The Science Behind ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’

Posted by Paige MacGregor (paige@filmschoolrejects.com) on February 13, 2009

Have you ever wondered how makeup artists go about making an actor or actress look as though he or she has aged 30 or 40 years? Probably not, given the fact that until recently most Hollywood age-jobs were so horrible that you could tell exactly how they had made the actors look older—with bad makeup.

It would appear, however, that The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which received 13 Oscar nominations, including one for Best Makeup, exemplifies the very best of what the film industry has to offer in regards to false aging. In fact, the whole process of creating the characters of Benjamin and Daisy, each in their various stages of aging—either from young to old, or old to young, as the case may be—is detailed rather impressively using all the glory of modern-day multimedia on a Web site titled The Science Behind The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

The Web site also details the creation of some of the film’s landscapes, including 1917 New Orleans, 1938 New York, and 1954 Paris, France using the latest and greatest computer graphic technology combined with both on-location and in-studio film footage. If you’re at all interested in theatrical makeup, computer graphics or special effects, we highly recommend that you take a look at the site. We spent a good deal of time perusing the videos, sketches and photographs there and haven’t even seen all there is to see.

Read more articles by Paige MacGregor