Gordy's Rampage In Nope Involved An Eye-Popping Change To The Set
Jordan Peele has made quite the name for himself in the horror movie genre over the past several years. It all started with "Get Out" in 2017, a movie about a Caucasian family who kidnaps black people, removes their brains, and sells their bodies to the highest white bidder. Peele followed that up with the even more cerebral psychological horror film "Us" just two years later, a film that chillingly explored the concept that we are our own worst enemies. Now, he's wowing audiences again with "Nope," a highly symbolic exploration of how much modern society is addicted to spectacle, as opined by GQ Magazine.
The film leans heavily upon symbolism — especially the visual kind — in order to convey its overall message. And what better symbol of spectacle is there than Gordy the chimp? He's trained to do tricks and obey human commands, all while wearing tacky costumes for the audience's pleasure. Naturally, the poor creature eventually snaps and goes on a violent rampage, shot from the point of view of his child actor co-star Ricky "Jupe" Park (Jacob Kim, later Steven Yeun as an adult). In order to put the audience right in the middle of the action for the most visceral effect possible, the SFX team had to pull off a special trick with the set to make the shot just right.
They put an adult actor in an oversized set to accurately capture the stunning visuals
First and foremost, for anyone who didn't know: Gordy the chimp was not completely CGI — he was played by a human actor. His name is Terry Notary, and he has a history of monkeying around on movie sets. He played Rocket in the modern-day "Planet of the Apes" franchise, as well as King Kong in "Kong: Skull Island." Obviously, they had to add some CGI visual effects in post-production in order to make him look like a real chimp — just like they did for Andy Serkis in "Lord of the Rings." But the size discrepancy between an adult chimp and a grown man made things a bit complicated for the set design team.
To get around this, they had to make everything on set 30% larger than it normally would be. As visual effects supervisor Guillaume Rocheron explained to befores & afters, "Terry could climb on the sofa and the interactions would be right. He'd leave a trail of blood on it and then interact with the table cloth, touch the foot of the little girl, everything was at the right size." Indeed, even after a close re-watch of that particular scene, it doesn't look like an oversized set at all. Everything was proportioned just right to create the illusion of a regular-sized set. And it's that level of attention to detail and dedication to achieving the perfect shot that makes movies like "Nope" as memorable as they are chilling.