Lieutenant Dan is a key supporting character in Forrest Gump, and the movie used clever effects in order to film Gary Sinise’s later scenes in the story. Lieutenant Dan is Forrest Gump’s platoon leader during the Vietnam War. Forrest saves his life following an ambush but his injuries result in both his legs being amputated below the knees. The movie used a blend of practical and groundbreaking CGI special effects in order to convincingly show Gary Sinise without legs in and out of his wheelchair.
Forrest Gump was a major hit when it was released in 1994, grossing $678 million worldwide and winning six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for Tom Hanks. Gary Sinise was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor but lost to Martin Landau for Ed Wood. The movie also won for its subtle but impressive special effects. While the movie’s effects are primarily remembered for integrating Tom Hanks’s into archive footage of deceased personages such as JFK and John Lenon, or Forrest Gump’s floating CGI feather, they were also utilized for Lieutenant Dan’s post-war scenes.
To film the scenes once Lieutenant Dan has had his legs amputated, Gary Sinise wore blue fabric stockings, which were then digitally removed in post-production via chroma key compositing. Blue was used because a single bold color helps to isolate the section of the image to be removed. While this visual effect technique has been around since the 1930s for background imaging, Forrest Gump was the first Hollywood production to utilize it in order to remove body parts from a character that is moving through a scene. The CGI removal of his legs was painstaking, as it required them to be painted out digitally from every frame of the Tom Hanks movie. Lieutenant Dan’s wheelchair was also specially made by stage magician Ricky Jay, who was a consultant on Forrest Gump. The wheelchair was structured to allow Gary Sinise’s legs to be folded under a slanting seat so that they were not visible in the film.
For scenes where he was out of the wheelchair, director Robert Zemeckis and special-effects supervisor Ken Ralston would then design the shots in such a way as to subtly convince the audience that Lieutenant Dan’s legs really are gone. One example is where he swings his legs around after falling out of his wheelchair. A table was digitally inserted next to him in the shot that his real legs would have hit. In another instance, Lieutenant Dan is the first mate on Forrest’s shrimp boat (in a deviation from the novel Forrest Gump). Gary Sinise jumps out of his chair and over the side of the boat. The effect was achieved by cutting out a section from the side of the boat for him to swing his lower legs through, and then digitally putting it back into the film later.
Forrest Gump’s subtle and innovative use of CGI really sells the illusion without calling attention to itself. This allows the audience to accept the effects so that they don’t distract from the story. The special effects used for Lieutenant Dan’s legs are commonplace nowadays, but back in 1994 it was groundbreaking technology, and it still holds up today.
