{"id":46536,"date":"2025-08-05T07:30:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T07:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/46536\/"},"modified":"2025-08-05T07:30:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T07:30:13","slug":"how-alison-brie-dave-francos-faces-merge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/46536\/","title":{"rendered":"How Alison Brie-Dave Franco’s Faces Merge"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Editor\u2019s note: The following interview contain spoilers for \u201cTogether<\/a>.\u201d]<\/p>\n

These days, the internet is littered with face-merging apps as the ability to blend photos of two different people has become even more prevalent with the rise of artificial intelligence. <\/p>\n

And it\u2019s understandable that some audience members might think of those consumer apps when they see the last shot of the body horror \u201cTogether<\/a>,\u201d as Millie (Alison Brie<\/a>) and Tim (Dave Franco<\/a>) finally become one, but \u201cTillie\u201d (the \u201cTogether\u201d team\u2019s nickname for the Brie\/Franco merger) was far more carefully considered and skillfully executed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe amount of screenings I\u2019ve gone to now, and people come up to me and say, \u2018Was that AI<\/a> at the end?\u2019 It\u2019s just so crazy that people assume AI is now the cause. We\u2019ve used absolutely none of it on this film<\/a>,\u201d said writer\/director Michael Shanks when he was a guest on this week\u2019s episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast<\/a>. \u201cAs a VFX guy, as somebody that\u2019s worked with all these teams that put in so much work, it\u2019s so frustrating now that people look at something that looks interesting or good, and they [assume] just a computer made it. It\u2019s like, \u2018No, no, no, no, no.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"(Left<\/a> \"BOYS<\/a> <\/p>\n

While VFX powerhouse Framestore<\/a> did the heavy CGI build for the climatic hallway scene of the married (on- and off-screen) couple<\/a>\u2019s bodies being drawn into each other, and the film\u2019s earlier brushes with togetherness relied primarily on the practical work of prosthetics designer Larry Van Duynhoven, the final \u201cTillie\u201d shot was the product of makeup and careful old school compositing work by VFX supervisor Genevieve Camilleri.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not \u2018The Substance<\/a>,\u2019 we\u2019re not going to get a crazy monster<\/a> opening the door. It had to be a regular person that you would walk by in the street and not notice,\u201d said Shanks.<\/p>\n

\"TOGETHER,Michael Shanks, Alison Brie<\/a>, and Dave Franco<\/a> on the set of \u2018Together\u2019Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

Camilleri\u2019s challenge was significant, making someone who could pass as just another small town citizen living their life, but also be someone the audience immediately recognized as an amalgamation of Brie and Franco.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn pre-production, Gen just went up and took photos of Dave and Alison and then in Nuke, she made a bunch of variations on which elements to take from which of their faces, to figure out what is essential to seeing both of them in that final image,\u201d said Shanks.<\/p>\n

The baseline starting point would be shooting Brie with a wig. The makeup team recreated Franco\u2019s eyebrows and put them on Brie\u2019s actual face. Tillie also has Brie\u2019s natural eyes, but with brown contacts to match Franco\u2019s eye color.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter we shot the scene with Alison, we moved in Dave, with a bunch of dots on his face,\u201d said Shanks. \u201cGen has taken his jaw and his lips and stuck that onto the bottom [of the face]. It\u2019s really a combination of makeup and, you wouldn\u2019t call it CGI, because nothing\u2019s computer-generated, but it\u2019s compositing.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Neon release, \u201cTogether\u201d is now in theaters.<\/p>\n

To hear Michael Shanks\u2019s full interview, subscribe to the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast on\u00a0Apple<\/a>,\u00a0Spotify<\/a>, or your favorite podcast platform.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[Editor\u2019s note: The following interview contain spoilers for \u201cTogether.\u201d] These days, the internet is littered with face-merging apps…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46537,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[62,363,49,48,366,75,1554,31810,2977,16022,32473],"class_list":["post-46536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-ai","tag-alison-brie","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-dave-franco","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-filmmaker-toolkit-podcast","tag-interviews","tag-together","tag-top-of-the-line"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}