Blade Runner 2049 Behind-The-Scenes Video Reveals VFX Magic Behind Recreating Rachel

Nowadays, it's often hard to distinguish great visual effects from real people and objects. The technology to bring characters to life even if the actors who played them are deceased, keeps getting better. For instance, Grand Moff Tarkin in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story faced criticism for using CG to represent an actor that has long been dead. Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049 was able to bring back the same look of a character introduced in the original 1982 film. 

In the sequel, we saw Sean Young as the replicant Rachel but instead of bringing back the actual Sean Young and de-aging her, the younger version was created entirely using visual effects. A featurette was released to show us how they magically recreated her look using VFX and the number of details they put into recreating a digital double is incredible. From her facial expressions and the way she blinks, it's almost as if they created an exact clone of her. 

The Moving Picture Company (MPC) even brought in the real Sean Young so they can scan her facial movements and use her as a frame of reference to recreate the subtle movements of her younger self. 

Watch the video below: 

Watch: A Woman Sees The Digital Ghosts Of Her Past in This Swedish Sci-Fi Short In The Gap