Cultured Views

Heath Ledger to complete his final film…with some computer help of course

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When actor Heath Ledger died last week he was still completing work on The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, a $30 million fantasy movie directed by Terry Gilliam.  The actor was the star of the film and the project is just about completed so ways are being sought to film around Heath in order to release the work.  So what will they do? How do you complete a film when the star actor has died before it is finished?

There are many ways now in fact and of course computer wizardry can create an alternative Heath and slot him into the action; a little bit ‘hmmmm’ if you ask me even though it would be done very well, but then they could rework the script so that his part is written out at some stage or the director could do what was always done in the past - employ a body double for Heath.

Actors dying during the making of a film is nothing new at all and many Hollywood films have been released with a ‘double’ playing the part of the deceased star, usually being filmed from the back. I will be interested to see what they do here in Heath Ledger’s case; in my opinion the film will be a hit and if they create a computer generated Heath Ledger for his final scenes I cannot help but wonder if this will give the movie a morbid kind of curiousity value. People undoubtedly will go and see the film to play ’spot the real Heath’ in the scenes. And that would be kind of…well, not nice, especially for his family. I would suggest the script be rewritten to accommodate his absence. There was only one Heath Ledger and it should be left at that.

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