Reblogging not just because special effects are cool but because body doubles, stunt doubles, acting doubles, talent doubles — all the people whose faces we’re not supposed to see but whose bodies make movies and tv shows possible — these people need and deserve more recognition. We see their bodies onscreen, delight in the shape and motion of those bodies, but even as we pick apart everything else that goes on both on and behind the screen, I just don’t see the people who are those bodies getting the love and recognition they deserve.
We’re coming to love and recognize actors who work in full-body makeup/costumes, such as Andy Serkis, or actors whose entire performances, or large chunks thereof, are motion captured or digitized (lately sometimes also Andy Serkis!). But people like Leander Deeny play an enormous part in making characters such as Steve Rogers come to life, too. Body language is a huge part of a performance and of characterization. For characters/series with a lot of action, a stunt person can have a huge influence on how we read and interpret a character, such as the influence Heidi Moneymaker has had on the style and choreography of Black Widow’s signature fighting style. Talent doubles breathe believability and discipline-specific nuance into demanding storylines.
Actors are creative people themselves, and incredibly important in building the characters we see onscreen. But if we agree that they’re more than dancing monkeys who just do whatever the directors/writers say, then we have to agree that doubles are more than that, too. Doubles make creative decisions too, and often form strong, mutually supportive relationship with actors.
Image 1: “I would like to thank Kathryn Alexandre, the most generous actor I’ve ever worked opposite.”
Image 2: “Kathryn who’s playing my double who’s incredible.”
[ Orphan Black’s Tatiana Maslany on her acting double, Kathryn Alexandre, two images from a set on themarysue, vialifeofkj ]
I’ve got a relationship that goes back many, many years with Dave. And I would hate for people to just see that image of me and Dave and go, “oh, there’s Dan Radcliffe with a person in a wheelchair.” Because I would never even for a moment want them to assume that Dave was anything except for an incredibly important person in my life.
[ Daniel Radcliffe talking about David Holmes, his stunt double for 2001-2009, who was paralysed while working on the Harry Potter films. David Holmes relates his story here. Gifset viasmeagoled ]
With modern tv- and film-making techniques, many characters are composite creations. The characters we see onscreen or onstage have always been team efforts, with writers, directors, makeup artists, costume designers, special effects artists, production designers, and many other people all contributing to how a character is ultimately realized in front of us. Many different techniques go into something like the creation of Skinny Steve — he’s no more all Leander Deeny than he is all Chris Evans.
But as fandom dissects the anatomy of scenes in ever-increasing detail to get at microexpressions and the minutiae of body language, let’s recognize the anatomy in the scenes, too. I don’t mean to take away from the work Chris Evans or any other actors do (he is an amazing Steve Rogers and I love him tons), but fandom needs to do better in recognizing the bodies, the other people, who make up the characters we love and some of our very favourite shots of them. Chris Evans has an amazing body, but so does Leander Deeny — that body is beautiful; that body mimicked Chris Evans’s motions with amazing, skilled precision; that body moved Steve Rogers with emotion and grace and character.
Fandom should do better than productions and creators who fail to be transparent about the doubles in their productions. On the screen, suspension of disbelief is key and the goal is to make all the effort that went into the production vanish and leave only the product itself behind. But when the film is over and the episode ends, let’s remember everyone who helped make that happen.
[ Sam Hargrave (stunt double for Chris Evans) and James Young (stunt double for Sebastian Stan, and fight choreographer), seen from behind, exchange a fistbump while in costume on the set of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Image vialifeofkj ]
I applaud these guys as much as the suit actors in my japanese tokusatsu shows. They do just as much work.
All of this. Also anyone who says VFX is ruining films needs to learn about film history and then apologise to everyone for being simultaneously ignorant and arrogant.
whats wrong with you? you got some sort of……..some sorta syndrome? you got a syndrome or something? youre tryna tell me youve got like, a syndrome
[goes to doctor]: whats wrong with me doc. tell me the ‘prognosis’ doctor: well, its looking as if you have some kind of syndrome [thinking] hmm.. thats not good
i diagnose you with symptoms syndrome
sorry to say but it seems you’ve got problems disorder
Children playing with Barbies in media:“This is Sally. She’s the mommy. She loves fashion, swimming, and she drives a convertible! She has a baby with Ken and sometimes they kiss.” OR “Look, I ripped Barbie’s head off! Ha ha ha! I’m a boy.”
Children playing with Barbies in real life: “This is Aurora, the fallen goddess of the sky. She has been banished from her kingdom and bound to a mortal body by her sister, who rose to power by human sacrifices. She now leads an army of cannibal water spirits who eat men. Sometimes they have orgies. They dismembered a traitor and keep her head on a Popsicle stick as a warning to others. Aurora can turn into a wolf and uses battle magic to paralyze her enemies. The king of the stuffed animals developed rabies and she had to slay him to save his people, but they do not understand that it was an act of mercy and kindness and are sending assassins after her for regicide. This is Aurora’s soulmate, Crystal, but her soul is trapped in a gemstone while an evil spirit pilots her body and attempts to murder her friends.”
Raccoons are the worst. You expect them to go through your stuff and steal your food while you’re camping, but they don’t stop there – half the time, they’ll be curious enough to come over and touch you. They prod your sleeping body with their horrible little people hands, run their claws through your hair, hold your fingers with their own. I’ve never been aggressively menaced by one, but they’ve slapped my ass through hammock fabric on multiple occasions and stroked my face or hands on others. I’ve played tug-of-war with large raccoons through my window when they grabbed the string to the yarn-and-cup telephone I’d set up with my neighbor.
I AM SO GLAD THAT I’M NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO HATES THEIR PEOPLE HANDS.
My first year at camp, our tent was infiltrated by at least six raccoons. They made scratching, shuffling noises as they crawled in from all sides. Somehow they were strong enough to shove our trunks across the ground, and started undoing zippers with horror-film slowness. How they didn’t wake anyone else up, I will never know. The shuffling noises suddenly stopped. They chittered to each other, and the sound was much closer than I had expected. Then I felt hands. Tiny fucking human hands touching my arms, not quite digging in with claws, and I whimpered and tried not to scream. This went on all night long.
I fucking hate raccoons.
They come into the cabins at camp every night. I’ve never had one touch any of my campers, but that’s only because I sleep with my hand curled around the handle of a broomstick and have trained myself to recognize their snuffling and scrabbling. I have leapt out of a bunk to sweep them forcefully out of the cabin in the dead of night, to sleepy tween boys whispering “Wow… you’re like a superhero…”
What if I want little hair goblins to sneak in at night and gently touch my face with their weird tiny fingers
Penhales 