Actors playing more than one character on screen
Having decided on Time Travel, I’ve been looking at “twin” shots, where Actors play more than one character on screen at the same time.
They fit nicely under the Benign Violation Theory – not the version where someone appears to get hurt (violation), but the “unexpected” version. The audience doesn’t expect to see the same person on screen at the same time. This does need to be set within a generally comedic setting for true comedy, which is fine, because that is how I am using it.
However, it can be used in other genres too. In the film Legend (2015), which is a Crime/Drama, Tom Hardy plays both Reggie and Ronnie Kray. This is not for comedic effect, it is because Ronnie and Reggie Kray were twins. Obviously both twins would need to appear on screen together, so similar techniques to those that I am using were needed. The director, Brian Helgeland, was wary, at first, of having Tom Hardy play both roles. To quote him, “I was a bit leery of it at first…There’s a tradition of casting one actor to play twins in movies, but usually in those movies, I just can’t get into it. I keep looking at it and not thinking about the movie.”
Hegleland overcame his concern because Tom Hardy looked very different at Reggie Kray compared to Ronnie Kray. I did also find it written in Wikipedia that Tom Hardy really wanted the role of Ronnie Kray, and he wanted it so much that said to Brian Hegleland that if he let him play Ronnie then he would play the role of Reggie for free. I did wonder at first if that was true, it’s a good story but the kind of thing that people make up.
I haven’t watched Legend (2015) yet, but I have watched Tomorrow I’ll Wake Up and Scald Myself with Tea (1977). In Tomorrow I’ll Wake Up and Scald Myself with Tea (1977) by Director Jindrich Polak, one actor plays twins. This is a comedic time travel film, from what was then Czechoslovakia, where the antagonists want to go back in time to give Hitler a weapon so that he can win the war. It is a great film, I enjoyed it. My Dad had seen it on TV many years ago, back in 1982 when he was a similar age to me. I know the exact date he watched it, because he told me it was only on TV the once back then. So, I did some research and found out that the date was 16th January 1982 on BBC2. He loved it, and had wanted to watch it again, so he tracked it down and we watched it together.
As well as really enjoying it too, I was interested in how they shot the twins scenes back then. It was a mixture of editing for shots where you can see both face and using a body double where it is possible to hide one face. Given that this film was made 44 years ago I will probably have more sophisticated editing techniques available to me than they did back then, which I find fascinating. It does make me think that it is amazing the whole variety of effects that filmmakers managed to achieve without all the fancy editing software that we have now.
From what I can find out, the kind of digital editing software that we use now started round about the end of the 1980’s, early 1990’s. I cannot imagine editing without it, and yet some of the most classic and incredible films were made before this era.
In Back to the Future 2 (1989), you see Old Biff take a book with sports results in back to his younger self, so that he can bet on the results and win lots of money.
This also show me the importance in making sure it is clear which of your characters is which. In this case it is easy because of the age difference, shown by clever prosthetics, makeup and costume. My characters will be much closer in age, which is good in one way since it means I don’t need to get involved with prosthetics and makeup which would be more costly. Buy I will need to think carefully about costumes. I will also need the costumes to be easy to change in the middle of a wood with no privacy.
I know that cost is something that filmmakers need to always bear in mind, whether it is an independent film with a small budget or a full-scale feature film with a huge budget, since the Postproduction editing involved to show 2 characters played by the same actor on screen are more than if they were played by different people. And the whole setting up the shot adds to the cost.
That is why you often have body doubles where you can’t see the face, like they did for quite a lot of shots in Tomorrow I’ll Wake Up and Scald Myself with Tea (1977). But, of course, the easiest, and hence cheapest, way is when you can actually use identical twins, like in the Harry Potter films, where the Weasley twins, Fred and George, were played by real life identical twins James and George Phelps. Although creativity is vital in making films, I know you always have to keep in mind the cost, whatever size your production is.
I was reflecting on why I find the idea of filming and editing these shots, with the same actor being on screen twice at the same time, so interesting, and I think it is partly because I love the challenge of getting interesting, but still appropriate shots. Another reason I think is because one thing that I am loving about this course is finding out how a lot of things are done on screen. And even better is being able to do some of those effects myself.