Netflix has released a clip that details the VFX behind Thing, the Addams Family hand servant in Wednesday. Wednesday, which is a Netflix show revolving around the only daughter of the Addams Family, was released on November 23 and has already become a major piece of pop culture. With Jenna Ortega starring as Wednesday, the show followed her for eight episodes as she navigated Nevermore Academy alongside the trusty hand Thing, played by Victor Dorobantu.
While it may be strange to picture an actor playing Wednesday‘s Thing, Dorobantu proved that he could bring life to a character who never even had a face. In a recent video from Netflix, Dorobantu, Ortega, and members of the Netflix VFX team go into detail about how Thing went from a regular actor’s hand to a featured character in his own right. Watch the video below:
Wednesday’s Complex VFX Explained
While he would be terrifying on the streets of NYC, Thing is a little more than an actor’s hand. With Dorobantu having never performed as an on-screen actor before, director Tim Burton and the VFX team for Wednesday worked with him to ensure that he could lea rn how to walk and emote for the character. Dorobantu was often forced into small spaces while he awkwardly shoved his hand through holes or under covers. Given that Thing has never had stitches before, there also needed to be prosthetics and makeup work done to get Wednesday‘s version of the character looking just right for the show.
While it might have been simple to feature Thing in some Wednesday scenes, there were others where more than just the hand needed to be on-set, and that meant that Dorobantu would need to be removed from each shot in post-production. With Dorobantu dressed in all blue, the VFX team painstakingly removed all shots of the actor and replaced him with the blank setting through digital effects. It looked brilliant, and the meld of practical and computer-generated effects granted VFX artists the grounding that they needed to make Wednesday‘s Thing look surprisingly realistic.
Of course, not all the CGI work was perfectly done in Wednesday. The Hyde monster, for example, was also made with computer effects but doesn’t look nearly as good as Thing. While there were many clues behind Wednesday‘s monster, few could’ve predicted how different the two pieces of CGI work could be. Without the addition of the practical effects that made Thing so compelling, the Hyde just looked oddly absurd. While Thing may look brilliant in Wednesday, he is also the perfect case study in how important it is to mix practical and computer-generated effects.
