Awesome Vfx

Fashion design house Burberry celebrates its love of the outdoors, discovering new places, and its FW21 collection with a wild and inventive short film. Using a mix of live-action and VFX trickery, the film places its performers in a surreal world where they can fly through the air like skydivers, but without jumping out of an airplane.

(Gore) So much of what we see in today’s action, science fiction, horror, and fantasy films is done with computer graphics. But WhatCulture points out 10 recent movie illusions that were created in-camera with practical effects and stunt work. We can’t believe they launched real appliances at the cars in F9.

Remember the part of The Matrix where Neo took the red pill? What if he took the blue pill instead? Ctrl Shift Face and VFX artist Chris Ume make us wonder no longer, with the help of some deepfake tech. If the concept seems familiar, you might recall this mashup. VFX breakdown and comparison clip here.

Movies and TV shows use a mix of practical, optical, and digital visual effects to simulate natural disasters. Insider compiled behind-the-scenes footage from eight movies where VFX pros brought storms, earthquakes, tsunamis, and other acts of Mother Nature’s fury to life.

If you haven’t seen Macro Room’s amazing Playing with Time video, go watch it first. Then come back to this post and watch Captain Disillusion’s deconstruction of the clip, which explains in great detail how its creator likely achieved the complicated visual effects sequences.

(Gore) Since the 1950s, James Bond has been portrayed by eight different actors. Unlike Doctor Who, there’s no regeneration sequence to explain the change. The VFX experts from Corridor Crew fixed that by doctoring scenes of 007, showing him die and rise from the grave to serve His Majesty’s Secret Service once more.

Paul McCartney gets gracefully de-aged in the imaginative music video for the song Find My Way, a track which truly sounds like equal parts McCartney and Beck. We’re not sure Macca ever had those dance moves even when he was younger. Directed by Andrew Donoho, co-produced by digital avatar maker Hyperreal Digital.

DEVO’s Gerald V. Casale presents an impassioned solo track about “gaslighting and betrayal at the hands of a toxic narcissist.” Accompanying the song is a phenomenal music video by director Davy Force with a cool animation style inspired by the work of illustrator TOMO77.

Dave Ardito makes short videos inspired by anime. There are lots of fun and energetic clips on his TikTok feed, but this is one of the best examples, a real-life version of Speed-o’Sound Sonic from One Punch Man zooming and ricocheting around a room thanks to some slick editing and VFX.

(Gore) You might not know that Tig Notaro wasn’t in the original cast of Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead. After Chris D’Elia was bounced from the film, Tig stepped in and was digitally integrated into scenes. Watch how VFX artists performed the feat in this effects breakdown reel, which also shows how they did the zombie tiger gag.

The follow-up to Sila Sveta’s award-winning performance art piece Levitation goes beyond the boundaries of the original, growing this dancer’s environment from the limits of a small, projection-mapped stage into an expansive digital stage. Stick around to the end for the behind-the-scenes footage.

VFX artist Ian Hubert put together this short but impressive animation which drops us into a sci-fi race filled with insane rocket bikes. He created the clip using Blender and After Effects, and data from a Rokoko mocap suit for the pilots’ movements. This is so much better than the pod racing sequence in The Phantom Menace.

If you’ve never seen Who Framed Roger Rabbit, load up Disney+ right now and watch it. We’ll be here waiting. Then come back and watch Fun Fact Films’ video about how the filmmakers so effectively blended live-action and animation, and why it’s unlikely that the same quality will ever be achieved again.

Car chases have been a staple of moviemaking since the days of silent film. Insider looks at how chase scenes have evolved over the years through the advancements in stunt coordination, safety equipment, cameras, rigging, and visual effects technologies.

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.

Having worked on movies like Kubo and the Two Strings and Missing Link, animator Kevin Parry loves visual effects. When he’s not working on feature films, he makes his own illusion videos. Here’s a compilation of some of his best edits and tricks from the past year. He also owns the world’s only portal trampoline.

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.