God… god damn this is a bit odd. Ever looked at a shampoo commercial and wondered how they manage to get the models’ hair bouncing around perfectly in the shots? Or have you ever seen Superman fly in a film and thought about how they manage to get his cape flapping in the air realistically without blasting wind at the actors’ face, causing him to squint as well?
It’s not just really disciplined acting, or many hours of painstaking takes, or even well-executed CGI. It turns out there’s a particular trick to these things, and it’s a pair of humans hiding in plain sight.
Most, if not all of these things are done in front of Green Screens, so production crews take advantage of this by getting one or two people to dress up in chroma key morph suits and manipulate things that need to be moving.
You read that right, two blokes in all green are standing behind the smiling model playing with her goddamned hair.
This is a thing: Greenscreen-clad workers who secretly flip models’ hair during shampoo commercials. pic.twitter.com/tfHvykkxS8 ht @MakingOfs
— Saladin Ahmed (@saladinahmed) June 26, 2014
Oh my GOD.
Turns out the role, known as a Greenscreen Fluffer, is relatively common on ad and film shoots. Here they are manipulating Superman’s cape in a totally natural, non-nightmarish fashion.
People are fucking weird.
