The hilarious comedy Ted 2 Full Movie doesn't need much introduction. After all, the film was the 12th highest grossing movie of the year when it was released in 2012. The story of John Bennett (Mark Wahlberg) and his foul-mouthed teddy bear (Seth MacFarlane) completely charmed audiences despite its R-rating.
The film was such a commercial success that a sequel was inevitable. The raunchy sequel 'Ted 2' already has several redband trailers that were all decidedly NSFW, but Universal decided to release a more family-friendly teaser to reach a wider market.
The synopsis reads as follows:
[Seth] MacFarlane returns as writer, director and voice star of Ted 2 Online Movie, Universal and Media Rights Capital's follow-up to the highest-grossing original R-rated comedy of all time. Joined once again by star [Mark] Wahlberg and fellow 'Ted' writers Alec Sulkin & Wellesley Wild, MacFarlane produces the live action/CG-animated comedy alongside Bluegrass Films' Scott Stuber, as well as John Jacobs and Jason Clark.
'Ted 2' will mark the return of Giovanni Ribisi, Jessica Barth and Patrick Warburton. The film also stars Amanda Seyfried as Ted's lawyer, to whom he warns, "I just don't want my lawyer to be singing 'Frozen' songs during the opening argument." Other cast members include Morgan Freeman, Liam Neeson, Curtis Stigers and David Hasselhoff. MacFarlane has always expressed interest in making a 'Ted' sequel, even to the point of bypassing other animated projects. The director has famously put the 'Flintstones' reboot on hold due to several projects, one of which was 'Ted 2.'
The director did assure fans of the Hanna Barbera series that the project is not dead, but simply put on hold for the meantime. "It's been put on the backburner, so we don't know when it is going to happen," MacFarlane said. "There's no exact schedule."
“It was awkward,” Ms. Barth says. “Where should my hands be? Does my mouth need to be open, do you want to see my tongue?”
“Ted 2,” which opens June 26, demanded more. Tami-Lynn and the wisecracking Ted, now married, have arguments and emotional scenes together as they try to have a baby.
“There’s nothing there when I’m acting opposite Ted,” says Ms. Barth. “We can rehearse with a stuffed animal, or with an eye-line, which is a stick with two eyeballs on it. But when it comes time to film, they take that out, then there’s nothing.”
It’s one of the biggest changes in the acting profession since the advent of talkies. Actors must constantly summon dramatic performances while looking at scenery and co-stars that aren’t there. Directors are routinely placing actors into simulated backgrounds (replacing green or blue screens on the set) and adding digitally animated characters into filmed scenes.
An entirely new vocabulary has arisen: “Monster sticks,” “motion reference” and “consistent eye lines” are now common. Players often ply their thespian trade opposite tennis balls on a stick.
Giving convincing performances amid digital effects is essential to the success of the movie industry’s biggest blockbusters like last weekend’s Download Ted 2 Full Movie, the first film ever to sell more than $500 million in tickets in its opening weekend. Last summer’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” grossed nearly $774 million world-wide.
While expensive visual effects are a big part of these films’ global success, the stars still need to do their jobs. Pretending is what actors have always done, of course, and movies have always relied on fakery and illusion. But the sheer volume of the tricks these days is new.
Mike Chambers, chairman of the Visual Effects Society, estimates 95% of movies today employs some digital imagery. “It’s not just the big comic book, action, science fiction, disaster movies. There’s a lot of subtle things going on in a lot of movies,” he says.
In “The Social Network,” for instance, Armie Hammer appeared as both twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. But during filming, another actor, Josh Pence, played a twin. Then they swapped roles and did the same scenes again. In postproduction, Mr. Hammer’s face was digitally copied onto Mr. Pence’s body to make the twins look completely identical. Mark Wahlberg, when walking alongside an animated Ted that would be added later, had to take extra-small strides to maintain the pace that a stuffed little bear would have.
Actors on soundstages often perform in front of vast sheets of green screen (sometimes blue), pretending they’re on the streets of 1920s New York, in Ancient Rome, or on another planet.
“They stand on a patch of dirt in the foreground and we put something in the background,” says Peter Baustaedter, who has created background art for films including “Watch Ted 2 Full Movie” and “Avatar.” The director can advise actors: “You’re in this beautiful valley, or you’re coming up to a Roman villa” Mr. Baustaedter says. After that, the actors are on their own: “Here’s more green for you—hope that helps.”
“You’ve just got to dig deep and really imagine it,” says Jason Clarke, who stars in “Terminator Genisys,” opening July 1. Playing John Connor in the film, Mr. Clarke has a change come over his body that he couldn’t see while he was acting the scene. He had to ask visual effects people how pained he was supposed to look.
His character in last year’s “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” confronted an army of primates.
“I’m imagining 80 apes there,” says Mr. Clarke. His strategy: “You have to go much stronger with your conviction. I find myself with the director saying, “Look, I’m gonna go big.’”
Some drama schools are adapting, adding green-screen training to the curriculum. “Actors need to be able to go onto a set and know exactly what to do. There’s no time to teach them there,” says Penny Templeton, who runs a studio in New York.
At a recent Monday night class, two actors sat on chairs on a bare stage, vivid green sheets hung behind them, reciting movie dialogue while piloting a spaceship through an asteroid field. Instructor Hank Schob, videotaping the exercise, yelled instructions like “zooming left!” and the students craned their necks, not always in sync, to watch imaginary objects fly by. “If you don’t see it, the audience won’t see it,” he told the students. Later he would insert their performances into an asteroid-field animation using off-the-shelf PC software.
