We All Die Screaming

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This video RUINED my brain.

COMMENTERS: Have you ever been completely fooled by subtle CG or other movie FX and astonished when you found out the trickery? The lies? The deceit?

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44 Comments

  1. I thought the makeup for Davy Jones in the 2nd Pirates of the Caribbean movie was awesome until I learned the whole thing was CG

    • Same here. I assumed it was a mixture of makeup, puppeteering and some CG for the really squigley tentacles. When you actually see all the pirates and NONE of them are even in costume its very confusing. I also never realized that Voldemorts entire head was CG'd. I assumed it was all makeup but I never thought about how his nose couldnt really be squished that much.

  2. My roomie and I watch almost everything together, and we have a standing policy of NEVER EVER EVER watching 'behind the scenes'/'making of' extras on a DVD. All they do is destroy our ability to incorporate a good story into our own personal fantasy worlds.

    Suspension of disbelief is critical to containing all possible worlds in one alternate universe in your mind. Watching an actor talk to a tennis ball in front of a green screen on a sound stage is like that time I worked for that restaurant with the sundae bar. That isn't ice cream, its some kind of non-dairy powdered food substitute mixed with tap water. I can never enjoy a sundae bar again. 🙁

  3. In the scene from the Avengers, when the Hulk is chasing Black Widow through the Helicarrier, I had no idea Black Widow was CGI the whole time. Sure, the Hulk probably is, but I figured they had filmed Scarlett Johansson and then CGI'ed her being hit. Nope. Fakey fakerton the whole time.

    Digital stunt people are locking better and better.

    • I dont believe she is CGI in that scene. In the FX reel Im pretty sure theyre just showing the digital rotoscoping they had to do so the CGI debris could bounce off of her the right way.

      • On second viewing, I think you might be right.

        I wish more of the CGI heavy movies would do proper technical documentaries for their DVD extras like the LOTR disks did. While it can be somewhat repetitive, it is nice to see the progression of the technology and new techniques over the years.

  4. Starting to think my life is crap because strip is sounding like a great idea… All the memories without the crud.

  5. I still have trouble believing that David Fincher didn't start shooting his Zodiac exteriors when he was 5 or so… or at the very least didn't travel back in time with his cast.

  6. I thought of one! … this isn't a movie, its Game of Thrones (close enough?)
    but all the bazillion bits of CGI used to erase "modern world" in backgrounds of half the shots, and then adding things like blue skies or falling snow in scenes you didn't even think needed to be computer-fixed

  7. I started watching that video a few weeks ago and then quit because I don't want to ruin the movie for myself. I like my suspension of disbelief right where it is. There was a moment in The Hobbit where the 3D failed, when Bilbo crossed in front of Gandalf, and I realized it was a failure of the composite process, because of course Gandalf had to be on a different scale than everyone else…it nearly ruined the scene for me. I'm much happier not seeing behind the scenes of my movie magic.

  8. I have hope that future generations will take pity and fix our bad CGI. Like making the young CGI Jeff Bridges in TRON Legacy look 100% real – they tried to do a good job but its still clearly CGI.

    • I think it's just never going to look good. Jurassic Park is 20 years old this year, and it doesn't look all that different from what we do now. CGI people (and anything else) just look so out of place, all the time.

      I think future generations should do what I have just now named "A Reverse Lucas," in which they replace all the CGI elements in every movie with something, anything, physically real.
      They can switch out Young CGI Jeff Bridges with a muppet that stands there and says his dialogue. It would be more natural and believable.
      They can also replace Jar Jar with an actual tennis ball.

      • Would have worked, if they didn't try to pull off the same effect for a scene or two where they're trying to sell us Jeff Bridges being younger in a flashback. I think that was in there, anyway. It's been a while.

        • Exactly. They established that this grim vissage was intended to be real flesh and bone human. They should have realized the limitation and cut bait before putting it in the actual movie.

  9. I'm usually quite good at spotting CGI witchcraft in movies. However, I was always sure the truck flip in The Dark Knight was CG, and I'm still shocked when I remember it's completely real.

  10. My comment about The Hobbit leaving the theater: "Man, the effects in a few places were really noticible, but I had to keep reminding myself that wargs weren't real."

    • Even the original LotR films completely fooled me in a few scenes. Watching the extended extras was a real eye opener both to what they can do in reality, and the quality of what they can do in CGI.

  11. I just got "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" on Blu-Ray. And in the commentary track, Fincher talked how they digitally inserted a part in Rooney Mara's hair in one scene.
    Not the hair, JUST THE PART!!!
    God help me, Alex Jones is right. We are living in The Matrix!

  12. Been watching old sci-fi movies, and I still don't really understand the magical way they turn some hand-portable props and a spotlight into the Enterprise exiting Earth orbit while the sun comes over Earth's disk.

    Also, I heard that there were lots of practical effects in the new Hobbit movie. For the first time, just about ever, I'm having a hard time deciding if a lot of the stuff they could have used for practical effects were CG or not. I know they used camera angles in the Hobbit hole, so there's hope yet. I always did miss those practical effects…makes movie magic feel more…magical.

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