10 Movies That Put INSANE Effort Into Tiny Details
9. Making The Agent Smith Extras Wear Hugo Weaving Masks - The Matrix Revolutions
For The Matrix Revolutions' epic final battle, Neo (Keanu Reeves) battles Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) while an unfathomable number of Smith duplicates are seen watching from the sidelines.
While you probably assumed this was achieved by digitally pasting Hugo Weaving's likeness onto hundreds of extras in post-production, similar to how the burly brawl was achieved in The Matrix Reloaded, the Wachowskis actually settled on a surprisingly practical solution.
The threequel's effects team took a cast of Weaving's face from which they created countless masks, which were then given to the scene's innumerable extras to wear in the front row. For the further back Smiths less likely to get picked up on camera in detail, the crew simply put some of the masks on mannequins. As the Smiths are all wearing sunglasses and the scene was captured in low light conditions, it passes the sniff test perfectly.
All the same, though, didn't we all assume it was figured out in a VFX house after-the-fact?