Summary

• Director David Lowery explains the de-aging of Robert Redford in The Old Man & the Gun, using unconventional methods like cutouts and footage from other movies.
• Lowery wanted to showcase Forrest Tucker's history as an escape artist, so they needed a younger Redford. They used a cutout to achieve this effect.
• The Old Man & the Gun took a different approach to de-aging compared to other films, choosing a simple and low-budget method.

The outlandish de-aging of Robert Redford in The Old Man & the Gun is explained by the film’s director. Directed by David Lowery, The Old Man & the Gun is an action comedy based on the true story of septuagenarian Forrest Tucker’s escape from the San Quentin prison and a series of heists he embarked on following his breakout. As an independent film, The Old Man & the Gun faced one notable VFX challenge: the de-aging of then 82-year-old Redford for a key sequence in the film.

In a conversation with Corridor Crew, Lowery breaks down what went into de-aging Redford.

In making The Old Man & The Gun, Lowery wanted to “illustrate [the] history” of Forrest Tucker’s long-term legacy as a “consummate escape artist.” In order to do so, Lowery and the production team would need a younger Redford. In some moments, the team accomplished this by using footage from other movies. In one shot, however, The Old Man & the Gun deployed a shockingly simple method: using a cutout of Redford’s young face. Check out the full quote from Lowery below:

Lowery: The character is a consummate escape artist. He broke out of San Quentin, he broke out of pretty much every prison he’s every been put into. And I wanted to have a sequence that illustrates that history. Most of the movie is taking place in the twilight years of this character’s life. But I wanted to showcase his legacy. And so we needed a younger Robert Redford. If you watch this, there’s a number of ways in which we achieved this. And one of them is one of the things that I will you know put on my gravestone as being happiest to get away with. So that one is a de-aging effect. Can you guess how we did it? [. . .] So there’s another part later on where we pull some footage from a movie called The Chase in which Robert Redford conveniently at a younger age broke out of prison. But this one is something we shot.

Corridor Crew: Is somebody wearing a cutout that’s been printed out?

Lowery: 100%. We went to Kinkos, printed out a photo of Robert Redford from another movie, and cut it out, and scotch taped it to someone’s face.

The Old Man & The Gun Took A Different Approach To Controversial De-Aging

Using this uncouth de-aging method means that this scene from The Old Man & the Gun is actually a two-dimensional de-aging. Rather than using CGI or superimposing an older film with cinematic depth of field, Lowery abandoned the need for a third dimension in his choice to use a simple cutout. While a low-budget way of de-aging an actor in 2018, The Old Man & The Gun, as Lowery mentions, managed to “get away with” this simple trick.

The Old Man & the Gun is far from the only film to de-age actors in recent years. The following year, Martin Scorsese’s film The Irishman featured CGI de-aging of Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Al Pacino. Years before, reverse-aging parable The Curious Case of Benjamin Button also digitally aged Brad Pitt down to an infant.

Both The Irishman and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button received criticism for their digital de-aging being uncanny and unrealistic looking. Looking at these films in contrast to The Old Man & the Gun thus poses an interesting challenge to the default to CGI that many films make for such VFX dilemmas. The Old Man & the Gun’s paper cutout would not work for a prolonged sequence, but the multiple non-CGI methods of aging go to show that sometimes unconventional means can accomplish able–or sometimes better–ends when it comes to idiosyncratic visual effects needs.

Source: Corridor Crew/YouTube