Awesome Vfx

While Avatar: The Way of Water shot its underwater scenes by training actors to hold their breath, there are lots of other tricks that moviemakers use to create the illusion of underwater action. Insider explores some of the visual effects techniques – both practical and digital which bring underwater scenes to life.

We know Joel Haver from his animated sketches like the Toilet Paper Bears and It Came from the Fridge. But it turns out that Joel is way more involved in Hollywood than you might think. The guys from Corridor are here with the exclusive true story of Joel and the personal suffering he endures to entertain us all.

Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo shows off his multitude of talents in this wild music video by director Peter Quinn. The tricky visual effects shots make it appear that Rivers has cloned himself and performed all of the instruments on the track What Happens After You? from the band’s 2022 seasonal release SZNZ: Autumn.

VFX artists have been making actors look younger or older for a while, but the effect is costly and labor-intensive. Researchers from Disney, ETH Zurich, and UW-Madison are showing off an AI tech called Face Re-aging Network (FRAN), which can perform the feat in five seconds per frame. It seems better at aging than de-aging, though.

CGI technology keeps getting more impressive. But it still takes a lot of time and effort to create photorealistic environments. Wren from Corridor Crew introduces us to a tech called Neural Radiance Fields, aka NeRFs, which can produce a texture-mapped 3D environment with realistic lighting from 2D photographs.

With the help of AI image generation tech, Corridor created this short fan film in the style of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. The crossover imagines that The Avengers (and a whole lot of Spider-Men variants) found their way into the Spider-Verse as a result of the events of Doctor Strange’s actions. Go behind the scenes here.

Movies and TV often use wires and CGI to make it look like actors are moving in low-gravity environments. This rig works differently, connecting a stuntperson to a counterweight on a metal armature via a rotating belt. The resulting effect is impressive, though we imagine it would be tricky to erase the rig in post-production.

Digital images typically have three color channels – red, green, and blue, and sometimes a fourth, Alpha channel, which defines transparency. Captain Disillusion the ways they can be created, and how the improper use of the Alpha channel can mean the difference between a seamless composite image and disaster.

Ever since The Matrix came out, visual effects that play with time have become more common. Insider explains how effects artists have slowed down and frozen time on screen in movies like X-Men: Days of Future Past and The Worst Person in the World using practical effects, high-speed photography, and CGI.

If there’s one thing you can rely on action movies and TV shows for, it’s car crashes. While some filmmakers have moved on to using CGI for crash effects, practical vehicle stunt work is still the most convincing. Insider got together with J.E.M. FX to explain the tricks required to create controlled vehicular mayhem on screen.

David Fincher is known for his fastidious approach to filmmaking. He’s a staunch believer in digital technology and visual effects to bring his fiction to life. But when making a movie like Mank that’s supposed to look like it was shot in the 1940s, is digital better than analog? Video essayist CinemaStix explores the topic.

Captain Disillusion is back. This time, he’s not here to debunk some video fakery but to show us how various visual effect shots are done in music videos. With the help of the J-Pop band Atarashii Gakko!, a green screen, and an office chair, he put together a sequence of cool VFX shots for three music videos.

After being annoyed at his friends for riding on scooters, a guy smashes a bunch of the two-wheelers in a back alley. But instead of destroying them, they come to life as a robot. Peter France’s sci-fi comedy is one of the most endearing short films we’ve seen in a while. It’s like Short Circuit meets CHAPPiE but with scooters.

This six-part documentary series tells the history of Industrial Light & Magic. It features interviews with famous filmmakers and the people behind George Lucas’ esteemed visual effects studio, and explores how they created some of the most memorable movie scenes of all time. Arrives on Disney+ 7.27.22.

Flying through the air is one of the most common powers wielded by superheroes and supervillains. Insider takes a look at the history of flying characters in TV and movies, and how improvements in special effects and stunt techniques have led to more and more believable flight on screen.

Every trick a skateboarder ever landed required at least some degree of practice and persistence. Director Najeeb Tarazi offers up an “ode to effort” with this experimental short that takes footage of skateboarders failing and composites it with their successes. Filmed by Dennis Ludwig, Ryan Neddeau, and Frankie Eder.

(PG-13: Gore) As Star Wars fans know, stormtroopers have a long history of missing their targets. Corridor imagines how differently things might have turned out if the Empire’s plastic-armored troops just a bit more practice. Bonus VFX points for Han Solo’s mustache.

This clever video makes it look like a giant hand is manipulating the real world by making pinch, pan, and zoom gestures. This effect was created in-camera with the help of a precisely choreographed model and hand actor behind the camera. Though we’re not sure how he got the finger gun past the metal detector.

Whether or not you’re into the bedroom pop sounds of Cuco’s, the music video for his track Caution is a must-watch. Director Cole Kush and Grin Machine take us on a wild and trippy ride with the singer-songwriter through a dreamlike virtual world. It’s a face-melting good time!

There are many epic action scenes in Zack Snyder’s 300, including the dolly shot that zooms in and out on King Leonidas in the Battle of Thermopylae. Wren from Corridor Crew wanted to see if he could replicate the original’s triple camera rig using three iPhones, then shot a battle sequence with piñatas in place of Persians.

The canals in Venice, Italy are swarming with boats, especially the floating city’s iconic gondolas. With the help of the computer graphics software Blender and After Effects, Raffo VFX eased congestion on the waterways by moving the skinny boats to the skies above, making Venice look like a scene out of The Fifth Element.

While WhatCulture sometimes mistakes compositing and rotoscoping for CGI, the video is still worth a watch, as they show off a dozen times that VFX artists managed to create illusions that were so seamlessly integrated that you’d never know they weren’t real.

This excerpt from the documentary short The Special Effects of Karel Zeman showcases some of the late Czech filmmaker’s wildly inventive methods for creating movie magic with miniatures, fluids, smoke, forced perspective, and other camera tricks. You can watch the full documentary on YouTube.

Today’s movie VFX rely on green screen and CGI, but in silent movie times, neither of those existed. Pedro Cinemaxunga created this fascinating analysis of vintage moviemaking techniques that shows how in-camera effects managed to fake out audiences. We always thought Harold Lloyd was really hanging from that building.

Independent filmmaker Danny Donahue set out to make a movie about time travel and dinosaurs. Despite having virtually no budget, he created an impactful short film that relies heavily on sound effects to build dramatic tension. Even more impressive is that Danny did the CGI himself with no prior knowledge of the tech. (Thanks, Rob!)

Buttered Side Down got on a new dartboard and decided to try his hand at the game. As expected, things go off the rails when he realizes it’s not only impossible to land a bullseye but to hit the board at all. Perhaps he should call Mark Rober for an assist.