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Hollow Man (2000)
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The Spike
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Joined: 23 Sep 2014
Posts: 266
Location: Birmingham. Great Britain.

PostPosted: Wed Mar 04, 2020 5:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Gord Green wrote:
And so, Paul Verhoeven became irrelevant.

Well his first film back after his extended break was Black Book, that was made in his own country and it was a critical and commercial hit. There was still life in the old button pusher yet.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 11, 2020 2:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

IMDB has several interesting trivia items for this production. Very Happy
________________________________

~ An anatomically correct, totally working computer model was created of Kevin Bacon's entire body - down to the last capillary. The 3-D model has since been donated to scientific researchers.

Note from me: Kudos to the filmmakers for doing such an accurate job! Cool

~ To get the right reaction from the cast, Paul Verhoeven had speakers put in different places on the set, and had Kevin Bacon's voice come from different speakers so the cast would genuinely react to the invisible character moving around. For the scene with the invisible gorilla, Verhoeven screamed to the microphone, imitating gorilla noises.

Note from me: This was also a great way to cue the cast about which direction to look, so they were all together on the place where Sebastian was located.

~ During filming, Kevin Bacon wore skin-tight costumes in green, blue, grey, or black, to assist with the adding of visual effects. Some of his cast mates said that the hardest part of the role was not laughing at someone painted in black, green, blue, or grey, pretending to be mean.

Note from me: Okay, when Kevin was black, green, or grey, it probably wasn't too difficult to believe he was evil. But when he was blue, he'd look like a tall, skinny, naked Smurf!

~ When the crew carries a half-invisible Sebastian back to the operating table, a metal skeleton was used. It was made of metal in order to make it heavy, so the actors would give the impression of carrying a human body.

Note from me: Bravo! It is very difficult for most people to handle a light object and convincingly act like it's heavy!

~ Despite assumptions that Bacon would not be needed on set, except when his character Sebastian is visible, Verhoeven and the crew realized after test footage was shot, that he would need to be present, to interact with the cast, as "the other actors were stranded in empty space, and the scenes looked stiff, inorganic, and unconvincing" without him.

Note from me: This relates to the earlier comment about the speakers placed around the room to simulate where Keven was located. Having Kevin on the set gave the cast a focus point, not just a general direction for Kevin's location.

~ To achieve convincing visibility underwater in the pool scene, the effects crew made countless experiments with transparent objects and transparent molds of body parts underwater. In the end, the entire body of Kevin Bacon, including hair, was painted black for the scene, because black gave the best contrast underwater.

Note from me: Well now, ain't that ironic? To make Kevin appear invisible, when NO colors of light are reflected or absorbed, they painted him black — when ALL the colors are absorbed! Very Happy

~ Creature effects supervisor Tom Woodruff Jr. played the gorilla Isabel, similar to the alien roles he played in the movies Aliens (1986), Alien 3 (1992), and Alien: Resurrection (1997). To obtain a picture in the heat-sensitive infrared light, crew members warmed up the fur of the gorilla suit with hair dryers.

Note from me: I thought the gorilla was mostly CGI. The Wikipedia article says, "Isabelle was played in part by a man in a gorilla suit . . . " But I can't find info on how much of the footage was CGI.

~ Kevin Bacon wanted the role of Dr. Sebastian Caine badly because he really wanted to portray an invisible man whose own morality decreases.

Note from me: That aspect of this movie is an important part of the novel and the classic original. They just took the idea much further in this version. I hate to say it, but people really can be just as crazy and cruel as Sebastian became . . . even without a psychotic drug to cause it. Smile

~ Isabelle, a member of a normally herbivorous race (gorillas), messily devouring a rat while under the invisibility serum foreshadows how much the serum is really a psychotic serum and the corrosive effects it would have on the human mind.

Note from me: Many people don't realize that gorillas are herbivorous. A convincing argument for becoming a vegetarian is the fact the two strongest animals in Africa — gorillas and elephants — don't eat meat! Very Happy

~ A scene depicting the invisible Sebastian brutally raping his neighbor, then climbing off her as she wept, was deleted, because test audiences, still identifying with Sebastian, seemed to feel it was too early in the movie for him to have descended to that level of evil.

Note from me: I've always wondered if he really did rape the poor woman, or did he perhaps something worse, like kill her. Not showing clear evidence of what he did do makes the audience wonder what actually happened.

~ Shares many similarities with H.G Well's 1897 novel "The Invisible Man". In the novel a young scientist discovers a substance that makes him invisible, but by doing so, it drives him mad and he loses all empathy for other people and can only think of himself. Like in the movie, the gradual change due to the substance to transparency is told very accurately.

It also mentions the problem of seeing through one's eyelids while trying to sleep.


Note from me: Concerning the invisible eyelids, it occurred to me several years ago that an invisible man would have far worse problems than just eyelids that were transparent.

He would, in fact, be totally blind! :shocki:

Think about all the parts of the eye that have to be normal to work properly.







As light enters the eye it passes through both the cornea and the clear fluid behind it. Fortunately, an invisible man would have no trouble with either of those parts, because their supposed to be transparent. Very Happy

But the iris (the colored part) must be opaque, because it contracts and expands to allow the pupil to regulate the amount light entering the eyeball. If the iris is transparent, an invisible man will be blinded by too much light flooding in!

But wait, it gets worse . . .

The lens of the eye doesn't just pass light straight through, it refracts the light waves to focus the image on the retina. If the lens is invisible, it acts like a sheet of glass, not like a lens. So the invisible man would just a see a total blur — even in very low light.

But the smallest amount of light would still be a problem, because the sclera (the tissue that makes up the sphere of the eyeball) must also be opaque to keep out all the light except that which enters through the iris.

And finally there's the retina, which must not be transparent, because the millions of photoreceptors (rods and cones) are needed to react to the light they receive. Then they send signals through the optic nerve to the optic center of the brain so the image can be processed and understood.

Therefore, the whole concept of an invisible man — in every story which has ever included one — has ignored the fact that an invisible pair of eyes would completely useless! Shocked

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trekriffic
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 11, 2020 5:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Logical argument and conclusion argued logically. Bud, you blow me away man with the invisible eyeball problem.
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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 11, 2020 5:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

You're absolutely correct Bud. A truly transparant man would be blind!

However....One way around it would be if an "invisability suit" was developed. For example in chromokey color use of "green or blue screen" a person can be made "invisable" to the camera by wearing a similarly color suit. A totaly light reractive coverall would have the same effect.

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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 11, 2020 6:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Thanks, Steve!

Gord's suggestion is the answer! Invisibility could be achieved "outside" the person's body, because it does not change his physical make up.

The Klingon warships with cloaking devices which "wrap light around the ships" illustrates the concept. They create a "bubble" which encloses the object and makes it invisible to everything around it.

This is basically what Black Holes do! Very Happy

The only problem is that the person inside the bubble is still blind! Light can't reach him, so he's surrounded in darkness! Shocked

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Pow
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 11, 2020 7:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Approximately $50,000,000 of the $95,000,000 budget went to FX.

The movie was shot in chronological order which is not the norm for films.

This was due to the fact that the laboratory set was physically blown up near the film's finale.

HM was one of the rare films that was given permission to be allowed to shoot directly in front of the Pentagon.

I recall reading that when they required scenes of Kirk Douglas in front of the Pentagon for the terrific film "Seven Days In May" that director John Frankenheimer had to do it surreptitiously. The American military definitely did not approve of a film that was about our military usurping the civilian government of the US.

Touchy, touchy.

Elisabeth Shue tore her Achilles tendon six weeks into shooting of HM. The production had to shut down for over seven weeks because of her injury.

And that boys & girls is why movie studios & television networks won't let their actors film very many stunts.

I thought this was an intense & frightening film with marvelous FX.

I do wish that they had been more daring by not having Kevin Bacon's character succumb to the invisibility serum's psychotic properties.

We saw that with H.G.Wells classic novel The Invisible Man.

I'd prefer to have seen Bacon's scientist as someone who is corrupted by the power of the serum and not some chemical element within it.

Who of us could gain a superpower and hope and pray we did not let us alter our decent nature into an evil one?

And aren't Elisabeth & Rhona dishes!
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