It was reported last week that Warner Bros. was spending over $25 million on their ongoing Justice League reshoots and while that was a pretty major piece of news in itself, it wasn't until details about Henry Cavill's mustache began to circulate that the internet collectively lost its mind.
It turns out that Cavill, who grew the glorious mustache for his role in Paramount's highly anticipated Mission: Impossible 6, would have to keep his stache intact for the entirety of the extensive reshoots, meaning that highly-skilled VFX artists will be committing quite a bit of their time over the next three months digitally removing the stache from any new Superman scenes that are currently being shot and/or have yet-to-be filmed.
Following the report, Business Insider decided to get in touch with the award-winning VFX company The Mill to learn more about the intensive process behind actually removing Cavill's lip-warmer in post-production.
Speaking with Lead 2D Artist Anne Trotman, they learned that the process behind digitally removing facial hair is actually quite common in the business. "Yes! It's very common to be asked, particularly on beauty projects. Sometimes celebrities might be shooting a commercial, but need to keep their facial hair for a film, so can't shave on set. Also for different global markets these days some clients need alt versions."
From a 2D perspective, Trotman says the removal process isn't particularly difficult. "We are using grading techniques as it's not that imposing. If it was on a man, we paint a clean top lip and track that onto the face." However, from a 3D perspective, everything gets a lot more challenging. "If the head moves in perspective, this would need to be achieved with 3D and 2D techniques. If the talent is facing the camera straight-on, we can use 2D techniques.
The Mill's Head of 3D Dave Fleet further elaborated and admitted that the amount of work required is quite substantial and can prove to be quite difficult depending on what is actually required of the artists as it could ultimately mean completely rebuilding an actor's face. He provided the following description:
"Smoothing out tiny vellus hairs on the skin requires a totally different approach to removing a large volume of hair, like a beard or mustache. If we were to remove a beard we would have to digitally re-build the actor's face behind the hair mass. We would need to build a 3D model of the face and then shade the surface of the skin to look realistic. We would then need to track the 3D model to the movement of his head and potentially re-animate his mouth. The amount of lip animation would depend on how much of the original beard occluded his lips. We would need to paint out the parts of the beard that extend beyond his shaven face."
Despite all this, the production team's biggest challenge comes from their uphill battle against Father Time as they attempt to complete what could easily be eight months work in record time. Fleet explains, "One week just to make the 3D elements; then another three weeks to track, animate, and render the shaven face; and another two weeks to composite it all together." Warner Bros. does luckily already have 3D models of Cavill from Man of Steel on file, so that should speed up some of the lengthy process, but Fleet does add that it typically takes about six weeks to edit a mustache out of a one minute clip and can take approximately 25 weeks to edit a mustache out of a five minute clip, so if the reshoots are as extensive as they've been described, with a lot of dialogue scenes being redone, then godspeed to the VFX artists assigned to this movie.
Meanwhile, Cavill and his Mission director Chris McQuarrie both responded to MustacheGate (StacheGate?) late last week. Check out their hilarious replies below:
Fueled by his restored faith in humanity and inspired by Superman’s selfless act, Bruce Wayne enlists the help of his newfound ally, Diana Prince, to face an even greater enemy. Together, Batman and Wonder Woman work quickly to find and recruit a team of metahumans to stand against this newly awakened threat. But despite the formation of this unprecedented league of heroes—Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Cyborg and The Flash—it may already be too late to save the planet from an assault of catastrophic proportions.
Justice League will feature:
Directors: Zack Snyder & Joss Whedon
Henry Cavill as Clark Kent/Superman
Ben Affleck as Bruce Wayne/Batman
Amy Adams as Lois Lane
Gal Gadot as Diana Prince/Wonder Woman
Ezra Miller as Barry Allen/The Flash
Jason Momoa as Arthur Curry/Aquaman
Ray Fisher as Victor Stone/Cyborg
Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor
Jeremy Irons as Alfred Pennyworth
Diane Lane as Martha Kent
J.K. Simmons as Commissioner James Gordon
Billy Crudup as Dr. Henry Allen
Kiersey Clemons as Iris West
Amber Heard as Mera
Willem Dafoe as Nuidis Vulko
Connie Nielsen as Queen Hippolyta
Joe Morton as Dr. Silas Stone
Julian Lewis Jones in an undisclosed role
Ciarán Hinds as Steppenwolf
Justice League unites in theaters November 17