http://variety.com/2015/film/awards/fur ... 201618224/Unlike the motion-capture work that Weta had done on earlier films, there were no scans of Walker to create a digital double. So the team went through old footage, building a reference library of Walker as Brian O’Conner by using outtakes from “Furious 7” and previous films in the franchise. But those moments had been filmed in one lighting environment and the Weta team “essentially had to relight his performance” digitally for each new scene, said Letteri.
Weta visual effects supervisor Martin Hill says the bus sequence got a lot of media attention, but it “paled in comparison to scenes such as Paul sitting still, or delivering dialog in closeup, because you don’t have the action and the kinetic cutting to help distract from the effects.”
For example, Walker is digital and full frame in a sequence of driving in the desert. Hill said, “Paul is trying to get to Los Angeles quickly, and is also reacting in a subtle way to the injured Kurt Russell in the backseat. The performance was very nuanced.”
The filmmakers scanned Walker’s brothers Cody and Caleb, as well as actor John Brotherton (who has a role in the film and whose build and coloring are similar to Walker’s). The three men tried to capture the timing and direction that director Wan wanted. Weta essentially motion-captured the work of the three men, and then reapplied that to Walker digital models they had created.
Here's the thing, though. Those shots are invisible. And by "invisible" I mean it never occurred to me I was looking at a digital creation. I had assumed when watching the movie in the theater that some of what I was seeing was a body double or Paul's brothers who apparently look almost exactly like him (particularly during a fight scene that took place in the dark), but the scenes where they actually used the digital effects were ones that I had believed he had actually filmed before his untimely death.
Apart from the obvious bitter-sweetness here, this does get me wondering what could be next. Are the tools now there to bring other actors "back from the dead" in the way that Bob Z always seemed to wish were possible? Could we potentially be seeing a fully convincing Gene Kelly done in CGI? Because after seeing what they did with a "digital body double" here without me even realizing it, I find myself thinking about whether or not there's anything they can't do.