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30 Practical Trivia Tidbits About Special Effects

Before A.I., you had to make your CGI by hand

30 Practical Trivia Tidbits About Special Effects

February 24, 2024

Back before A.I. could generate hyper-realistic depictions of puppies playing in the snow for 10 seconds, or archaeologists dragging an amorphous lawn chair out of the sand, movies used to spend a lot of time and money on their special effects. Here are a few interesting tidbits about how they did things in the olden days…

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THE FIRST SPECIAL EFFECT 1895 CRACKED.COM Alfred Clark of the Edison Kinetoscope Company developed the substitution shot, which allowed for the first special effect in the film The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots, and this technique became a standard for special effects. — Source

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ATTEMPT AT A PHOTOREALISTIC CGI MOVIE 2001 CRACKED.COM Hironobu Sakaguchi's Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was released in the United States in 2001 and was the first attempt to make a photorealistic rendered 3D feature film. It was praised for its realism, but was a box office bomb due to its high production costs. — Source

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COMPOSITING 1903 CRACKED.COM Edwin Porter's The Great Train Robbery was a pioneering film that used innovative matte shots to composite two separate images, creating a realistic effect. — Source

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El Hotel Electrico

STOP-MOTION 1908 CRACKED.COM Segundo de Chomón was a Spanish filmmaker who pioneered the use of stop-motion technique in 1908 with his film El hotel eléctrico. Actors held their positions while small objects were moved slightly between frames, creating the illusion of movement. — Source

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FULLY CGI SEQUENCE IN A MOVIE 1982 CRACKED COM In 1982, George Lucas's Industrial Light and Magic created the first completely computer-generated cinematic image sequence in a feature film, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. This sequence, which lasted sixty seconds, was created using fractal geometry and was a major milestone in the development of computer graphics. — Source

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GLASS PAINTING 1907 CRACKED.COM Norman А. Dawn adapted the principle of glass painting in 1907 to restore missing or ruined portions of crumbling structures, which was the first known example of what became the glass shot in cinematography. — Source

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MOVIES IN 3D 1922 CRACKED.COM 3D films have been around since 1922, when The Power of Love premiered at the Ambassador Hotel Theater in Los Angeles. Despite receiving good reviews, the audience was not enthusiastic about the movie. — Source

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FULLY CGI MOVIE 1995 GRACKED.COM In 1995, Toy Story was released in theaters, becoming the first entirely computer-animated feature-length film. It was produced by Pixar with Steve Jobs serving as an executive producer, and was the highest grossing film of 1995, making $192 million in the US and $362 million worldwide. — Source

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BLUESCREENS AFFLICATION TILLO MAY-22-1916 1,273,435, Patented July 24 1918 1916 Tig.1 Fig.2. 6 GRACKED.COM The Williams Process is a variant of the bi-pack method used to create traveling mattes, which allow actors to move in front of painted elements. It involves shooting the actor against a blue screen and carefully printing the footage onto high-contrast film to generate a black silhouette of the actor against a white background. — Source

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PIXELIZATION 1973 CRACKED.COM Michael Crichton's Westworld pioneered modern special effects in 1973 with its use of a digital effect called pixelization, which is now commonly used in films and TV shows. This low-budget science-fiction film marked the beginning of the digital revolution in cinema, and its influence can still be seen today. — Source

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Casper

CGI LEAD CHARACTER 1995 CRACKED.COM Casper the Friendly Ghost from 1995's Casper was the first movie to feature a CGI lead character. It was a box-office hit, grossing $287.9 million against a $55 million budget and was created with the help of 150 people at George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic (ILM). — Source

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CGI CHARACTER 1985 CRACKED.COM In 1985, Young Sherlock Holmes was the first full-length movie to feature a completely computer-generated character, which was achieved through the use of computer graphics by animator John Lasseter. — Source

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The Matrix

BULLET TIME 1999 CRACKED.COM The term bullet-time was first used in the original script for The Matrix and has since been used in a variety of video games. The effect is achieved with the aid of multiple cameras to capture moments in slow motion that were otherwise unfilmable. — Source

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CGI WATER IN A MOVIE 1998 CRACKED G COM Dreamworks' Antz (USA, 1998) was the first movie to use computer software to simulate the properties of water, prior to this, computer-generated fluid effects were drawn, frame by frame, using graphics programs. The detailed studies of fluid dynamics at the time were being carried out by scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, USA. — Source

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Updating...

CLAY ANIMATION 1912 CRACKED.COM Modelling Extraordinary was released in 1912 and was one of the first clay animation movies to use stop motion. It was met with great critical acclaim. — Source

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Snoke's throne room in The Last Jedi used no CGI. They actually built the whole set (apart from Snoke, of course). CRACKED.COM — Source

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In Fellowship of the Ring, when Frodo and Gandalf are at the same table, it's not really one table. To make Elijah Wood seem much smaller than he really is, they used forced perspective, meaning they put him really far from the camera and then shot at an angle that would conceal the distance. To make sure camera movement wouldn't ruin the effect, they moved that half of the set in a way that exactly followed the camera's movements. CRACKED.COM — Source

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The fancy 3D shot in Snake's glider's computer in Escape From New York isn't 3D. NOSEVIEW AIR.. 70 That would have been too expensive in 1981, so they just put some green tape over their model of New York, lit it with a blacklight, and shot that. CRACKED.COM — Source

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The Mangalore costumes in The Fifth Element had a little TV screen inside the head. The masks were so bulky, actors couldn't see out of them, so they had to have a camera on the costume and a TV screen. The screen was linked to the effects crew, too, who gave the actors commands like Walk, walk forward, shuffle, shuffle, for God's sake, STOP! CRACKED.COM — Source

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For Total Recall, the actors had to contort their faces in ridiculous grimaces for a day. That allowed special effects wizard Rob Bottin to make masks of those faces, and he then added air pockets into the masks to exaggerate the grimaces even more. Masks of those super-exaggerated grimaces are what you see when characters are losing oxygen on Mars. CRACKED.COM — Source

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That's spaghetti squash splattering in the scene where ED-209 kills a young exec in RoboCop. They used around 200 blood squibs (small charges that spurt fake blood) on the actor, Kevin Page, but that wasn't gory enough for Paul Verhoeven. So the special effects guys took baggies of spaghetti squash from the place where they had lunch that day, and added them. Finally, there was enough blood for Verhoeven. CRACKED.COM — Source

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The chase scene in The Dark Knight was all physical. For the part where the Batmobile shows up and rams the Joker's convoy, they built a one-third-scale model of everything they needed and then just shot the scene. For the part where Joker's 18-wheeler flips over, they flipped over an actual 18-wheeler in a closed-off street in Chicago. CRACKED.COM — Source

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The weightlessness in Apollo 13 is real. The sets were in a special plane that NASA uses to simulate zero-G on Earth (by going up and then down very, very fast). It took about 600 arcs (time when the plane goes up and then down), which was probably excruciating -- the plane was nicknamed the Vomit Comet for a reason. CRACKED.COM — Source

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In the book and train montage shot in Bram Stoker's Dracula, you're seeing exactly what they shot. indana and and and god May Bada Perth Ldish Jaupichae German the it 25 Left Buda which Pasth were the lovering rode this East had Jo yet swelling a was West love fa day of and The forest we long entiring every impression we and bind; easy was wigh full y through the the it Meaning, they built a model train and book (instead of shooting them separately and combining them). The whole movie is like that - all the effects are in-camera. CRACKED.COM — Source

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When Uma Thurman is foaming at the mouth in Pulp Fiction after snorting coke, she's drooling Campbell's mushroom soup. CRACKED.COM — Source

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In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, there's a shot with two Jim Carreys. In a memory, Carrey's character talks to the doctor who later wipes his memories, then the camera turns to another version of his character. They didn't shoot Carrey separately or anything - he just really, really quickly ran to the other side of the set, changed his clothes, and started acting differently. CRACKED.COM — Source

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In Knives Out, the photo of Richard, Linda and Ransom was added digitally. It was added after filming was done so viewers could put a face to Ransom's name, and they did it by shooting the photo and then putting it in one of the wide shots of the room. CRACKED.COM — Source

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The fire raging through New York in Independence Day was all real. They built a model of the city that stood at a 90-degree angle, blew it up with an explosion, and then slowed that footage waaayyy down. CRACKED.COM — Source

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When Tyrell lowers the shades in his office in Blade Runner, no shades were actually lowered. The set didn't have shades, so they had to build a rig that would gradually lower a filter over their light sources. They then added the shades as a visual effect later on. CRACKED.COM — Source

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In Avengers: Endgame, the Quantum Realm suits are 100% CG. They never bothered making physical versions of them. CRACKED.COM — Source

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