{"id":44577,"date":"2025-08-05T02:21:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T02:21:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/44577\/"},"modified":"2025-08-05T02:21:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T02:21:12","slug":"together-director-explains-how-that-wild-final-shot-was-made-without-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/44577\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Together’ Director Explains How that Wild Final Shot Was Made (Without AI)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ever since its debut at Sundance earlier this year, fans of horror have had Michael Shanks\u2019 new film, Together,\u00a0on their radars. Neon picked it up<\/a> out of the festival and, after some really creepy trailers and marketing<\/a>, opened it in theaters last weekend with solid results. It\u2019s a provocative, surprising, and incredibly disgusting movie with an ending viewers will not soon forget. An ending that was achieved through traditional methods of visual effects and without a hint of AI.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Io9spoiler\"<\/p>\n

As per that spoiler warning above, we\u2019re about to explain what happens at the end of Together, so\u00a0if you haven\u2019t seen it and want to, we urge you to look away right now.<\/p>\n

In the film Tim and Millie (Dave Franco and Alison Brie) get infected by this unexplained force that wants their bodies to become one. The how and why behind it is pretty weird, mysterious, and fun, but eventually, the couple realize the only way to defeat this force is to give in to it. And so we watch as their bodies combine from two into one, and, in the film\u2019s final shot, a completely new person, the amalgamation of both of them, opens the door to Millie\u2019s visiting parents.<\/p>\n

Speaking on Indiewire\u2019s Filmmaker Toolkit Podcast<\/a>, Shanks explained that both the blending of the bodies and the new character were achieved without the use of AI. \u201cThe amount of screenings I\u2019ve gone to now, and people come up to me and say, \u2018Was that AI 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,\u201d Shanks said. \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

Instead, the \u201cTillie\u201d character was created using makeup and visual effects compositing by Genevieve Camilleri. \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 Shanks said.<\/p>\n

Then, on the day, the director shot the scene with both actors. \u201cAfter we shot the scene with Alison, we moved in Dave, with a bunch of dots on his face,\u201d he continued. \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

Stepping back a bit from the specifics of Together, it\u2019s wild that Shanks has to defend that his film didn\u2019t use generative AI. If it had come out even just 3-4 years ago, it would not have even been a thought. We all would\u2019ve just assumed it was one of them dressing up as the other or visual effects. Ultimately, it\u2019s kind of both. But the whole conversation changed when we began living in a world where you can put \u201cDave Franco and Alison Brie as one person\u201d into a program and get something back in seconds. Basically, props to Shanks for doing something right, working hard at it, and making something memorable. And boo to the world for making us forget that the real magic of filmmaking comes from the human touch.<\/p>\n

Together is now in theaters.<\/p>\n

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel<\/a>, Star Wars<\/a>, and Star Trek<\/a> releases, what\u2019s next for the DC Universe on film and TV<\/a>, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ever since its debut at Sundance earlier this year, fans of horror have had Michael Shanks\u2019 new film,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44578,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[11861,11862,96,23889,2839,11863,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-44577","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-alison-brie","9":"tag-dave-franco","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-michael-shanks","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-together","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}