CGI Livia Soprano: Deep Dive and Analysis

Breaking down and analyzing the infamous CGI Livia Soprano scene from the season 3 episode "Proshai, Livushka".

0:00 Intro
1:09 The infamous Edit
1:36 Background / Context
2:15 Be Kind They Did The Best They Could
2:49 Who Was Responsible?
3:43 What's Going On Here?
4:41 Lighting
5:27 Hair Style Changes
6:05 Where her old lines came from
9:19 My Attempt

References

#thesopranos #cgi #aftereffects

[licmir]

I don’t understand why they did it, because the scene is not essential. It doesn’t contain anything that is ever mentioned again. It would have been better to remove it and have Tony get a phone call telling him that his mother passed away.

[cheesymiccheeseballs]

That bag crinkling substituting the newspaper crinkling is clever enough to deserve respect.

[emtherobot]

"two Livias talking at once" Tony's worst nightmare

[drj-pphw]

I don't understand why they used so many closeups. Why not set the scene up with her farther back in frame and maybe in darker lighting?

[koira]

That looks something straight out of Twin Peaks: The Return

[Stuart]

*Crazy thing is although Livia was the most miserable character in the show, the actress playing her was genuinely the most humorous on the cast. She made Gandolfini break character multiple times during filming.*

[JoJoJoker]

We watched this episode on the day it came on TV. We didn’t notice it was CGI at the time so it served the purpose.

[crnicdahedgehg]

The funniest thing about CGi Livia is that you can tell whoever did it really tried but was told by higher-ups to just piss in the wind on a rainy day without getting wet.

[enthiegavoir]

You should do a video on the smaller production goofs and oddities in the series, cause there's quite a few. Stuff like Phil turning into a house, Vito's actor being a random customer beforehand, the Dean Martin song in Whitecaps being cut weirdly at the end, the very clear cut to the dummy Mikey throws off the falls etc. Those were just off the top of my head (and as I wrote this I also remembered Vito killing Jackie Jr being weird as well).

[MazeMe]

There was nothing he could do about it. Livia was a made woman, and 1999 CGI wasn’t.

[JaKeW]

If you're not fully invested in the scene, you don't really notice it. Also take into account 99% of people watched this one time on 4:3 standard definition 360p CRT in like 2001

[FindTheFun]

I've waited over 20 years for an answer to this...

[rentless]

Strangest thing is they could probably edit around this... like, have the stitched up audio, but instead of showing the actress, use a body double and show her reflection on a tv screen, or shoot from the back, or anything.

[humoroususername]

The attention to detail to actually track down every original line & recognize the outtakes is great stuff, that's the kind of production minutiae I live for.

[NotQuiteFirst]

In the interview in _The Sopranos Sessions, _ Chase admits it was a mistake doing this and that he regrets putting it in. "It seemed like a good idea at the time" kinda thing. The scene serves no purpose and Tony & Livia's final scene in s2 was a fine parting scene, but they had the capability to do it, and the temptation was too much.

Great detective work on finding all the original source clips, especially the newspaper/bag thing! I've always wanted to see a side by side of the source and edit synced up, so this video popping up was fortuitous! Great video!

[Jean-Paul-Lane-Valley]

The scene is done exactly like those shitty memes that add Tobey Maguire Spider-Man over any other movie. It's very interesting how something so difficult and expensive back in 2001 is done massively nowadays.

[The_Texorcist]

I personally think that they should have recast the role. Just have a message at the beginning of the season before the episode starts have a message that says “ as you may already know the actress who played Olivia has sadly passed away. We will always be grateful for her contribution to this show. we have made the tough decision to recast her character as we hope that she would not only understand, but be supportive of this decision to continue a character she brought to life.”.

That’s it, that’s all they probably would’ve needed to do and the fans would’ve probably supported it. That way they could’ve had that amazing season arch that sadly we never got.

[sheismymom]

It's a shame she passed away she was a fantastic actress and we didn't get enough Livia Soprano.

[jordanfish]

Seeing the original lighting setups gives you a good sense of how challenging the existing material must have been to work with, and an appreciation for what was done over twenty years ago.

[dutifulpriest]

made my day before work, awesome video. I hope CGI Livia makes a return one day