Right, so the movie Together just released last week. And it’s already generating a lot of chatter, especially about the ending. The film follows Tim and Millie, played by the real-life couple Dave Franco and Alison Brie. The couple face an unexplained force that threatens to merge their bodies in the most terrifying way imaginable. Basically, it’s creepy, gross, and wildly inventive horror that sticks with you. But the final scene of the film is even more bizarre, and the director of Together has now explained how it was filmed.
By the end of the film, Tim and Millie realise the only way to deal with this mysterious force is to give in to it. And what we see next… well, it’s unforgettable. The film presents a completely new person, a strange hybrid of both characters, opening the door to Millie’s visiting parents. Audiences have been left both horrified and amazed, and many immediately assumed some sort of AI magic was involved.
So, how was the final scene actually filmed?
via NEON
Speaking on Indiewire’s Filmmaker Toolkit Podcast, director Michael Shanks explained that the finale was achieved entirely with practical effects and compositing. There was no AI involved at all.
“The amount of screenings I’ve gone to now, and people come up to me and say, ‘Was that AI at the end?’” he said. “We’ve used absolutely none of it on this film. As a VFX guy, as somebody that’s worked with all these teams that put in so much work, it’s so frustrating now that people look at something that looks interesting or good and just assume a computer made it. It’s like, ‘No, no, no, no, no.’”
Basically, Genevieve Camilleri, the film’s VFX supervisor, photographed both Brie and Franco before filming and created test composites in Nuke. They experimented with which features to combine to get the “Tillie” character right. “She made a bunch of variations on which elements to take from which of their faces. It’s to figure out what is essential to seeing both of them in that final image,” Shanks said.
On set, Shanks filmed Alison first, then Dave with tracking dots on his face. Camilleri layered Dave’s jaw and lips onto Alison’s upper face, blending the makeup with compositing to create the seamless, horrifying hybrid.
And, as Shanks put it, “It’s really a combination of makeup and. You wouldn’t call it CGI, because nothing’s computer-generated, but it’s compositing.”
That final scene will haunt you even longer now that you know it was all actually real. So wild!
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