THE BEST Vfx

Weta Workshop is one of the world’s best special effects and prop companies. Now, visitors to Auckland, New Zealand can enjoy a 90-minute interactive tour that allows them to experience the creative processes behind three imaginary movies in the horror, sci-fi and fantasy genres. Book tickets here.

After watching every episode of The Office, is there a limit to how much Michael Scott you can take? Jessie Richards thinks there wasn’t enough of Dunder Mifflin’s blowhard boss, so he deepfaked the faces of most of the other character’s onto Michael’s head. We’re guessing that Stanley, Kelly, Oscar, and Darryl wouldn’t have worked so well.

If you’ve ever shot a video where you wanted everyone to do something at the same time, you know it’s hard to get that level of coordination. Two Minute Papers shows off an AI-based technology that can re-time moving elements in a video, complete with shadows, reflections, and deformations. Read the full paper here.

Sergey Vasiliev decided he had enough of the old “in Soviet Russia” trope which represents his country as technologically backward. Incorporating some clever visual effects, his brilliant short film imagines a Russian farm where everything is running on the latest tech. The footage reminds us of the work of Simon Stålenhag.

Epic Games and Unreal Engine helped to develop the amazing virtual environments used to bring The Mandalorian to life. As this highlight reel shows, theirt technique of combining projected, camera-tracked CG environments with live actors and props has far-reaching potential for all kinds of video production.

The visual effects in The Mandalorian are impressive for a TV show. In addition to tech like The Volume, VFX firms like PXO contribute to many shots. In this reel, the company shows off CG breakdowns for various shots from the series, including some of the more memorable creatures they helped to bring to life.

While stuck home during the pandemic, it’s more important than ever to try and vary your days and mix things. up. In Jan Riesenbeck and Dennis Stein-Schomburg’s strange short film, a man explores the importance of breaking out of routines, while his floating head transforms into some of the many thoughts he expresses.

Just because something is a commercial doesn’t mean it can’t be a work of art. This clip from director Henry Scholfield and Mathematic Studio for Indonesia ride hailing and tech company Gojek is proof positive of that. For all 60-seconds the clip is on screen, it will fill your eyes with magical, VFX-powered sensory overload.

BRONSON is a collaboration between the members of ODESZA and Golden Features, and the music video for Keep Moving perfectly suits the track’s industrial beats, thanks to StyleWar’s deft juggling of stock corporate videos and insane visual effects.

Visual Suspect took advantage of the warped look of a 360º camera lens, and combined it with additional distortion effects to create this beautifully twisted perspective on the world around us. The film was shot in Hong Kong in stunningly crisp 8K resolution.

It’s been a while since we checked in with the guys at SoKrispyMedia, with their last Chalk Warfare video debuting back in 2014. Now, they’ve drawn their chalk weapons once again, and headed back to the battlefield to give us their most epic action and VFX sequence yet. We loved the R/C car and gravity gun made out of chalk.

The best part of setting up dominoes is knocking them all over once you’re done. But what if dominoes were much, much bigger? The guys from Corridor put their visual effects skills to the test once more by creating an enormous set of virtual dominoes that could crush a human like a bug. Behind the scenes video here.

Among his many talents, musician Jacob Collier is known for his multitrack music videos. While quarantined at home, he and his three identical (virtual) twins performed this stellar NPR Tiny Desk Concert that showcases his diverse musical skills through three smooth and enveloping tunes.

TV news channels, YouTubers, and even blockbuster movies us green screens to place people in alternative locations by removing their background and replacing it with another. Tom Scott explains why it’s challenging to get a really convincing background swap, and how the effect is really easy to spot when done badly.

Phil is a skeleton. He quickly rose to fame on the big screen as a stop-motion superstar. Then, modern effects put him out of business. Michael Shanks’ (aka “timtimfed“) charming short film is a fun blend of live-action, animation, and VFX, and a loving tribute to the great Ray Harryhausen. Behind the scenes here.

To show off the rendering and physics capabilities of Razer Blade Studio laptops and their Nvidia Quadro RTX GPUs, the VFX experts at Corridor Crew created three short effects sequences using virtual dominoes. The realistic visuals include dominoes that topple up a wall and a ridiculously huge domino progression.

Anyone who lived through the 1990s can tell you that watching movies on videotape was a decidedly lower quality experience than today’s HD and UHD technologies enable. Tom Scott met up with the team from Red Giant to learn how their software can make modern footage look like it was recorded on VHS.

These days, if you want to destroy a city in a movie, you do it all with computer graphics. But back in the day, it was done with practical effects and miniatures. Check out this footage from the 1933 disaster movie Deluge, in which models of countless New York City buildings are demolished by a massive tidal wave.

We like all kinds of donuts: glazed ones, cake ones, and ones made by rear-wheel drive cars. This brief clip combines both the circular fried treat and circular tire tracks through a slick composite of drone footage and digital VFX. Created by Benoit Finck, John Bashyam, and Yann Bouloiseau for Warm & Fuzzy.

Being in a car crash can be quite terrifying. But what might crashes be like if other cars were invisible? With a little visual effects trickery, Donato Sansone created this surreal sequence of car crash footage, in which one of the involved vehicles was digitally removed from the scene.

Visual trickster Zach King pays tribute to the 1986 classic Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, faking out his parents and sneaking out of the house on a “sick day” with his buddy through the magic of digital and practical effects, optical illusions, and clever editing.

As much of the world is staying home to help reduce the spread of COVID-19, we’re all looking for things to do while we’re not going out. UK creative guy Rob Wakefield is having no trouble keeping his mind entertained while he self isolates, and took a little of his time to create this amusing little clip.

(PG-13: Language) Filming things against a green screen and then replacing that area with digital images has become the norm in visual effects shots. But with the dramatic improvements in rear-projection tech perfected on The Mandalorian, Mr. Sunday Movies wonders if that could spell the end of the long-standing chromakey technique.

One of the world’s leading shops for practical visual effects is Wellington, New Zealand’s Weta Workshop. If you need creatures, miniatures, vehicles, weapons, robots, or just about anything else, they’re your guys. Their 2020 reel showcases just a handful of their many incredible visual accomplishments over the years.

Gareth Smith & Jenny Lee’s enchanting video observes Los Angeles from a new perspective. Watch in awe as dancer-choreographer Jason Chong appears to dance across the city’s overhead power lines. Now before you go calling the power company, the illusion was done using VFX trickery by Smith and Theo Alexopoulos.

ILM takes us behind the scenes of The Mandalorian to see how visual effects tech developed with Epic Games are used to create the series. Rather than shoot on location or in front of a green screen, the series uses a gigantic, wraparound screen to surround actors with digital scenery which can move in sync with a camera.