Three of the main characters were the same actor, and yet there are shots with all of them in the same scene. When I saw this as a young adult I didn't even notice that Mike Myers was playing three roles and was genuinely dumbfounded years later when I found out.
How did they do those scenes so seamlessly?
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Compositing has been a thing for, like, forever, going from cutting and gluing film together to, well, having lookalike instead of the real actor in certain shots...
I'm mostly weirded by how you found out only now. I guess go and have fun looking up "Captain Disillusion" youtube channel.
One of the lucky 10 000
I love Captain D, the way he takes apart a scene in Blender is an art form in itself.
I guess the question I'm asking is, normally when editing comes into play you can sort of notice it through one way or another. There's an uncannyness to it that makes it jarring, whereas in Austin Powers I never once clocked on that I was watching the same person. Did they use really sophisticated techniques for this? Was the campiness and comedic tone of the film itself a good distraction from any editing goofs?
If it was a more sombre film, would I notice it more I wonder?
Edit: @Aurenkin mentions the ping-pong scene in the 2019 Moon film, which has a more mature tone and the editing there was definitely flawless.
That really helps by distracting the viewer away from the small give aways.
They also did a really good job with the interactions and editing so it flows smoothly.
I personally have never noticed flaws when such tecniques are employed, but it may be just immersion doing its job. I've never heard of Austin Power being singled out for its special effects...
Red Dwarf was doing same actor multiple roles for a long long time. There are many episodes to check out, but one of the best examples is Stasis Leak (3 of each character on screen), another good example is Me^2^ (Rimmer and Rimmer). They were doing this in 1988.
My guess: For the first version of the scene they'll have someone saying the other character's lines the way they should be played so that dialogue looks natural. Once one version has been filmed it's not hard to play that version's audio while filming the second version so the actor is actually hearing himself play the other character.
Here's a Captain Disillusion VFXcool episode about this special effect, specifically as applied to Back to the Future (which innovated having a split screen with a moving camera): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhNDsPMaK_A
Corridor Crew is also an excellent YouTube channel for industry professionals commenting on how effects are done
Eddie Murphy, featuring...Eddie Murphy.
https://youtu.be/koTVfm31QUY