Sunday, May 6. 2007

Debunkery: I demonstrate how Emma Watson's Boobs Were NOT Altered for the IMAX Poster

UPDATE: I've added more explanation and examples at the bottom. I missed out on the buzz a couple days ago surrounding the latest attempt at sleazy Hollywood poster boob-enhancement, which this time purportedly boosted Emma Watson's chestage to more mammoth propertions. The article I linked to has nearly 2,000 "diggs," so you know it's a big deal. Here's the image shamelessly stolen from posterwire.com:

Click to view full size
Never one to miss an opportunity to ogle Emma Watson's chest with impunity, I decided to do a little "forensic investigating" to see if there is any explanation that's a bit less sleazy. After many cries of "enhance!" were heard inside my office, I suddenly realized what happened. See, I was having trouble getting the purportedly "before and after" images to line up properly. Things seemed skewed, shadows didn't seem to fall properly. Then I noticed the young bloke on the right's tie, and how it seemed to be at a completely different angle in the two shots. "It's almost as if this shot was taken with two cameras at the same time," I said to myself. "Why on earth would they do that??" Then I noticed the overlayed text on the "after" image, and how it proclaimed that some of the movie would in fact be projected in 3-D iin the IMAX theaters. Eureka! Knowing that 3-D movies are made by filming them with two cameras strategically placed a small distance apart, everything suddenly made sense. What they're calling the "after" image is actually the shot captured by the camera that was closest to Emma, giving it a view to more of the "profile" of Emma's boob. The "before" image is the camera further away with a more "head-on" shot, making it look flatter. Here it is as a 3-D anaglyph (that I just generated in The Gimp):
Hopefully you have some 3-D glasses around (mine say Spy-Kids 3D on them) to view this with, but I assure you that I've gotten to the bottom of it. There's no conspiracy here. No one is trying to enhance Emma (nor would the be able to if they tried; she is already a textbook example of perfection as-is), the poster designers just didn't realize that when they 2-D-ified the 3-D promotional poster (I haven't seen said poster, but I am deducing its existence based on my research), the old one used the "left" frame, and the new one used the "right" frame. I'm sure that no one even thought of this, not realizing that two frames captured mere inches apart would cause any problems. Sadly, with thousands of internet fanboys nitpicking, it can make a huge difference. Anyway, spread the word. No one is trying to pull anything, it's just an oversight. Oh, and if you've seen the 3-D poster I'm postulating the existence of, I'd sure like to hear about it. UPDATE: Some people don't quite understand, so I quickly drew up this top-view approximation of what's going on. It is not to scale.
Does that make more sense? UPDATE: Apparently not... I thought the 3-D anaglyph would be self-explanatory, but sadly nobody actually owns the glasses required to see it. So I tried to draw a simple drawing explaining it, but that didn't do it either. See, in the drawing, the red/blue lines are meant to show what your eyes are doing when looking at a 3-D scene -- not the cameras. 3-D is all just trickery designed to fool our brains into seeing flat images the way we see objects in the real world. In the real world, each eye sees things from a slightly different perspective, and our brains calculate differences in those perspectives to tell us how far apart things are, how round, etc. With a 3-D anaglyph, an entire scene is presented encoded in colors so that the special glasses can "filter" the view such that each eye is seeing a completely different view. But the magic really happens when the eyes start to focus at different parts of the picture. The brain is usually fairly convinced that what it's seeing is an actual scene, so your eyes begin to move about the image as they would in a normal everyday view of the world. If a 3-D image is made properly, you can focus your eyes on one element of the composition, then move to one "deeper" into the image, or "farther away" from the camera, never breaking your brain's sense of 3-D. The 3-D anaglyph above is simply just the "before" image set as the left eye's view, and the "after" image set as the right. Nothing else was done to them, yet the 3-D encoding is perfectly realized when you put on the glasses. This doesn't happen on accident folks. My drawing above was demonstrating what your eyes would do if you'd look over at Emma's side of the composition in such a 3-D scene, to show that the closer eye would see her breast with more of a profile, and the further away one would be more head-on, thus explaining the difference in the curve of her breast and stomach. And if your eyes would behave that way, so would the two cameras. I decided that perhaps a better explanation would be to try to take 2 similar shots myself. Now, I didn't take these at the same time, and I had to just sort of estimate the exact amount to shift the camera, so it isn't perfect -- but I think you'll get the idea. The subject of the photo was not altered in any way, the only differece between the two shots is shifting the camera about 2" laterally between taking them.

Click to enlarge
Obviously the effect is more pronounced due to the much smaller scale and the inaccurate camera movement, but I think this really concretes what I'm saying. If I had more scale action figures to play with -- and a lot more time -- I could set up the entire shot, but that's way more work than I'm prepared to put in. How am I doing here? Any more takers?
Posted by jer@nyquil.org at 10:15





blog comments powered by Disqus

Pre-Disqus Comments:

2007-05-04 17:45
marcus132 said:
Brilliant. If I had a Researcher of the Century award, I'd give you the whole thing.
#1
2007-05-04 18:04
jer said:
Thanks :) It's funny, my spidey senses were telling me it was BS before I even had any idea what was going on. I was halfway to giving up when I had that traing of thought regarding two cameras... I was literally like "naaaw, that'd be retarded," before the little light went on. I LOVE that little light, and wish it would go on more often.
#2
2007-05-04 18:54
greatbiggary said:
Cool, but I must go with the crowd. These look very edited to me, but that's entirely normal now. These types of posters are created with all separate elements, shot separately in the studio, imported into Photoshop, typically on Macs, with each element arranged, scaled, and heavily tweaked by artists for hours with large Wacom tablets, or Cintiq screens. They'd never bother to light a group of people like that, or position them all around on marks, and apple boxes to get them all in the right spot, especially with all the other stuff that has to go on for a photo shoot. They always want full control over every element these days, meaning each kid was brought into a studio, and spent a few hours getting made up, stood in front of a camera, maybe with fans blowing, and makeup/hair/wardrobe people waiting out of frame to doctor them up between shots. The lighting would be specific for each kid to highlight their features. Note Ron is hatchet lit for ruggedness, Harry is butterfly lit to make him pretty, and Hermione... well, I don't know what they were doing there exactly. Moody, I guess. I don't quite agree with her light in terms of beautifying her, but at least it's not harsh. They'd need lights all over the place to set this whole thing up up, and they'd never bother with that. They'd lose all their control. Actual group photos end up looking like this: http://www.hp-lexicon.org/images/film/op/DA.jpg That said, her hair is pretty different in each shot. This could be the hair person coming in between 2 shots and ruffling her hair up for a different look, or more likely IMO, especially with so many other things being similar, the left was the original, and the right was edited in Photoshop to lighten up the hair underneath (especially look by the neck), to stamp hair in new directions, and to erase out sections to make it look more lively. I don't think they enhanced her chest much, but I do think they pulled her stomach in, and maybe angled the top of her breast a bit to make it a bit more exaggeratedly feminine. All the clothing has the look of heavy work to enhance light and shadow, and homogenize it. Another good example of why they want full control over separate elements - Keith Richards was recently removed by Disney from all print media advertising the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie, because he made a remark about snorting his father's ashes with some drugs, and that freaked Disney's PR out. They went back to their PSD files, removed his layer, and either shuffled the rest around to fill in the hole, or they inserted the next character in line into the empty spot. They also can reuse these separate pieces however, and bow to the whims of producers, directors, company heads, and whoever else, by having complete images of every person that can be shuffled, rotated, stacked in a different layer order, flipped horizontally, scaled, dodged/burned, and otherwise edited easily. I've watched a few of these kinds of things be created, like video game box/manual art, and even some movie posters, and so much is built in by the artist. Not only do they heavily tweak every element, they import pieces from everywhere to fill in things. Parts of things in this poster could even be from stock photography, like clothing. The background fog and light is an artist painting on a back layer. The fog that fades in over the background kid's feet is a layer in front of them. Anyway, without further rambling, I think the art was handed to an artist, with all the stock footage, in a big zip file, and they were told to punch it up, and make it look good for the IMAX poster, and they had the most fun tweaking Emma. I can almost hear the producer, or director, or art director saying "sexier her up a bit," or imagine the artist taking things into their own hands. That's my take.
#3
2007-05-04 18:59
marcus132 said:
Still, that 3D is pretty neat, huh? Those kids are coming right at me!
#3.1
2007-05-05 09:33
jer said:
That's really the dealbreaker; if some Hollywood photo retoucher just went and bumped up her boobs, then the before and after wouldn't make such perfect 3-D when combined. I didn't do anything to manipulate them, I just set the "old" picture as the left eye and the "new" picture as the right eye and combined them, resulting in a 3-D image with all the dep[th levels perfectly set. You can follow the depth all the way back to Harry, with each other star incrementally further back as you go. That doesn't happen on accident.
#3.1.1
2007-05-04 19:20
jer said:
Yeah, I'm not saying that there isnt photoshop trickery, but that is CLEARLY a staged 3-D shot. Rather than line them all up like that I would block out the finished composition and then light and shoot each actor individually. Then compositing the layers together will give you nice individual lighting but still preserve the 3-D you get with the dual cameras. Are you doubting that those shots are two separate camera angles? Or is the crux of your argument that staging it would be a pain in the ass?
#3.2
2007-05-04 19:35
jer said:
the basis of my argument is that two camera angles acceptably explains the boob size and the angle disparities between each individual in the shot. The biggest differences in the shot are rons elbow and emma's boobs. lay them overtop eachother and flip them back and forth... the wrinkles on Ron's coat are EXACTLY the same, just from a slightly different angle) Then when you combine the fact that the ones closer to the camera have incrementally more disparity with the fact that when you anaglyph them you get PERFECT 3-D, it all seems to perfectly add up. Could they have grown her boobs? Sure, they did it to Kiera and Scarlett, I sure wouldn't put it past them. I just have trouble justifying it when the 3-D theory perfectly explains everything. Plus, if you go moving elements around, you would break the 3-D. As for the hair, you're just not thinking three dimensionally. those little squiggly bits above her shoulder on the "bigger boobs" shot would be hidden behind the straighter longer bits on the "smaller" boobs shot if my 3-D theory was correct, and I maintain that it is :)
#3.2.1
2007-08-12 22:14
Bonnie said:
1000% agree.
#3.3
2007-05-06 05:55
Quatto said:
Sorry, can't buy it. If your red and blue drawings were accurate (Which I can understand) the other characters would not be in the same positions in the picture. The blue blue lined position would then emphasize more of Harry's left side, simply from it's angle against his position. Nice try but it's bunk.
#4
2007-05-06 10:28
jer said:
Well, I just failed to get across what I was trying to with the drawing. the cameras capture the entire scene, but your eyes look at Emma like in my drawing. Also, Harry would e about the least-affected member of this photo, as he's almost at the deepest point in the scene. The most obvious bits are the ones with angularity to them, like Neville's collar/tie over on the right and Emma's boobs/hair.
#4.1
2008-01-20 05:28
Anonymous said:
how come emma's hair is different, and her face and body has been retouched, and notice how ron hasnt moved at all? surely his position would change if it was for 3-D
#4.1.1
2007-05-06 11:43
marcus132 said:
Thanks for using an action figure this time.
#5
2007-05-06 11:58
jer said:
hah! You’ve got it bookmarked, I see… :) Really though, I’m not sure which is worse. I can no longer say that I’ve never spent an hour photographing an action figure to which I’ve applied my own plasticine boobs.
#5.1
2007-05-07 10:13
Krum said:
Emma's already hot, no enhancements needed!
#6
2007-05-07 13:49
BigE said:
Everyone seems worried about Ms. Watson quitting the series. Keep dwell on this boob crap and you won't be helping matters one bit!
#7
2007-05-08 18:54
B.D. Riley said:
Great investigation! I think it is an altered 3d image. The depths don't seem quite right... there are too many flat planes; reminds me of those promotional posters for the 3d episode of the TV show Medium if you saw those. They had pop-out effect but didn't look at all like a real 3d photo. I think they had some lackey 3d-ify these from one (or perhaps more) original photos.
#8
2007-05-12 14:27
Me said:
Not debunked. Aside from nature, nothing happens "accidentally". Bogus theories are usually very convoluted such as this 3d anaglyph explanation. This can be easily explained in one word: marketing.
#9
2007-05-12 17:42
jer said:
I guess we are arguing the same thing then, because I submit that it's impossible to accidentally get accurate, perfect 3-D out of a photo and some monkey's photoshopping. I never claimed that her breasts look bigger on accident. That happens as a result of camera placement.
#9.1
2007-05-20 03:03
Geoff8 said:
This is definitive. Your 3D anaglyph and the two picture clearly illustrate that it is the same shot with two camera angles. Personally i dont buy the whole photoshop thing especially that they would try to stich together all the cast members from individual shoots. It would be too hard to keep all the elements controlled. And plus it's not like they wouldn't spend the time, money and effort to get it done in group with lots of different lights just so that the shadows would line up correctly and the lights would look somewhat lke they were all just coming from the source behind Harry. They may have photoshopped in elements of the environment but to photoshop the cast? Personally I don't think that they'd be stupid enough to try to photoshop things like that. They know that there are bloggers that nitpick everything... like these pictures and they also know that there are millions of fanboys trying to get off to her picture that would notice changes like these. But that's just me. P.S. Good work figuring it out and making all the diagrams for those who refuse to not be mad at WB for photoshopping.
#10
2007-05-24 11:51
JuliusOcean said:
oh darn get a life !!
#11
2007-05-25 20:00
Geoff8 said:
we have lives they just bore us to the point that we compare teenagers chests on different posters
#11.1
2007-05-25 20:06
jer said:
At least we aren't commenting on someone's blog about it... oh wait ;) Thanks for the nice things you said in the previous comment. I meant to send you mail before, but it kind of slipped through the cracks.
#11.1.1
2007-09-02 09:30
SB said:
One big problem with your otherwise thorough investigation -- the 3-D sequence wasn't filmed in 3-D. It was converted from 2-D to 3-D in post-production. It was a complete after-thought (though the producer's wouldn't call it an after-thought, that's my take). See the link below. http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/07/10/262073.aspx
#12
2007-09-03 00:13
Geoff8 said:
one last problem with your otherwise fine observation if i may. From what i can tell it was done frame by frame by professionals and it would have been perfect 3-D on purpose anyways correct? so therefore they might've decided to convert the poster into 3-D to try to produce a proper 3-D image for the 3-D poster but some idiotic lackey could have theoretically taken the picture from the 3-D folder by accident instead of using the same picture twice for the 2-D versions of the poster. *winks at jer* I've subscribed to this one lol. its rather odd how it dies for ages and then some one magically finds a reason to attempt to debunk your debunkery
#12.1
2007-09-03 08:14
jer said:
I'm guessing it's just the poster. Nearly every time I go to a movie I see at least one lobby poster that's 3-D, even for movies that aren't 3-D. I still haven't actually seen such a Harry Potter poster, but that doesn't mean that they didn't shoot one. I suspect they do all such photoshoots with the option of putting out a 3-D lobby poster.
#12.2
2007-09-04 21:20
J.D said:
Her hair is completely different in both pictures, though. Notice the waves. The first pictures looks much more air brushed on her skin. And I don't understand how the whole 'camera angles' theory works when actually, this wasn't a group picture. Each actor took individual pictures in their promotional photoshoot for the movie, and this movie poster was created by photoshop.
#13
2007-12-24 07:47
biki_soumitri@yahoo.co.in said:
please call me emma! I love you.my number is 9861534680
#14
2008-01-11 12:46
Tatu said:
Two points; the images are taken separately and combined afterwards, that is for sure. Just think how hard that kind of composition would be to setup when it's a whole lot of easier just to shoot everyone invidually. And if these images are taken on the exact same second with separate cameras, how come they are looking directly to the camera in BOTH pictures? I think that even though the cameras aren't that far apart, it would show if they weren't looking directly at the camera. And Emma's hair is too different in those two pictures that it seems to me that they are taken a few seconds rather than a few inches apart. Just my two cents.
#15
2008-01-12 09:08
jer said:
I agree that each actor was shot separately, but I think that they were done with a 3-D camera, standing in the appropriate sopt so that when composited the 3-D would still work. As for "looking right at the camera," when someone is across the room looking right at you, do you get the impression that they're looking at one of your eyes or the other? You are seeing the world exactly like a 3-D camera would, meaning that you see two views, from about an inch and a half apart. You wouldn't see the difference between each eye, and neither would the camera.
#15.1
2008-01-14 20:01
Wolfie Rankin said:
I doubt it's a 3D shot... Look at Emmas Hair, it's not just shot at a different angle. The tips of her hair are pointed in the right hand shot, but curled in the left. Ok, so perhaps that's photoshopped... hence the "doubt" and not "it's not". I actually made 3D photos of my family with an old 3D Realist camera, which has twin lenses. Wolfie!
#16
2008-01-15 23:38
Anonymous said:
You all have way to much fucking time on your hands
#17
2008-01-16 15:03
Aldrea said:
You all are neglecting to take one fact into consideration on this Hot Emma Watson Boob Analysis... SHE'S NOT EVEN 18 YET, YOU PEDOPHILE FREAKS.
#18
2008-01-16 19:03
marcus132 said:
Seriously! Everyone knows that humans don't develop a third dimension until sexual maturity.
#18.1
2008-01-17 05:56
geoff8 said:
Oh come on now... there isn't even a single mention of pedobear! we aren't pedophiles until Pedobear or his twin brother Pedo Bear shows up.
#18.2
2008-01-17 01:41
Anonymous said:
Sorry to burst bubbles but I have it on good authority that the first image is the photo that has been enhanced.. or in the case of emmas chest - dehanced. It was cleaned up, as in the case of her hair in order to show more of Neville's face, the smoothing of the clothing, deepening of hair colors, perfecting skin, etc. This is often done with posters that are meant for purchasing.
#19
2008-01-17 11:54
Nicole said:
Remember the 'hidden image' pictures that were so popular a few years ago. You had to sort of relax and cross your eyes at the same time to view the hidden 3D image. If you do the same to the top two pictures you will see an 3D version of the image
#20
2008-01-19 12:04
ames said:
who gives a fuck. woman have been self-conscious about their tits ever since men decided to care for them. but now you can hire an artist to touch up your tits. if you typed this because your paid to, i can understand. any other reason means you need to find a fucking hobby.
#21
2008-01-19 12:37
omen said:
the people who take these photos use cameras that take god knows how many pictures a second, they could have just chosen two different pictures taken a nano second appart at two slightly different. angles? like in your diagram, i think you're over engineering it a little with your theories of whatever, why would they make a composite of two images?
#22
2008-01-20 02:57
Daisy said:
1) i have the glasses 2) you are a twat do some proper work other than this. 3) they only curved her stomach in. 4) that ANgle with the two cameras doesnt take into account the eye posistion just overlay the images. urgh this annoyed me!
#23
2008-01-20 03:35
Peter said:
Errm, get a life?
#24
2008-01-20 15:27
alix said:
it is very much photoshopped. emma's hair was edited. you can tell by closely looking at it. you can see the parts of her hair they chose to leave in and those they chose to take out. the shape of the hair is still the same. also, none of the character angles have changed, so your theory is completely wrong. i am a professional photographer and i am very well versed in photoshop. the imax poster is clearly touched up.
#25
2008-01-28 11:14
JAY said:
christ!! are you all blind!?!? the so called "before" picture is in fact the touched up picture, ie, with the REDUCED cup size the imax poster is the UNTOUCHED image... huh?!?! no really, not EVERY actress needs to be bumped up a cup, thats what she actually looks like. consider this, she is a child, and playing a childs character in a major film, so ,due to what the studio considers an appropriate image of a young girl,ie, a slight chest, irrespective of what she actually looks like, the image gets touched up and certain parts are made smaller (or bigger, her hair) before i go i just want to say, what a HUGELY over blown explanation for such a simple thing, 3d, angles, yada yada yada, you do realise that they do not shoot promotional posters in 3d yes!?!?!
#25.1
2008-01-20 17:08
zoop55 said:
doesnt matter she's still fuckin hot.
#26
2008-03-06 21:25
Jerry W Barrington said:
OK, all of you who believe it's a 3D camera issue are totally lost. 1st, look at the left collar of Ron's white shirt. It's a perfect match between the 2 pics, even though it's near vertical. The slightest diference in camera position would be obvious. 2nd, look at Ron & Emma's faces. Other than slight edging that I would ascribe to how well you could line them up, they are a perfect match. Her face is about the same distance from the camera as her right boob, thus should show the same effect. Also, the stripe of her shirt match: camera angle would change that. 3rd, the differences in her hair are way too much to be explained with the camera position, while at the same time, parts of it are a perfect match. Lots of photoshopping done there. And finally: I work at Walmart. I saw all the promotional pictures in great detail (the display was right in front of my register for about a month!). Each of the character elements on the poster and DVD cover were on the display box. It was clear from comparing that they were *exactly the same pictures, but you could see, for instance, the left shoulder/side of the boy behind Emma. This shows that the explanation that the pictures were all taken seperately and composited is correct.
#27
2008-03-14 19:38
Jav said:
ummm... has anyone noticed that she's got extra hair strands on the "after" shot.. so.. if both shots were taken at THE SAME TIME, how do you figure hair magically appears off one spot than another.. and its not even slightly... its by A DAMN LOT. so even if the pic was off by whatever the measurement.. yea kid.. this was DEFINITELY edited and it shows off her hair.. Your debunk has been DEBUNKED homey... PEACE~!
#28
2008-10-22 13:32
think about it said:
The group was not photographed together, adjusting the camera angle would have affected how the other people in the picture looked, but because each character was most likely photographed individualy, we wont notice it. Look at Emma's hair in both pictures, different? two different photos, taken at different angles.
#29
2008-10-22 13:36
Laura said:
It certainly was shopped, not only is the breast enhanced, but the hair was also to make it more frazzled. if the angle was eschewed as suggested the face angles would also change and they have not. By the way I happen to be one of the people THAT DO NOT always call something shopped, but this is.
#30
2009-01-19 09:27
Mike said:
I understand completely your theory about the 3D version of your image,and a few weeks ago I bought it and thought,"hell yeah this is completely right!",but after some time I decided to come back and read al your text here again,then it came to me: this kind of photoshoots arent taken with 3D cameras,only if the poster itself was meant to be 3D,and the IMAX version clearly is not 3D(I dont know if that actually made senese). Warner Bros. wouldnt bother to shoot all the cast at the same time,film studios like to have perfect posters,they like to controll every aspect of an image,when I see this of posters its like, everything is so smooth,and the lighting is nearly perfect,almost like if it was CG created,well not exactly,but the point here is that you can clearly see that both posters has been "photoshoped",and in the IMAX poster they thought "why dont we enchance her breast",or maybe (this was one of my first theories)they thought:"Ok,Emma,who is 17 is playing a 14 year old,a girl that age wouldnt have such "developed" breast,we should make them smaller in the normal poster",Thats what I think because I have seen in some other pictures that Emma has larger breast than in the first poster. I would like to believe your theory,but unfortuately it doesnt apply here,because its a poster,pictures for poster arent taken with 3D cammeras as I said before,just if the poster is meant to be 3D,now,if for example:if we were talking about a screencap of the real movie,then that would be a completely different story because that would actually be shooted with a 3D camera. But anyways nice work trying to figure this "mistery" out.
#31
2009-01-19 18:36
Jerry W Barrington said:
Actually, Emma's bust is *smaller* than many 14-year-olds. One of my nieces, at 14 1/2, was a C cup, and she wasn't even 5 feet tall at the time.
#31.1
~