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15 Movie Visual Effects That Were Insanely Hard To Pull Off

Every single frame of a translucent ghost in Ghostbusters had to be drawn by hand.

15 Movie Visual Effects That Were Insanely Hard To Pull Off

June 02, 2021

Two-second scenes from movies sometimes take months to accomplish. For example, every single frame of a translucent ghost in Ghostbusters had to be drawn by hand. Here are 14 more visual effects that took more effort than we realized…

15

They built an elaborate, 30-foot-long machine for one scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey. VFX wizard Doug Trumbull asked Stanley Kubrick if he could build such a machine to film the star Gate sequence with, and Kubrick said Go do it. CRACKED.COM — Source: The Hollywood Reporter

14

The Dark Knight Rises

The actors in The Dark Knight Rises had to endure sweltering heat for outdoor shots. They shot some outdoor scenes in Pittsburgh when it was a hundred degrees or SO, and the actors wore heavy coats and pretended it was winter. CRACKED.COM — Source: Collider

13

Machines at Silicon Valley and Caltech were involved in rendering Terminator: 2's finale. Although it kind of looks cartoony today, it took the best computing power of the day to create it and it'd look even better if they hadn't run out of time to render it. CRACKED.COM — Source: Vulture

12

They built seven different versions of BB-8 for The Force Awakens. Some versions were operated by puppeteers, some had stabilizing wheels, and in the desert they all had lots of footprints nearby. All that had to be CGI'ED out later. CRACKED.COM — Source: The Hollywood Reporter

11

Terminator: Dark Fate's de-aging involved digitally replacing actors' heads. They shot sequences with young actors, then replaced their faces with the stars' faces using a facial capture system from Disney Research. CRACKED.COM — Source: The Hollywood Reporter

10

They made 4,000 or SO miniatures and models for the VFX in Independence Day. into PATILLE mith things think It took nine months to film all the miniature and model footage they needed, and up to four camera crews were filming it at any one time. CRACKED.COM — Source: Vulture

9

The Irishman

The de-aging process in The Irishman involved shooting with a three-camera rig. Two of the cameras were infrared - the whole thing was a replacement for a typical motion capture system that would require actors' faces to be covered in dots. CRACKED.COM — Source: Vulture

8

The hardest part of animating Game of Thrones' dragons was moving Dany's legs. Making the dragon fly and breathe fire convincingly was pretty easy compared to the challenge of making Dany's legs react to the dragon's movement. CRACKED.COM — Source: Vulture

7

They filmed the sinking of a partial full-scale warship replica for one scene in Dunkirk. The ship was mounted on a hydraulic gimbal to simulate what would be happening in combat, and they added crowds and the rest of the ship with CGI. CRACKED.COM — Source: IndieWire

6

Creating the Medium place in The Good Place was surprisingly tough. The real-life house had trees and mountains all around it, but the house in the show was supposed to be isolated, so its whole environment had to be replaced CRACKED.COM — Source: Vulture

5

Getting the underwater CGI right for Aquaman was a drawn-out, agonizing process. Developing a convincing look, which required accurate physics - especially for hair, like Aquaman's beard -- took months and months. CRACKED.COM — Source: Vulture

4

It took 220 visual effects artists to create Pogo from The Umbrella Academy. Plus, two actors perform the character-- one is on set, and the other provides the voice and the facial expressions that get mapped onto the Pogo CG model. CRACKED.COM — Source: IndieWire

3

Inserting direwolves into Game of Thrones scenes was amazingly hard. The performance has to go exactly to plan so that everything can be matched to the footage with the actors, which is insanely hard to pull off with real-life animals. CRACKED.COM — Source: Vulture

2

Putting Grand Moff Tarkin into Rogue One depended on finding a prop from a 1984 movie.. They made a life cast of Peter cushing's face for the movie Top Secret! that year, which apparently helped ILM build a CGI model of his face for Rogue One. CRACKED.COM — Source: IndieWire

1

Ghostbusters

It took three weeks to create one on-screen second of a ghost in Ghostbusters. There was no CGI back then, so animation had to be drawn frame by frame (some ghosts were puppets, though, and those were easier to animate). CRACKED.COM — Source: DenOfGeek

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