Vfx

Vehicle maker Honda and a team of talented artists pay tribute to the creativity and effort that goes into the production of modern motion pictures, peeling back the layers of the visual effects onion, and reminding us how little of what we see on screen these days is real.

Fernando Livschitz of Black Sheep Films messes with our expectations by swapping out everyday sights with wacky, unexpected, and downright impossible versions. We love the stubby airplanes and the two-wheeled buses.

“Who took these?” A couple has an intense argument. And it’s all because of you. Or at least someone you know. Director Noah Levenson’s customizeable short film uses photos from an Instagram account of your choice. Choose wisely.

YouTuber Buttered Side Down used an array of clever editing, camera tricks, and VFX to make his first-person quest for his lost frisbee far more daunting than it really was. The only thing better than this would be a VR version of the video.

Captain Disillusion takes on yet another internet myth – this time its the guy who claims to be able to aim his tape measure with the precision of a crossbow. With the help of a fan, he yet again illustrates how VFX, camera angles, and editing can make anything believable.

A titan from the game Destiny stumbles onto its most horrific adversary yet – cute, cuddly, and deadly Care Bears. Freaking Rad’s video offers up cool weapons, comedy, cosplay, action, and VFX. (Thanks Grey!)

(Gore) Kaptainkristian highlights what David Fincher so deftly hides: the director’s extensive use of CGI and other digital effects in his films. From the Winklevoss twins to digitally perfected hair, Fincher stealthily bends reality in service of the story.

A battery that lights up. An outlet that’s a plug. A pill that’s a screw. Daihei Shibata has an ongoing series of short VFX videos that show ordinary objects with a twist. They originally aired in a Japanese industrial design show for kids called Design Ah!

The guys from Corridor have a little fun with shadowplay in this clip about a couple of graffiti artists who get more than they bargain for when they try to tag the wrong building. TL;DW: kids, don’t use spray paint.

Tinrocket’s Olli is an iOS app that lets you add hand drawn animated effects to photos and videos. You get a live preview and you can save still images or animated gifs and videos up to 10s long. It comes with six filters, with two more filter packs available to buy.

While we don’t normally think of Saturday Night Live for its visual effects, the show actually requires quite a few of them these days. Take a look at some of the work their VFX artists must deliver under the gun each week, often with less than 12 hours before airtime.

Launched in 1997, the Cassini space probe has been providing NASA with data about Saturn and the moon since 2004. It’s now running out of fuel. Erik Wernquist made this excellent CGI short film to sum up Cassini’s contributions and its final mission.

Want to stage a massive battle, fill an empty stadium, or take on a zombie horde? There was a time that you’d need thousands of extras to pull off such epic scenes, Golaem shows us some of the ways their software has been used to make movie, TV, and video game magic.

Effects house Framestore walks us through some of the 365+ insane and trippy visual effects sequences it created for Doctor Strange. Were Benedict Cumberbatch and Mads Mikkelsen even in this movie, or were they just their digital doubles?

These days, much of what we see on screen wasn’t there at the time of filming. This short video by Roy Peker explains how techniques such as green screen, rotoscoping, matchmove, CGI, and color grading can place actors and objects anywhere without ever being there.

McClatchy Video Lab’s documentary explores one of the nastiest secrets of the movie business, that visual effects studios and artists are often forced to work ridiculous hours, often at fixed bid pricing to meet unrealistic demands of movie studios. Premieres online on 2/22/17.

Reminiscent of the best in-camera visual trickery of the mighty Michel Gondry, director Oscar Hudson’s incredible music video for Bonobo and Nick Murphy’s chillwave track was created using forced perspectives with “a very small camera… and a very big set.”

Visual effects company Oblique FX share some of the work that they did for Denis Villeneuve’s excellent sci-fi film Arrival. Naturally, the spaceships were computer-generated, but we weren’t expecting the freakin’ grass to be virtual as well.

YouTuber Snake Buddies gathered and edited videos of peacock spiders from fellow YouTuber Peacockspiderman to make it seem like the Casanovas of arachnids were partaking in the Holiday spirit. The snowspiderman is somehow both cute and creepy.

(PG-13) Contemplating suicide, a man with cannibalistic tendencies remembers the defining moments of his life. Director Nina Gantz’ award-winning stop-motion short is creepy yet tender, and filled with visual and emotional juxtapositions.

For his latest video, Devin Supertramp replicated the classic speeder bike chase from Return of the Jedi – but instead of flying precariously between giant redwoods, they did the stunt on water, using specially modified Jetovator jetpacks. Duct tape ftw.

CaptainDisillusion is getting so good at debunking, he’s now tackling two lies in a single short video. The cup levitation trick is easier to do, but at least you know it’s a trick. The train track near miss video on the other hand leverages realism for views.

The chefs in this kitchen use some pretty unconventional ingredients, serving up car chases, explosions, angry velociraptors, and more in this awesome ad spot for TV network CANAL+. The spot uses a wonderful mix of CGI and practical visual effects.

The guys at The Viral Factory made skiing even more exciting by enlisting animator Nick DenBoer to fill the course with all manner of deadly obstacles, from dinosaurs, to giant sawblades, to falling meteors. Just one question: when can we play this video game?

These days, we’re accustomed to such seamless and realistic visual effects on the big screen and even some TV series that we’ve become pretty jaded by CGI. But one look at Diane Bullock’s reel of 1990’s movie VFX should serve as a reminder of just how good we’ve got it today.