You can’t believe the Movies Anymore.

We’ve always known that after movies are shot, they spend months in post production. Something’s happening then, and whatever it is, it’s not exactly natural. According to this article, movies today can be photoshopped as easily as stills. The article talks about modifying an actor’s performance, adding a tear, and placing a dead actor’s face over a double. As usual, my own fear is that we ordinary people will spend an awful lot to try to look like the photoshopped people in movies, but the article raises other interesting concerns, such as: Who deserves control over an actor’s acting?

But before you get too excited about the way that post production obscures reality, bear this in mind: You’ve probably seen movie scenes that were shot backwards. That is, the actors all moved from the end of scene to its beginning, and then the film was played backwards to make it look like they were moving forwards. Some directors like this trick, it tends to show more tension in the actors’ bodies, for short dramatic takes. How much more unreal than that can a movie ever be?