14 DAY TRIAL // Health experts have repeatedly warned of the dangers of losing and gaining a lot of weight specifically for a movie role. Now, actors may undergo a complete physical transformation without taking any kind of health risk.
A new piece of software developed by scientists in Germany can alter the proportions of an actor by making him or her slimmer, fatter, taller or shorter – so that they won’t have to do that themselves.
Robert De Niro famously gained weight for “Raging Bull,” while Robert Downey Jr. packed serious muscle mass to reprise his part in “Iron Man.”
However, perhaps the best example of an actor putting his body through hell (almost literally) to make more believable characters is Christian Bale.
Bale dropped about 70 pounds to be scary thin in “The Machinist” and almost immediately had to revert back to shape (and add muscles mass as well) for “Batman.”
Just recently, he’s again lost a lot of weight for “The Fighter” in which he plays a former boxing champ with a serious drug problem. Now, Bale is back to his regular weight.
Thanks to MovieReshape, neither Bale nor any other actor / actress will ever have to go through this and risk their health, The Hollywood Reporter says.
“The software can alter an actor’s muscle tone or body shape and can be used on existing video material. In one test of the program, scientists took a sequence of ‘Baywatch’ and buffed up a lead actor, making him seem even more muscular than in real life,” THR says.
“Christian Theobalt, one of the scientists who developed the software, told The Hollywood Reporter the program could also be tweaked to adjust other characteristics such as an actor’s age,” the same e-zine notes.
In other words, it could represent the end of a long series of issues actors and actresses have to face whenever they go on set.
“You could use it to do something similar to what they did to Brad Pitt on ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,’ making him younger or older but much faster and with less computing power,” Theobalt says of MovieReshape.
“What would take days using conventional SFX software our model can do in a matter of hours,” he adds.
Below is a video of how MovieReshape works. Enjoy.