can be used.
Maybe these are the only ways. But I'd still like to hear/read/see some info on the logistics of how they are deployed.
If you find yourself thinking this is all very obvious and not worth discussing, I want you to know that I have spoken with your governor and they have issued special dispensation to absolve you of needing to comment in this thread.
This question was inspired by Triangle of Sadness, which features a scene in which this matter was not handled well and one character holds onto a "dead" person while the chest of the ostensible corpse moves in and out, clearly breathing normally.
I want to make clear: I am not in disbelief that this can be done, nor am I completely mystified about how it can be done. I am not a thick-witted person who cannot hazard a few guesses. This is obviously a matter handled very, very often. I am interested though in the various ways it can be done, particularly less obvious ones I might not guess. I mean, I know how bullet squibs work, but videos and interviews explaining the various techniques and mechanics are cool. I'd like to learn those kind of things about how they make it look like someone isn't breathing.
There are some tricks that would be obvious, yes. Obviously, people can hold their breath to some extent. And in some cases, they maybe hide the person's chest behind something. Or, a shot can be optically frozen. Or they cut around the breathing. Or a prosthetic person/head/chest can be used.
Maybe these are the only ways. But I'd still like to hear/read/see some info on the logistics of how they are deployed.
If you find yourself thinking this is all very obvious and not worth discussing, I want you to know that I have spoken with your governor and they have issued special dispensation to absolve you of needing to comment in this thread.
This question was inspired by Triangle of Sadness, which features a scene in which this matter was not handled well and one character holds onto a "dead" person while the chest of the ostensible corpse moves in and out, clearly breathing normally.
IMO, they use short scenes, camera angles, and acting (ie: practice) to get the shots. If it's a really long shot, then CGI or other technology.
It's not super rare to see people who are 'dead' breathing in movies- used to be more common in 'B movies' with small budgets.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:59 AM on July 24 [2 favorites]
It's not super rare to see people who are 'dead' breathing in movies- used to be more common in 'B movies' with small budgets.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:59 AM on July 24 [2 favorites]
Another thing to consider is - breathing is actually not always all that obvious to begin with. Unless someone's just run a marathon or something, we don't necessarily always see people breathing. The chest rise and fall is usually pretty slight in most people. So the "dead" person might still be breathing normally, we just don't see it because we wouldn't anyway unless the shot was a big enough closeup.
There are variations to this, of course - some people breathe more quickly or deeply than others naturally, or are slender enough that you'd see a difference, but for the most part you actually don't notice people breathing. So an actor "playing dead" can keep breathing normally.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:54 AM on July 24
There are variations to this, of course - some people breathe more quickly or deeply than others naturally, or are slender enough that you'd see a difference, but for the most part you actually don't notice people breathing. So an actor "playing dead" can keep breathing normally.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:54 AM on July 24
Best answer: I am a VFX artist, and I've had to remove breathing and eye twitches a lot! I think I know just what scene in triangle of sadness you mean because when I was watching it I was thinking about how I could have fixed the breathing. Most of the time they do try to cut around obvious movement, but a lot of the time there will also be fixes in post.
To get boringly technical, there's 2 ways I usually remove movement from dead characters:
1 - just cover up the moving area by tracking in a still frame.
2 - use a grid warper. This is a part of compositing programs that lets you adjust the shape of an image by using 2 grids - a source grid that is tracked onto your shot, and a destination grid that you adjust to get the image into the desired shape - so I can have the source grid follow the breathing motion, and the destination grid identical, except the breathing motion is stilled. This works great if there are other things moving in the scene that you want to preserve, like say someone's been shot, and there is blood running from the wound, the chest stays till but the blood still flows.
Another thing that gets adjusted a lot to make it seem like a character is dead is fixing the eyes - a lot of actors are pretty good at not blinking for a long time, but it's very difficult to keep the eyes from twitching if a lot of other things are happening on set. Sometimes I'll just cover up the few frames where the blink/twitch happens, but sometimes I'll replace the eyes with a still frame through the whole shot. Then the eyes get eerily still and I can also remove some of the highlights so they look drier and deader. yea, I have a weird job.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 1:54 PM on July 24 [81 favorites]
To get boringly technical, there's 2 ways I usually remove movement from dead characters:
1 - just cover up the moving area by tracking in a still frame.
2 - use a grid warper. This is a part of compositing programs that lets you adjust the shape of an image by using 2 grids - a source grid that is tracked onto your shot, and a destination grid that you adjust to get the image into the desired shape - so I can have the source grid follow the breathing motion, and the destination grid identical, except the breathing motion is stilled. This works great if there are other things moving in the scene that you want to preserve, like say someone's been shot, and there is blood running from the wound, the chest stays till but the blood still flows.
Another thing that gets adjusted a lot to make it seem like a character is dead is fixing the eyes - a lot of actors are pretty good at not blinking for a long time, but it's very difficult to keep the eyes from twitching if a lot of other things are happening on set. Sometimes I'll just cover up the few frames where the blink/twitch happens, but sometimes I'll replace the eyes with a still frame through the whole shot. Then the eyes get eerily still and I can also remove some of the highlights so they look drier and deader. yea, I have a weird job.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 1:54 PM on July 24 [81 favorites]
The podcast The Rest is Entertainment covered this briefly in a recent episode (jump to 52 seconds). This is a podcast worth subscribing to if you're curious about various nuts and bolts aspects of tv, films, music, books, etc. For example, the following bit in the same episode covers how British tv panel / game shows are scored.
posted by maudlin at 5:01 PM on July 24 [2 favorites]
posted by maudlin at 5:01 PM on July 24 [2 favorites]
Another data point: a recent MRI of my spine (lie still while magnets clang all around you and no exact idea how long it's going to be until it's over, but darn I am not going to do this again just because I breathed too much, so I just breathed the absolute minimum... if you have good enough reason a person can find a way... maybe I didn't have to get that extreme but I wasn't about to ask them).
posted by forthright at 5:44 PM on July 24
posted by forthright at 5:44 PM on July 24
An old school way is to just keep the camera moving (and not targeted at any one location) always a smooth swooping through/around. The viewer then has no real fixed point to use as a reference, so you loose that ability to notice tiny (or quite large tbh) movements.
Mostly used for 'frozen in time' shots on older/cheaper movies. I can't recall the film my friend used to rave about, Buffalo something or other that used it to good effect. I've also seen a Jim Carey one do it (but that was helped with CGI in places).
posted by Static Vagabond at 10:49 AM on July 25
Mostly used for 'frozen in time' shots on older/cheaper movies. I can't recall the film my friend used to rave about, Buffalo something or other that used it to good effect. I've also seen a Jim Carey one do it (but that was helped with CGI in places).
posted by Static Vagabond at 10:49 AM on July 25
So, from the other end of things (and I won't get too detailed in case this bothers people) when I was new to the funeral industry I often saw a sort of "shimmer" or hard-to-quantify visual disturbance over the chests of genuine dead people, despite the fact that I wasn't feeling super freaked out. I asked around and this is common. Your brain expects breathing and when you don't see it, your brain tries to put it there.
So you're aware of actors being alive on some level, I think, even when it's a convincing movie affect.
The absolute MVP of playing dead is Olwen Kelly in The Autopsy of Jane Doe, who did it by controlling her breathing, and is both a convincing corpse (in my professional opinion!) while also somehow projecting vibes? Here's an interview she did about the process where she talks about some of the FX (some spoilers and somewhat NSFW shots within).
posted by Nibbly Fang at 6:06 PM on July 26 [3 favorites]
So you're aware of actors being alive on some level, I think, even when it's a convincing movie affect.
The absolute MVP of playing dead is Olwen Kelly in The Autopsy of Jane Doe, who did it by controlling her breathing, and is both a convincing corpse (in my professional opinion!) while also somehow projecting vibes? Here's an interview she did about the process where she talks about some of the FX (some spoilers and somewhat NSFW shots within).
posted by Nibbly Fang at 6:06 PM on July 26 [3 favorites]
Mod note: [btw, this post and 5_13_23_42_69_666's answer have been added to the sidebar and Best Of blog!]
posted by taz (staff) at 1:23 AM on July 27 [4 favorites]
posted by taz (staff) at 1:23 AM on July 27 [4 favorites]
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