"Two weeks ago, when HBO screened the first two episodes of this season's 'The Sopranos' at Radio City Music Hall, the trade paper Variety reported that attendees were all abuzz about a scene in which the head of the late Nancy Marchand, who played Livia Soprano, was digitally put on someone else's body.

When The TV Column called HBO to find out more, a rep said that the information about Marchand's head being put on a body double was inaccurate; the producers had simply inserted old footage of Marchand into the new footage.

Turns out that's not true. This came to light when execs at Rhinoceros Visual Effects and Design went on NBCs "Today" show yesterday morning to promote their special-effects work in the 4 1/2-minute scene, including the digital insertion of Marchand's head on another body.

'This was accomplished layer by layer,' Rhinoceros's Michael Miller told Matt Lauer.

'You go into each head and make sure you rotoscope out all of the pieces around the head to isolate it, take that head and her performance and put it on a body double that was taped with Tony [James Gandolfini], back and forth, until we felt that the details and the lighting and the shadowing was as close as we could possibly get.'

The work was not without its problems, added Rhinoceros's Rick Wagonheim.

'We got shots where you would see Nancy Marchand's hands in front of her face, yet you would also see the body double's hands, so what we had to do was digitally erase Nancy Marchand's hands and then basically paint her face back in.'

Contacted again, HBO now says it was misinformed by the producers.

'In an effort to be respectful to Nancy Marchand and her family, the producers of 'The Sopranos' had not wanted to discuss in detail how the scene was done between Gandolfini and Marchand. HBO was made aware of the use of stock footage of Marchand, who had used many of the same sentences, as well as the use of a body double. However, HBO did not know the full details of the digital techniques and apologizes to anyone who feels they were misled' " (Lisa de Moraes, The Washington Post, March 6, 2001).