Reblogging not just because special effects are cool but because body doubles, stunt doubles, acting doubles, talent doubles — all the people whose faces we’re not supposed to see but whose bodies make movies and tv shows possible — these people need and deserve more recognition. We see their bodies onscreen, delight in the shape and motion of those bodies, but even as we pick apart everything else that goes on both on and behind the screen, I just don’t see the people who are those bodies getting the love and recognition they deserve.
We’re coming to love and recognize actors who work in full-body makeup/costumes, such as Andy Serkis, or actors whose entire performances, or large chunks thereof, are motion captured or digitized (lately sometimes also Andy Serkis!). But people like Leander Deeny play an enormous part in making characters such as Steve Rogers come to life, too. Body language is a huge part of a performance and of characterization. For characters/series with a lot of action, a stunt person can have a huge influence on how we read and interpret a character, such as the influence Heidi Moneymaker has had on the style and choreography of Black Widow’s signature fighting style. Talent doubles breathe believability and discipline-specific nuance into demanding storylines.
Actors are creative people themselves, and incredibly important in building the characters we see onscreen. But if we agree that they’re more than dancing monkeys who just do whatever the directors/writers say, then we have to agree that doubles are more than that, too. Doubles make creative decisions too, and often form strong, mutually supportive relationship with actors.
Image 1: “I would like to thank Kathryn Alexandre, the most generous actor I’ve ever worked opposite.”
Image 2: “Kathryn who’s playing my double who’s incredible.”
[ Orphan Black’s Tatiana Maslany on her acting double, Kathryn Alexandre, two images from a set on themarysue, vialifeofkj ]
I’ve got a relationship that goes back many, many years with Dave. And I would hate for people to just see that image of me and Dave and go, “oh, there’s Dan Radcliffe with a person in a wheelchair.” Because I would never even for a moment want them to assume that Dave was anything except for an incredibly important person in my life.
[ Daniel Radcliffe talking about David Holmes, his stunt double for 2001-2009, who was paralysed while working on the Harry Potter films. David Holmes relates his story here. Gifset viasmeagoled ]
With modern tv- and film-making techniques, many characters are composite creations. The characters we see onscreen or onstage have always been team efforts, with writers, directors, makeup artists, costume designers, special effects artists, production designers, and many other people all contributing to how a character is ultimately realized in front of us. Many different techniques go into something like the creation of Skinny Steve — he’s no more all Leander Deeny than he is all Chris Evans.
But as fandom dissects the anatomy of scenes in ever-increasing detail to get at microexpressions and the minutiae of body language, let’s recognize the anatomy in the scenes, too. I don’t mean to take away from the work Chris Evans or any other actors do (he is an amazing Steve Rogers and I love him tons), but fandom needs to do better in recognizing the bodies, the other people, who make up the characters we love and some of our very favourite shots of them. Chris Evans has an amazing body, but so does Leander Deeny — that body is beautiful; that body mimicked Chris Evans’s motions with amazing, skilled precision; that body moved Steve Rogers with emotion and grace and character.
Fandom should do better than productions and creators who fail to be transparent about the doubles in their productions. On the screen, suspension of disbelief is key and the goal is to make all the effort that went into the production vanish and leave only the product itself behind. But when the film is over and the episode ends, let’s remember everyone who helped make that happen.
[ Sam Hargrave (stunt double for Chris Evans) and James Young (stunt double for Sebastian Stan, and fight choreographer), seen from behind, exchange a fistbump while in costume on the set of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Image vialifeofkj ]
I applaud these guys as much as the suit actors in my japanese tokusatsu shows. They do just as much work.
All of this. Also anyone who says VFX is ruining films needs to learn about film history and then apologise to everyone for being simultaneously ignorant and arrogant.
My name is Calfe & Im too young to know yet what do with my Toung!
So till my Mom say “Dont Do That!” Ill stick it out And lik this cat.
My little Calfe, Im proud of yu– yur living like the Big Cows do. Yur doing just what Mom have said– for yu lik cat, and cat
lik bred.
Bad meme execution. 0/5 stars.
These poems are supposed to be imitative of 17th/18th century middle English poetry (pre-dating dictionaries and formalized spelling conventions) not early 2000s chatspeak, not babytalk.
These poems are also supposed to be in iambic diameter, giving them a pleasing songlike rhythm. The above has inconsistent syllabic structure from line to line.
These attributes are clearly illustrated in the prime:
So tired of people on this website and their flagrant disregard for syllabic structure.
No respect for the craft.
1. first of all, how dare you. i would never, N E V E R, put forth a cow poem with inconsistent syllabic structure. these may not be my finest work, but the iambic dimeter is IMPECCABLE. check my scansion again and come back to me. I guess “know what do yet” is not ideal, but it falls within the constraints of the form. i’m genuinely appalled by this. i have SEEN inconsistent scansion in this meme, i do NOT approve of it and i have NOT done it. how dare you. HOW DAR EYOU!!!
Secondly: it is not absurd to suppose that the linguistic constraints of a Cow Poem would depend on the figure to whom Cow speaks. In the original (and perfect) “i lik the bred,” the narrative cow, like a Chaucerian non-characterized narrator, directs her speech to an imagined and unspecific listener; not to “the men,” who are characters within the poem, but to some more general audience. (See the Canterbury Tales prologue for an example of this voice in action.)
Later, poem_for_your_sprog has Cow address contemporaries like “dog.” You will notice that the voice of Cow varies slightly, in speaking to Dog, from her voice in the original “I lik the bred.” WHY, then, can we not extrapolate that Calfe – who is, after all, a narrator of limited capacity, being only a Baby Cow with a Baby Cow’s simplicity – would have its own variant voice? And why, too, would Cow not speak differently to her own Calfe than she does to an animal peer, or to reverent imaginary auditors? These are experiments within an emerging form – flawed experiments, certainly, but not mistakes ipso facto. Again: HOW DARE YOU!!!!!!!!
my name is Cow, and as yu see, its worth yor tiyme to studye me. but if yu dont like what yu red,
take 2 deep breths
and lik the bred.
I am willing to concede on second reading that the syllabic structure is passable, and in that regard I’ve wrongly impugned the integrity of your work, however I maintain that your Frankenstinian amalgam of fake middle English with fake modern American baby talk is thoroughly unconvincing as either middle English or as modern American baby talk.
It’s an aesthetic failure, IMH(inh)O*
You’ve created the linguistic equivalent of a spork — vitiating two perfectly serviceable tools by attempting to fuse them.
Writing ‘till mothere says / do not do that,’ would have conveyed roughly the same idea without feeling quite so awkwardly anachronistic.
My name is Rave, and I can see you’re bent on pa- tronizing me! ”Anachronistic” frankly seems a misplaced word to use of memes. But since you want to start that fight, let’s step outside and do this right.
Dude: if you want to not get wrecked you’d better get your facts correct.
Like, “Mothere,” friend, is not a word that Geoffrey Chau- cer ever heard.*
We’ve invited some characters to Thanksgiving weekend…
Make the acquaintance of some great new books this weekend with our biggest savings of the year in our holiday sale! Save up to 50% on books sale at the IP Web Store starting Friday, and on Cyber Monday, save 40% on our entire stock of multi-format eBooks with discount code CYBER2017!
This is where NOT YOUR SIDEKICK and its sequel come from, along with SIDESHOW, the 1950’s carnival lesbians book!
There are like ten things I want from here! But I just bought a heap of books, so. Everyone else go buy stuff. Unfortunately, they only ship print copies to the US and Canada, so if you live in the rest of the world, see if you can find a buddy who you can get them shipped to who’ll send them on for you if you cover the shipping cost. (That’s what I tend to do.)
I know what she’s actually saying is super important but my first thought was, “There’s a dvd edition with commentary tracks? With EMMA THOMPSON doing commentary? I wants it, precioussssss…”
knitting in the dark 
