I just realized that!
Welcome back to another "Visual Effects Artists react:" video.
You guys have probably seen those videos where like, professionals react to videos pertaining to their career.
And we wanted to do the same thing because visual effects are super cool, and sometimes they're really bad.
Clint: ”The Matrix" is one of my favorite movies of all time.
I can quote this entire movie.
So the matrix is honestly is what inspired me to start getting into visual effects because they had a pretty small effects team all things considered, and
it was just really genius application of technology that made it good.
Alright- this shot- right here
Aww! Such a revolutionary shot!
I love that shot makes my heart flutter- and the matrix is one of the first films to kind of... pull off one of these
shots where the camera is just this virtual object that can move anywhere it wants at any speed
hey, you guys want to hear something that might blow your mind?- and you too?
This background is a hundred percent CG
So you're saying the only thing that's real in that entire shot is the Keanu? The Keanu Reeves is the only real thing
In that entire shot. So the way they did this shot instead of taking one camera and moving it through a circle
Just put a camera
At each a position where there be a frame and just hit a button and they all take a picture at once
Or at least slightly offset from each other in this case. Look at that. Look at the spacing of those cameras
they knew the speed at which they wanted to have the camera flying around certain moments and they built that into the spacing of the
Cameras, I just realized that I always I always assumed that they were evenly spaced
There's more frames here in the spin than there are cameras
What they actually need to do is basically do a little mini morphs to get the frames in between the cameras.
So you basically have a low frame rate version and then you go through to do frame interpolation,
It's called which is this just morphing from frame to frame to fill in those in-betweens. You can actually see those artifacts in his
cape? His jacket.
NIKO: Oh, yeah.
WREN: If you really look at like the folds and whatnot They do kind of like morph between each other on certain frames now. Here's the thing. So they build a big green screen room
There's all these little holes, you know where the cameras are pointed through they filmed Keanu Reeves on a green screen
What happens when you're doing a 360 rig and you're on one side of the rig looking at the other side of the rig?
You see all the cameras!
WREN: See all the cameras.
So they had to recreate the background in CG
Now, this is a problem in
1999 because you don't have the capabilities to make photorealistic CG and yet here we are with a photorealistic background
So why is it photo real, Niko?
So the trick that they came up with was:
Hey
Let's just go to our actual set, we'll literally just take pictures of it as is with all the lighting
Already baked in the shadows already there and we'll just use that as a texture and that's it
most people don't notice this but when Trinity does her kick the background is 100% CG and
When Agent Smith and Neo jump at each other and they're holding the guns in the subway
The background is also 100% CG in those shots. If you want to remake this shot yourself
All you'd have to do is get a bunch of cameras there wouldn't be expensive ones some green-screen poster board and an actor who flops
And there you go. It takes some work, but it's by all means something that's doable one person could recreate this effect shot these days
Wonky looking he looks like he has like cotton stuff underneath his lips. He's like, hey, I'm Superman. So, okay
What actually happened here is they filmed the Justice League Henry Henry Cavill or Henry Cavill? Henry!
Filmed superman and then he goes on to film Mission Impossible where he has this really cool-looking mustache, right?
but during the filming of that movie they had to do reshoots for
Superman they wouldn't let him shave his mustache. He's contractually obligated to have a mustache
Can you imagine signing a contract? It says you have to have a mustache?
At the end of the day this is just like movie studios
Just like flexing at each other being like, oh no, we have a contract saying he can't shave his mustache
So what are you gonna do?
And they're like I guess we'll CG it? They had to straight-up
Recreate his entire mouth match it as best they could and then just composite the the render over his mustache
But then you have to blend it further in so you end up having to use more
fake face
than the real face to make it all work together and then you end up with basically a mostly fake mouth. The hardest thing to
Recreate about the face is the lips. It looks like bad. It's not that bad sir. This scene is actually pretty solid
Oh this one. I've seen this one
*Clint screams. Niko laughs.*
The corners of his mouth don't like fold in on each other correctly. Yeah, that looks weird
It's too smooth its way too smooth and it stretches weird
Do you think they took his mustache and like?
Combed it up and then combed down and just like got us like they just crunched it together as much as possible
yeah, so this is another example of where someone did a deep fake over the top of this and it looks better he fix our
Pretty interesting technology. The next video coming out on this channel is austex parenting with deep fakes if you'd like to check that out
consider subscribing
That's great
I'm seeing some blurry I can see why they had issues in the corners of the mouth because the mustache overlaps the corners of the
Mouth and that's a bit tricky because you're dealing with two folds of muscle and skin coming together
It just looks like the guy on the left. Just got out of a dental exam. You're right. You're right
You got no cane flowing through his system. He's our little bit
Is this real life Cooper room?
Oh
Man oh man
Okay
One of my favorite movies Pacific Rim had probably the coolest
Aesthetic of any movie I've ever seen wait Guillermo del Toro's use of color
I can literally talk about Pacific Rim for days
Every shot was filmed in a way as if it was actually achieved in real life
All the camera moves are as if they're on a dolly or a helicopter or someone's holding it looking up at the robots
There are no like CG cameras flying all over the place and that makes these giant super unrealistic things seem more real
So that shot we just saw there going through the office building and then hitting Newton's Cradle, that's a pretty cool shot
They filmed that for real on a miniature set. Wait, that's not VFX. You're right
It's not they created an office building like third scale maybe
That's why it looked so good cuz it's real
The only thing they added in that was digital was the fist and like all the connecting stuff around the fist in the background now
It is worth noting that the cradle wouldn't actually react that way this movie doesn't care about physics that much
But okay the reason why I wanted to bring up this movie is to compare it to the abysmal second movie oh we're going there
You're not missing out dude, it was just such a disappointment tiny monsters, I don't
Like this has like one of those ethereal cameras where it moves without any sort of relation to real space
Which works for some movies it obviously works for the matrix
but this is an example where you don't want to do that because it just kind of
Reinforces the idea that the fake things you're seeing are actually fake. Yeah, and I'm just watching an animated film
Look at this camera move here
It's a digital camera move and it's just like flying between each of the jaegers as they are like powering up their weapons
Yeah, and it's like the robots look cool, I guess in the second movie also noticed that the jaegers are
Faster than the Eggers from the first movie and that also serves as a disadvantage for making them look realistic
What made the jaegers from the first movie looks so good is the fact that they were so slow
they're just like
mmm, and the second movie like
The bigger you get the slower you move because you have all these obstacles in your way like air and what?
you have to move really slowly and that really
Accentuates the fact that they're huge if you want your miniatures to look big you have to shoot them in slow motion
imagine you're standing on top of the Empire State Building and you drop a rock ten second stay at the ground now imagine you have
a ten foot model of the Empire State Building and you drop a rock off of that if it you want it to look the
Same size. You would need to slow down time for that rock to take ten seconds to hit the ground
And so that's the kind of math to do in filming miniatures
They change the frame rate to make you record slower to make the physics
Move at the same speed as they would if it was a lot bigger
Do you guys want to see the best miniature explosions you've ever seen?
Salvation yeah
You wouldn't think Terminator Salvation would have the best miniature explosion but these are by far the best miniatures I've ever seen
whoa
so they they time the shockwaves with other explosives so that things all fall apart at the exact time that should
Because obviously your manager is not gonna have enough force to blow things way with a shock wave watch this
There's an explosion for when it hits the ground. Boom. See that that timing is nuts
You don't think it's just like a master behind his like board and just like baaah
In True Lies
I was like
How did they blow up this massive bridge and how did this car just plummet into the ocean and it was with the miniatures?
That's real right there it's incredible I can see the bridge it's coming come on
Yes, yes, yes
And it hits that air and the truck frickin lands it on the other side of the bridge. Yeah
Man, good it's a boy. That's right. I forgot about the pelican dude James Cameron with the goofs, man
I think we've had enough of shots that we really enjoy it's time to look at something that no one enjoys. Woah, woah
Oh god
The baby that's on the baby's face
Why is it's it's too mature for his age
So far like all the shots looking down at the baby aren't that bad but past when we first see the baby
Oh my gosh, that was that was hard corn. Candy Valley
Also, there's like way too much fake right there on the baby
Yeah, look at it's like days clearly lit like we're different direction and they're like, they're adding fake shadowing and lamer lighting
Is it worth going to children of men baby wait you're saying that baby's not usually there that's been lately computer-generated yes
They've got a really good. It's really good. One thing to keep in mind is the lighting helps a lot
all the details are kind of hidden in the shadows and it makes it look more realistic because it matches the scene the animation is
Fantastic, the animation is really good. That looks like a frickin newborn baby. Someone had a hand animate that every finger every
Fold god no that was you see I had no idea. That was a CG, baby
Oh
Hi, this is the criss-cross crisis like the one redeeming scene to the whole movie wardrobe she didn't make it. Oh
This is pretty crazy because I get the perspective on her head right when it falls off. Oh, that was good
Super well done. That was good stylized. So is that a computer-generated head when I think they I think they had a head model
They just projected the texture of her head onto it
So projecting the texture from your footage onto a CG model and then you can just have that CG model Brooke
I think what what happened here is they just asked the actress to slowly turn her head and then dip it down
I think so. Yeah because look her ear comes into frame, right?
It's clearly like rode the bun, you know
And then they dip her head forward and it's just a clean cut. They animate the head down
I think he might be right Clint
So like that'd be the easiest and cheapest way because they're doing it they're doing this effect when the camera stops so they orbit around
her head, they stop the camera and now it's easy to do all your stuff on just a
Tripod shot basically. So what's this crisscross shot? You keep describing just wait for it
All right, is it he's yeah, he's gonna do it. I got this. What is he gonna do is either like wrestle with it?
oh crap, criss-cross fries
deactivated too late
Some strange animation on that that looks really cool look at the seer line. Yeah, the close up on his face looks really good. Oh
Look at the way the I do like that. Oh, yeah, that's really nice. The laser-light working out. Yeah
Yeah, watch as I melt though. Oh
The whites are running in his eyes like it's an egg
And it immediately falls apart
once we start seeing like all the little pieces the first part of that shot before it rack focuses to her in the background looks
Great. Yeah, and now it's the physics. It's like that little chunk falls off and then it kind of just kind of floats there
Yeah, well, you're right. It looks like it should just tumble off instead it goes dude
Yeah, I just think the execution of the piece is falling apart doesn't look that great agreed
So, you know who did that shot way better Freddie and Brandon that looked really cool
So he's chopping Freddie into hundreds of slices and pieces here. Dude, all those blood particles shooting out on every single slice
Oh, that's cool. That's pretty sweet example of projection mapping where the projection mapped Freddie onto a model
It's lined up and then anything that didn't get the projection map of Freddie's exterior is just a meat interior
You can see Freddie's hand though
Go from individual fingers to just a mitten and you can see the texture mapping really well on it. Oh, yeah
Right pops and ooh up into an inflatable glove, but it's a good transition. I hate it they faded
He does like a crossfade. This was a great shot great shot
There's a whole thing like effects when you're watching them in motion in context versus effects broken down frame by frame
played over and over and over and over again and most of the little things like that where his hand went ballooned into a little
Inflatable projection map you don't have to get it pixel perfect because we don't have time and no one's gonna know Duncan knows
You know what we should do. We should react to some of our videos in a future video
You're gonna get our best and worst VFX
For that and now check this out
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Curated a special playlist of a bunch of our favorite videos from last year that we think you might enjoy having watched this whole VFX
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It'll take you to several of these videos. They're great. And we think you might enjoy them