Jon Favreau‘s holiday season classic Elf turns Will Ferrell’s Buddy the Elf into one of Santa’s good-natured, cheerful helpers, while the filmmakers were able to draw humor from his vast height in numerous scenes. Buddy was a human orphan who crawled into Santa’s bag of toys one Christmas Eve and was accidentally transported to the North Pole. Raised as an elf his entire life, Buddy later learns that he is human and decides to return to New York City one Christmas to reconnect with his long-lost father Walter Hobbs (James Caan).
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While much of Elf takes place in the modern hustle and bustle of the Big Apple, the movie’s early scenes in the North Pole show Ferrell’s Buddy as a man living in an elf’s world, towering over his fellow elves to an often comedic degree. To showcase the hilarious difference in height between Buddy and the other elves at the North Pole, Elf uses an old filmmaking technique known as forced perspective.
What is “Forced Perspective” in Filmmaking?
Forced perspective is an on-screen illusion in which two objects or actors are placed on camera roughly parallel to each other but with one a greater distance from the camera than the other. This creates the illusion that one person or object is a much greater height while standing “next” to another. As shown in Elf‘s behind-the-scenes documentary in the Netflix series The Movies That Made Us, Elf makes extensive use of forced perspective in its early North Pole scenes, placing Buddy seemingly side-by-side with other elves to mine plenty of silly humor from the contrast of Buddy’s height to everyone and everything around him.
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One such example occurs early when Buddy is seen in a classroom learning the fundamentals of Christmas cheer with the rest of Santa’s elves. Buddy, seated in a standard classroom chair, appears to be a giant next to his classmates, but filming the scene involved placing Will Ferrell in a chair on the far end of the classroom and seating him several feet in front of and to the side of the other actors in the scene. Filmed from the right angle, Ferrell looks like he is sitting right next to the other elves in class, with the forced perspective of the scene also making Ferrell’s Buddy look much taller than everyone around him.
Similar uses of forced perspective can be seen throughout the North Pole scenes in Elf‘s first act, such as the flashback to a young Buddy (Max Favreau) riding a tricycle with his adoptive Papa Elf (Bob Newhart). This was accomplished by placing Favreau on a bicycle rig with a double’s hands on his shoulders and head out of view behind him. With Newhart seated several feet behind Favreau on the rig, this creates the impression that Papa Elf is seated directly behind Buddy on the tricycle.
Additionally, Elf also uses forced perspective for many other North Poles scenes, including Buddy lamenting his trouble with toy-making and Will Ferrell’s frustrated elf famously dubbing himself “a cotton-headed ninny muggins.” This was accomplished with Ferrell seated on a chair placed on an elevated surface from the rest of the work table, creating the impression of Buddy as a much taller toymaker than the other elves. Other uses of forced perspective in Elf‘s North Pole scenes also include Buddy learning about his father from Santa Claus (Ed Asner) himself, which employed a similar technique of placing Ferrell and Asner on an elevated stage several feet in front of the elves, in order for them to look taller.
One of the most stand-out examples of forced perspective in Elf is also seen in Buddy seemingly sitting in the lap of Papa Elf at the beginning and end of the movie (with Zooey Deschanel’s Jovie present in the latter). For these scenes, a diving board was rigged for Ferrell to sit on, while Newhart was seated about 10 feet behind him in his chair. To the naked eye, however, it looks like Buddy is seated in Pap Elf’s lap, with their size difference creating some comedy for the audience.
With these and many other instances of forced perspective, Elf uses camera magic to great effect to make Buddy the tallest elf in the North Pole. With Elf becoming such a beloved Christmas classic, often re-released theatrically for the holiday season, the movie arguably stands as one of the most shining examples of forced perspective put to work in modern moviemaking.
Elf is now streaming on Hulu, Max, and Disney+.
