People can't figure out if the 'Cats' movie is live-action or CGI — here's what's actually going on
- After the trailer for the upcoming movie adaptation of "Cats" the musical dropped on Friday, people were left wondering how the filmmakers were able to transform human actors into their feline characters.
- While the film appears to be a mix of CGI and live-action, filmmakers revealed in a behind-the-scenes featurette that they used something called "digital fur technology" to transform actors into cats.
- According to filmmakers, the technology creates "the most perfect covering of fur" on the actors, but people have mixed feelings after seeing the trailer.
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The "Cats" trailer received mixed reactions from people after it was released on Friday, with many wondering how exactly human actors were able to be transformed into their feline characters.
According to a behind-the-scenes featurette released on Wednesday, filmmakers were utilizing a new combination of CGI and motion-capture technology to bring the "Cats" characters to life.
"We've used digital fur technology to create the most perfect covering of fur," one of the filmmakers said in the featurette.
In early April, behind-the-scenes footage from the film was presented at CinemaCon, and showed the actors wearing "motion capture suits" and VFX dots on their faces. According to IndieWire, "the VFX will add fur onto the actors and make their faces appear more cat-like," which seems in line with the "digital fur technology" mentioned by filmmakers in last week's featurette.
It seems the "digital fur" technology touted by filmmakers is a combination of motion-capture and CGI, with the sets being live-action, for the most part.
Despite filmmakers' best efforts, however, the digital fur actually comes off as more distracting than innovative. Considering the fact that most of the cats seen in the trailer have human faces and bodies, with fur, ears, and tails as their only feline attributes, the whole thing feels a bit off — and people took notice.
Even though it seems that filmmakers used pretty cutting-edge technology to give human actors feline characters, many felt that the "digital fur" was distracting and disturbing.
So tell me how the new Cats movie looks exactly like this bonkers painting I have on my wall that I got from a con two years ago pic.twitter.com/BIrLhzvScl
— Neil Floyd (@NeilTFloyd) July 19, 2019
the entire cast of the cats movie looks like Hermione when she accidentally put cat hair in her polyjuice potion pic.twitter.com/7GIHaks2mM
— emma (@lemurlovr96) July 19, 2019
How does CGI keep getting worse? 1999 vs 2019... #CatsMovie pic.twitter.com/mHg3Fsp1M6
— Matador (@TheLoneMatador) July 19, 2019
#CatsMovie looks weird because the actors still have human noses. That’s all (oh and they’re weirdly small). They should have taken a page out of the Hunger Games’ book and adapted their faces to actually look catlike rather than just replacing their hair with cat ears. pic.twitter.com/KF5drrM7VR
— Aaron R Hale (@OverdoseOfAaron) July 21, 2019
Was the CGI for #CatsMovie done by medieval monks? Same energy. #CatsTrailer pic.twitter.com/8PeWpm6n5G
— Megan Rosenfeld (@MeganRosenfeld) July 18, 2019
IT'S EVEN MORE TERRIBLE THAN I EVER COULD HAVE DREAMED!!! WHY ARE THEIR FACES FLOATING ON THE CGI CAT BODIES? https://t.co/vhZrEzsKxU
— David Mack (@davidmackau) July 18, 2019
And some felt that the original manner of styling the characters — which involves costumes and makeup instead of CGI — would have been more effective.
There, I fixed it!#CatsMovie pic.twitter.com/VjJJV8NqHD
— Kata ???? (@KataDoodle) July 19, 2019
...so what was wrong with the traditional cat costumes that THIS had to happen.. just NO.. #CatsMovie #CatsTrailer pic.twitter.com/dpOai0UPKc
— A I D E N (@kWkaiju) July 19, 2019
i think i've pinpointed what it is that bothers me so much abt the cgi cat faces and it's that the bway makeup gives them like...cat noses and other artistic stuff to make them look like cats but the movie's just. normal human face w fur and whiskers and it's Upsetting to look at pic.twitter.com/icO0J2UfG8
— please watch tangled the series (@rapunzelvangogh) July 20, 2019
"Cats" will premiere in December 2019. You can watch the trailer here.
- Read more:
- Here's the star-studded cast of the 'Cats' movie and who they're playing
- The first trailer for the movie based on the 'Cats' musical just dropped, and you'll want to prepare yourself for something special
- The best memes and jokes about the puzzling trailer for the new 'Cats' movie
- Someone put the creepy music from 'Us' over the new 'Cats' trailer and people think it's much more fitting
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