Stars and fans react to the “Hawaii Five-0” Season 7 premiere in Waikīkī. (Photo : Getty Images/CBS Photo Archive)
The "Hawaii Five-O" team managed to do the impossible in Season 7 premiere by bringing the original Steve McGarrett actor Jack Lord back from the dead.
Lord died in back in 1998 and had portrayed the "Five-O" hero for 12 Seasons on the namesake series from 1968 to 1980, according to WVXU. He is best remembered as McGarrett but was much more than that because he directed several episodes of the show and starred in several other movies.
The happenings that proceeded in the premiere of "Hawaii Five-O" Season 7 demonstrated the magic of CGI. McGarett received trusted advice from Jack, a retired cop who offered words of wisdom about what it meant to wear the badge. The whole scene took a lot of time to make.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Executive producer Peter M. Lenkov said that he originally conceived the idea of the scene between McGarett and Lord to be the final scene of the series. But later on, he realized that the end would be nowhere near if he wanted to be the first person to execute his plan.
Thankfully, all went well for Lenkov since the McGarett's conversation with Lord fit perfectly in the context of "Hawaii Five-O" Season 7. In the ultimate execution of his idea of the scene, the "Five-O" crew sought permission from Lord's estate.
The estate, which is run by a bank, read the scripts and went with his concept. Later in June, they all officially submitted the pages and signed off, with the most inspiration coming from the hope that the scene would honor Lord's legacy.
The next big challenge for the "Hawaii five-O" crew was to bring Lord back to life. According to Lenkov, they employed a team from Counter Punch Studios, which began by creating a CG version of Lord's face. They worked in tandem with Picture Shop Visual Effects in the creation of a lifelike character.
By adding skin textures with reference to Lord's pictures from the final season of the original "Hawaii Five-O," they were able to replicate his looks. Actor Ken Matepi then came in as the final body double for having similar features to those of Lord.
Picture shop's Senior VFX Supervisor Adam Avitabile later worked with the make-up department to place small markers on Matepi's face to help with tracking. Finally, artists analyzed the final illustration and matched the facial movements in a precise manner.
Bringing Lord back to life was challenging in terms of both the effort and man-hours, but it paid off, according to "Hawaii five-O's" executive producer. "Hawaii Five-0" airs on Fridays at 9 p.m. ET on CBS.
Have a look at the main title sequence of "Hawaii Five-0" Season 7:
