Awesome Vfx

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.

VFX artist and filmmaker Buttered Side Down caught a monarch butterfly and placed it in a jar to admire its beauty. But nothing is simple in BSD’s wacky universe, and a swarm of the colorful insects would prefer that he releases their friend from captivity.

This clever TikTok video uses simple visual effects and editing to create some mind-bending transitions. By changing outfits and posing himself in precisely the correct positions between cuts, it looks like its subject is seamlessly moving between the digital world and the real world.

The Great British Bake Off is called The Great British Baking Show here in the U.S. because Pillsbury owns a trademark on the words “Bake-Off.” Captain Disillusion digs into the consequences of this legal battle in the way the show has to be shot, edited, and have VFX applied to modify its contents for Netflix.

(Gore) Thanks to the events of Loki, we now have the MCU multiverse, and Peter Parker is only gonna make things worse in Spider-Man: No Way Home. The VFX crew from Corridor imagine how Mobius M. Mobius might clean up the mess by pruning unwanted Spidey variants in the most gruesome ways possible.

We’ve seen how The Mandalorian uses a giant wraparound screen and camera tracking tech to produce immersive environments. Jelle Vermandere doesn’t have a Disney-sized budget, so instead, he built a homebrew rig that uses a ring of lights synced with a virtual environment to match his lighting to the scene.

You’d think that a simple Walk/Don’t Walk sign would be enough to keep people from crossing against traffic, but it’s not. VFXHD came up with some creative methods for keeping pedestrians from getting run over. While the boxing gloves and hammer setups are silly, the water curtain and pop-up barriers aren’t bad ideas.

The choreography in Star Wars lightsaber duels has isn’t exactly realistic. The guys at Corridor Crew enlisted stunt coordinator Luke LaFontaine to help choreograph a fight scene that much better captures realistic swordplay tactics and how you might wield a lightweight plasma weapon. Then, they cranked up the VFX wizardry.

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.