CGI is all the rage in Hollywood movies,
from big sci-fi epics, down to little ordinary dramas.
But sometimes, the more practical approach is best.
>> These are the top ten practical effects of all time.
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>> A wizard is never late, Frodo Baggins, nor is he early.
He arrives precisely when he means too.
>> Starting us off at number ten, The Lord of The Rings trilogy.
Peter Jackson pushed the envelop in countless ways for
his Tolkien adapted triptych.
Securing a best VFX Oscar for each entry in the series.
But some of his best effects were more clever slight of
hand than digital wizardry.
Faced with the problem of putting two average size actors in the same room to
play characters of wildly different scales, Jackson often used
forced perspective by exaggerating the distance between an actor and the camera.
He would use oversized props for Elijah Wood and
undersized props for Ian McKellan, and put one far behind the other,
while positioning the camera in such a way that they looked much closer.
And if he wanted to move the camera, wouldn't that break the illusion?
Jackson used something called motion control to move the actors
counter to the camera's movement in order to maintain the illusion.
And when you couldn't see the actors face,
Jackson just used the good old fashioned wig on a child technique, classic.
>> What, god, what, I'm burning up!
>> Next up at number nine, An American Werewolf in London.
When John Landis first set out to transform a man into a wolf in 1981,
he approached a computer specialist to ask if it were possible to
aid the transition with computer graphics.
His answer?
Yes, absolutely, but not in that decade.
So he called up Rick Baker to do it with make up instead.
They created a transformation unlike anything anybody had seen before.
It took 30 technicians, six months of preparation and
a whole week of shooting to pull it off.
With ten hours each morning for
makeup application, and three at night for removal.
Every shot in the transformation involved a specifically planned appliance that
physically under went just a small section of the transformation.
Like the rubber hand that stretched dramatically, or the rubber body that
David Naughton piloted with his head sticking out of a hole in the floor.
Or the incredible shot of hair growing that was actually a reverse shot
of hair being pulled through holes in rubber.
In the end, the effect was so
successful that the Academy created a whole new award category to honor them.
>> [SOUND] Clear!
>> Clear.
[SOUND] Aah!.
>> At number eight, John Carpenter's The Thing.
When John Landis called Rick Baker to do the makeup for
An American Werewolf in London,
he actually pulled him off an incredibly similar project called The Howling.
A werewolf story with it's own transformation scene to boot.
On it Baker was replaced by his assistant Rob Bottin.
The Howling didn't end up nearly as successful as An American Werewolf
in London, but it did give Bottin his first break.
Which eventually catapulted him towards his unbelievable work on The Thing.
Check it out, there's no computers here.
Every effect is hand-modeled by Bottin and his team with clay, and foam, and rubber,
and paint.
In fact, Bottin had so much to do for The Thing, that he worked seven days a week,
for 57 weeks straight, surviving on a diet of candy bars and cola until the film
finally wrapped, at which point he checked into a hospital for exhaustion.
All to create some of the most nightmare inducing creatures ever seen on screen.
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>> Let my people go.
>> Number seven, The Ten Commandments.
We are, of course, talking about the parting of the Red Sea.
All the way back in 1956, this absolutely monumental movie moment was brought to
life with a little bit of optical compositing and a whole lot of water.
In order to achieve the massive parting of the sea,
Cecil B Demille actually filmed tons and
tons of water being dumped into a trough from both sides, and then reversed it.
When combined with the walls of water filmed sideways,
it created a truly miraculous spectacle.
And it's actually a remake of Demille's previous Ten Commandments,
shot in the 1920s, which had a similar but smaller effect.
Back then, Demille used the same method to shoot the sea.
It's just with less color, less sound, and a couple fewer tons of water.
>> The force will be with you, always.
>> Next up at number six, Star Wars.
We mentioned Star Wars for its CGI,
but where would we be if we didn't mention the original trilogy's practical effects?
When Lucas set out to make the film and
found no effects company capable of what he planned, he decided to create one.
Thus became, Industrial Light & Magic.
What makes Star Wars so special is that it was the first film of it's kind
to feature such a saturation of effects in nearly every frame.
>From stop-motion, to blue-screen, to monster costumes, Star Wars had it all.
But if we had to pick one shot, we'd probably pick the very opening of
A New Hope, upon which the success of the entire trilogy hinged.
It was make-or-break, as audiences saw Lucas's version of space combat for
the first time, and in the end, expectations were shattered.
What's even better is that they had intended to model that first
Star Destroyer at 50 feet long, but when they ran out of money,
they could only manage 4.
And yet, it is still one of the most epic images ever committed to celluloid,
all without the help of a computer.
>> Destroy them!
>> At number five, the skeleton fight from Jason and the Argonauts.
If you've never heard of Ray Harryhausen, let this be your introduction.
Ray was one of Hollywood's most esteemed stop-motion animators.
Originally inspired by King Kong, who's subway destruction sequence narrowly
missed this list, Ray took up claymation at a very young age.
And by the time he reached Jason and the Argonauts, he was pioneering techniques
that seamlessly blended live action with stop-motion footage.
It is astonishing how very real, alive, and life-size his monsters look,
even though they are clay miniatures shot completely separately from
the actors shown here.
In fact, it took Ray nearly four and a half months to create this sequence,
during which he managed just 13 frames, or
just over half a second of footage each day.
And the kicker is that he worked completely alone.
No assistance, no 30-person team at his side.
Just Ray Harryhausen in his studio, bringing monsters to life.
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Next up, at number four, 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Kubrick's unforgettable space opera boast hundreds of effect shots,
all before the era of computer generated effects,
even before anyone had seen a full image of Earth.
And while the celestial sequences are breathtaking,
there's nothing quite as cool as the ten minute hallucinogenic Stargate.
And while nowadays any soccer mom with iMovie could probably create a home video
Stargate montage of their own, remember that this is the 1960s and
computers still used magnetic tape storage.
The task fell to special effects supervisor Doug Trumbull, who spent a full
two and a half years on 2001, where he famously re-purposed the panoramic
photograph technique, called slit scan, to shoot the sequence in-camera.
Basically, he exposed the entire sequence,
frame by frame, and each frame, millimeter by millimeter, from the center outward.
He's also the same guy who, almost 50 years later,
created the stunning super nova sequences from Tree of Life.
Again, without any help from a computer,
which at that point just seemed like showing off.
Closing in at number three, the rotating set.
Now we could keep talking about the 2001 here, because the $750,000 centrifuge
set was probably second only to the Stargate sequence.
But we're actually gonna look elsewhere.
If you're thinking Inception, that's a good guess,
because the fight choreography in the hallway sequence is absolutely astounding.
However, we're actually gonna go in the opposite direction, back to 1951,
with Royal Wedding, which premiered anti-gravity in a grand fashion.
With Fred Astaire dancing up the walls, onto the ceiling,
and all the way around the room.
The entire set was built into a geared barrel,
with all the furniture anchored in place.
And the camera is fixed to the room so that they rotate together, making it
appear as though it is Astaire who moves around the room, not the other way around.
Royal Wedding's director Stanley Donen actually reused
the effect 35 years later for Lionel Ritchie's Dancing on the Ceiling.
Which clocked in as the most expensive music video ever made at that time.
>> What are you?
>> I'm Gotham's reckoning.
>> Now if you're bummed we skipped over Chris Nolan for his take on the rotating
room, may we direct your attention to, number two, Dark Knight Rises.
Nolan's known for
pulling off ridiculous on-screen stunts that any sane director would do digitally.
In addition to rotating a hallway, he exploded a city street,
flipped a semi truck, and
we're seriously hoping he finds a way to open an actual wormhole for Interstellar.
But his most impressive stunt yet
was the plane heist from the opening of The Dark Knight Rises.
Those stuntmen are actually jumping out of a plane, onto another plane.
And that second plane is actually being suspended from the plane above it.
And that plane's fuselage is actually being dropped from
thousands of feet in the air.
And just because we haven't gotten our fill of rotating sets, you should know
that the interiors of the scene were shot on a sound stage with a rotating fuselage,
just like the one from Inception.
>> Come with me if you want to live.
>> And finally, at number one, Terminator 2.
Yes, Terminator 2's got some wicked special effects, from prosthetics and
articulated puppets, to blowing up L.A., and this awesome sliced-in-half costume.
But the number one slot goes to something which was just incredibly clever and,
surprisingly, left on the cutting room floor.
In this scene where John and Sarah Connor reset the T-800's learning chip, you can
clearly see Sarah and the Terminator both from behind and through the mirror.
But since Arnie obviously doesn't have a real hole in his head,
and CGI wasn't an option, how did they pull this off?
I know you're probably thinking, they just replaced the mirror with a green screen,
but they didn't even do that, because there wasn't a mirror at all.
That's actually a hole into another identical but mirrored room.
Sitting in front of it is a hollow swollen prosthetic and
behind it is the real Schwarzenegger.
But how did they get two Sarah Connors?
Even simpler, they used Linda Hamilton's twin sister.
Because when it comes down to it,
the simplest special effects solution is usually the best.
Because ultimately, it's not about man hours,
or model size, or number of polygons used.
It's about convincing the audience that something totally impossible is
actually real.
And that's exactly what they did here.
Which is why we think that this is the best use of
practical effects without any CGI.
So what do you think?
What are your favorite special effects shots that we left out?
Did you find any of the shots on this list underwhelming?
Let us know in the comments below, and subscribe to CineFix for
more Indiewire movie lists.
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