It’s not every day you’re asked to bring dead celebrities back from the grave, but in our line of work, it’s becoming more common. 

It’s something we at Framestore were asked to do when we resurrected Audrey HepburnTM for Galaxy’s chauffeur commercial.

Audrey represents heritage, classiness and elegance. So from a strategic and creative point of view, it made sense for Galaxy to communicate its “silk, not cotton” branding through these qualities. What was less clear, however, was just how we were meant to recreate an iconic and globally recognised face when the original footage exists at a resolution incompatible with today’s high standards.

 

We ended up completely recreating Audrey’s face in computer graphics (CG) – a feat never before achieved at such close-up scale. If this doesn’t sound like a big deal, it is. Replicating a photorealistic 100% CG human that stands up to close inspection is the mecca of visual effects (VFX). So this project was an industry first and took us to the edge of what’s possible.

Skin, eyes and facial hair are just too “perfect” when rendered through a computer. Crucial human subtleties, like the flicker of an eye, can also look robotic when computer-generated. So why go 100% CG?

We couldn’t take the easy option of filming a lookalike and disguising mismatched nuances through shadows and camera angles because, first, Audrey was the absolute star of the show and there was no hiding her in a dark corner; second, as the ultimate symbol of beauty, the likelihood of casting a near-perfect match was nil. So we went the whole hog and digitally recreated every millimetre of her face...

Read more about this article on TheGardian.com