SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for Together. If you have not yet seen the movie, proceed at your own risk!
Watching Together at a screening last month, I found myself wowed, impressed, and mesmerized by the movie’s final shot. The film builds well to its freaky, body horror-centric climax, which sees Alison Brie’s Millie and Dave Franco’s Tim submit and embrace the force that is fusing them together, and I left the theater instantly curious how the final shot came together with the Mille/Tim hybrid that greets Mille’s parents at the door of their home when the older couple arrives for a Sunday visit.
Fortunately, one of the best aspects of my job is that I get to satisfy that kind of curiosity via interviews with filmmakers and actors, and that’s exactly what I got to do when I sat down with writer/director Michael Shanks, Alison Brie and Dave Franco during the Los Angeles press day for the new horror movie late last month. In separate interviews (as captured in the video above), I asked them all about how that final shot was accomplished, and not only did I learn about the execution of some amazing special and visual effects work, but I discovered that the married stars have a hilarious “qualm” with the final look.
How Together Accomplished That Final Shot
Did they find an actor who looks like a hybrid of Alison Brie and Dave Franco? Is it entirely a VFX creation? I had questions like those running through my head after witnessing the wild final moment of Together, and when I asked Michael Shanks about how the shot was created, I found myself impressed and amazed. It’s a mix of practical and digital artistry, and the work that went into it is fantastic.
The Millie/Tim hybrid is played by Alison Brie, but you can be forgiven if you don’t recognize her at all. In addition to extensive makeup work on set that saw parts of Dave Franco’s visage applied to the actresses, there were also visual effects employed that changed the shape of her face to be more like her co-star’s/husband’s. Shanks explained,
The very final shot, it's a combination of practical and visual effects. It's Alison in a wig with shoulder pads with Dave Franco makeup eyebrows and Dave Franco makeup contact lenses. And then our visual effects supervisor did the comp herself of cutting out Dave's nose and jawline and kind of like sticking it together.
Our society is presently without advanced cloning/genetic engineering technology that could perfectly generate a hybrid, nor do we have time travel technology that could age the creation up, so this is really the best option that the production of Together had… and it worked out perfectly. That being said, there is one issue with the final shot that the stars of the movie don’t love, and it was something that the actors came to understand after test screening early cuts of the feature and getting some weirdly insulting feedback…
The Mille/Tim Hybrid Is A Combination Of Two Attractive People… But Alison Brie And Dave Franco Are A Bit Perturbed That They Aren’t More Attractive
Together had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year – where it was met with critical acclaim and eventually picked up by Neon for distribution – but before it had its big debut, unfinished versions of the work were shown during test screenings to determine how the movie would play with audiences. One of the “unfinished” aspects was the final shot… and one unfortunate side effect was a reaction to the work that particularly hurt Alison Brie’s feelings.
While it’s not super common for creatives to attend test screenings, the Community star snuck in to secretly observe how people felt about the movie. At the time, the VFX for the final shot and the applications of details from Dave Franco’s face on top of the makeup were still being experimented with, and the audio wasn’t finished either, so the voice that the audience’s heard from the hybrid was the actresses. It didn’t look perfect… and it led to Brie being shocked by one person’s response:
I would sneak in the back of these test screenings – the audience didn't know I was there. And after one of them, they're asking questions and 'What did you think about this final person and how did it make you feel and what did it look like to you?' And one person goes, 'It just looks like Alison Brie,' and I turned to one of our producers and I was like, 'That's the meanest thing anyone's ever said.'
It was this super funny comment that led to a confession from Alison Brie and Dave Franco, which is that they’re a bit upset that a blend of their movie star good looks didn’t yield a more attractive person. They don’t feel that the hybrid is ugly – but it wasn’t quite what they expected. The actors explained:
Dave Franco: We will say one qualm we have with that final creature is we were just disappointed with how unattractive...
Alison Brie: We wish they were a little more attractive. Like the merging of our two faces made that face.
Dave Franco: They're not unattractive, but we just wanted them to be a little cuter.
Humorous niggles aside, it’s a great conclusion to the film, and one with which Michael Shanks is particularly happy, if not especially because it was an element of Together that featured in the very first draft and was the only conclusion that the writer/director could envision for the movie. Said Shanks,
I'm so proud with how it came out, because that's been in there from the first draft, just like, 'The movie has to end in this shot.' I don't know why, but I just kind of felt like that's the end.
I’m excited to see the film again just so that I can really focus on the face of the hybrid creation and appreciate the high level movie magic that went into it. And if you want to do the same, Together is now playing in theaters everywhere (having landed at sixth place with a strong debut at the box office this past weekend).
