The Camera Never Moves in Tom Hanks’ New Film ‘Here’

The director behind Here, the new movie starring Tom Hanks, has revealed that the camera never moves once during the entire film.

Robert Zemeckis’ new film Here follows multiple generations of couples and families as they inhabit the same home over many thousands of years.

The movie, which will be released in November, follows the history of one piece of land. Much of Here revolves around the decades when the area is part of an American house owned by a couple played by Tom Hanks and Robin Wright.

In an interview with Vanity Fair, Zemeckis — the filmmaker behind Forrest Gump, Cast Away, and the Back to the Future series — says that Here takes place entirely from one single fixed viewpoint.

As a result, Zemeckis says that the camera never moves, zooms, or even turns throughout the 104-minute-long film — a feat that has supposedly never been done before in cinema history.

“The single perspective never changes, but everything around it does,” Zemeckis tells Vanity Fair.

“It’s actually never been done before. There are similar scenes in very early silent movies, before the language of montage was invented.

“But other than that, yeah, it was a risky venture.”

Zemeckis says that this creative choice to leave the camera in one place from the dawn of time to when Hanks and Wright’s characters grow old centuries later in Here makes the movie more poignant.

“That’s the excitement of it,” Zemeckis says of the concept of the camera as a stationary observer in Here.

“What passes by this view of the universe? I think it’s an interesting way to do a meditation on mortality.

“It taps into the universal theme that everything passes.”

The Use of De-Aging AI Technology

Here, which is based on Richard McGuire’s 2014 graphic novel of the same name, has also fuelled debate over the decades-spanning film’s use of de-aging AI technology.

According to IndieWire, Hanks and Wright have been digitally de-aged with AI-assisted technology Metaphysic Live, which face-swaps in real-time. For example, 58-year-old Wright was de-aged using footage from her at age 19 to be paired with her present-day performance.

IndieWire reports that Zemeckis chose to use the AI technology after Metaphysic’s 2022 appearance on “America’s Got Talent,” where company co-founders Tom Graham and Chris Ume created a photorealistic avatar of Elvis Presley.

“I’ve always been attracted to technology that helps me to tell a story,” Zemeckis says in a press release announcing the partnership with Metaphysic.

“With Here, the film simply wouldn’t work without our actors seamlessly transforming into younger versions of themselves. Metaphysic’s AI tools do exactly that, in ways that were previously impossible.”

In an interview last year, Tom Hanks said he could continue acting after death with the help of AI technology.