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I am talking about older pre CGI film since computer effects done right are virtually seamless.
I always get a thrill when I learn about some sort of optical trick in older movies I know well is revealed and until then has fooled me. Since I always took a bit of pride back in the 80's and 90's picking out optical effects that were supposed to go unnoticed (not the showy stuff like space battles but effects made to duplicate more mundane stuff like matte painted town).
What got me going though is the recent blu rays of Indiana Jones.
It wasn't until the 1980's when NOVA had a show on visual effects that I found out most of the mine car chase climax in Temple Of Doom was miniature stop motion.
Also something it took a while for me to pick up on in in TOD was Indy and company trying to get out of the way of flooding water in the mine tunnel and end up at the opening going out to the edge of the cliffside. I
knew most of that was effects but never picked up on the establishing shot being a matte painting because they worked in a move that made it seem that it was being filmed by a handheld camera. Since matte shots usually are locked down camera wise it fooled me. It was much more difficult to do a matte painting shot and have the camera move back then.
The camera move fooled me in Last Crusade too. I had always known the long shots of Indy at the big gap that seperated him from the chambel with the grail were all Harrison Ford on blue screen. But always thought the scene where he is standing on the invisible bridge and the camera moves to show how the bridge is hidden was live action. But harrison Ford is on blue screen there too. Incredibly difficult shot to pull off with the camera move and it had me fooled for years.
Then there is It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. In an old special effects book I had, it wrote that the final collapse of the gas station had to be optically fix because part if the station collapsed befire it's cue. On old pan and scan VHS and even widescreen DVD I never could find the fix and thought it was a myth (this older effects book did have some of it's other info wrong). But with the blu ray which is opened up wider than the previous DVD I finally found it. Johnathan Winter's truck backs into the water tower. The water tower falls onto the outhouse in the back of the station (a continuity error since that building already got demolished earlier inthe sequence) and because the building collaped too early before the tower hit it, they split screen it into a freeze frame and delay the collapse until the tower "hits" it.
And finally, the long shot of Sulu flying a helicopter in front of the city in Star Trek 4? A model shot using an off the shelf remote control model.
I always get a thrill when I learn about some sort of optical trick in older movies I know well is revealed and until then has fooled me. Since I always took a bit of pride back in the 80's and 90's picking out optical effects that were supposed to go unnoticed (not the showy stuff like space battles but effects made to duplicate more mundane stuff like matte painted town).
What got me going though is the recent blu rays of Indiana Jones.
It wasn't until the 1980's when NOVA had a show on visual effects that I found out most of the mine car chase climax in Temple Of Doom was miniature stop motion.
Also something it took a while for me to pick up on in in TOD was Indy and company trying to get out of the way of flooding water in the mine tunnel and end up at the opening going out to the edge of the cliffside. I
knew most of that was effects but never picked up on the establishing shot being a matte painting because they worked in a move that made it seem that it was being filmed by a handheld camera. Since matte shots usually are locked down camera wise it fooled me. It was much more difficult to do a matte painting shot and have the camera move back then.
The camera move fooled me in Last Crusade too. I had always known the long shots of Indy at the big gap that seperated him from the chambel with the grail were all Harrison Ford on blue screen. But always thought the scene where he is standing on the invisible bridge and the camera moves to show how the bridge is hidden was live action. But harrison Ford is on blue screen there too. Incredibly difficult shot to pull off with the camera move and it had me fooled for years.
Then there is It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. In an old special effects book I had, it wrote that the final collapse of the gas station had to be optically fix because part if the station collapsed befire it's cue. On old pan and scan VHS and even widescreen DVD I never could find the fix and thought it was a myth (this older effects book did have some of it's other info wrong). But with the blu ray which is opened up wider than the previous DVD I finally found it. Johnathan Winter's truck backs into the water tower. The water tower falls onto the outhouse in the back of the station (a continuity error since that building already got demolished earlier inthe sequence) and because the building collaped too early before the tower hit it, they split screen it into a freeze frame and delay the collapse until the tower "hits" it.
And finally, the long shot of Sulu flying a helicopter in front of the city in Star Trek 4? A model shot using an off the shelf remote control model.
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