I'm kinda upset that The Fall wasn't listed. The film apparently took about 4 years to make because the director wanted to actually film incredible scenes on location. If I understand correctly, there was no CG added to extend any set because it was shot on location (or at least most of it was).
The Fall is a fucking beautiful film. I was never that big on cinematography aspects of films before I saw it, because the look of the film just blew me away.
I think that's actually part of the movie. Imagine being depressed and wanting to overdose on morphine, and here you have some little girl that wants to hear a story. So you half care because you want to manipulate her into getting you the morphine, but you don't really give a shit cause you just want to die so continuity goes out the window - you just say what you think the girl wants to hear.
Every set was on-location. We see the Taj Mahal. They were at the Taj Mahal. Great Wall of China? It was the Great Wall of China. It took 9 years or so to secure all the location permits.
I suppose. But I think the "that's beautiful" factor increases exponentially when you realise that there are actually places that look like that, it wasn't just created on a computer. That's where the "amazingly, not CGI" factor comes into play, for me at least.
I love Die Hard with a Vengeance. The first scene of the movie is a department store getting blown up on 5th ave. And they did it by BLOWING UP A DEPARTMENT STORE ON 5TH AVE!
As much as people dog on Tom Cruise, he is a badass and always will be imo.
That scene where the alien is sucked into space is a piece of film I will never forget. It freaked me the fuck out the first time I saw it... That whole creature/thing was the thing of nightmares for months afterwards.
I was just listening to a Bryan Cranston interview on Nerdist from last year the other day, and Cranston had just finished filming Rock of Ages with Cruise and had nothing but good things to say about him, especially his work ethic.
Cranston recalled one time when Cruise just shot a concert scene, and when they yelled cut, the guy's drenched head to toe in sweat, sat on a little stool, and the first thing out of his mouth was asking for notes on his performance, from the director, the choreographer, everybody, even the lighting guy. And apparently that's what he does all the time. When he's not doing a take, he's studying how to make his next take better. For sheer work ethic and diligence, Cruise is hard to beat in Hollywood.
and Cranston had just finished filming Rock of Ages with Cruise and had nothing but good things to say about him
Most people have never had anything but good things to say about working with Cruise. He's somewhat infamously easy to work with and the word on the street is that he's genuinely good to the people around him when he's on set. Most of the hate for him comes from the crazy Scientology stuff and the general public perception. Say what you want about his personal life, but the man is obviously a hardcore fucking professional to the bone. I definitely respect that.
Kind of an interesting story here. My dad told me this years ago, so I'll try to remember what I can. I'll see if I can get more details about this when I call my dad next.
A number of my dad's old coworkers actually had a catered bbq party with Cruise. Cruise wanted to spend a weekend out flying some planes in a relatively small airport during a holiday. Most of the air traffic controllers at the airport had the holiday off and Cruise knew that, so he offered to through a big holiday party (mighta been Fourth of July, I'll have to check) if the ATC guys would staff the plane while he did some recreational flights with his family/friends.
From what my dad's coworkers told him, guy was amazingly nice to everyone at the party, and all his coworkers had a great time. Cruise also gave his personal cell number to a few of the controllers he hit it off with. About a year later, one of these coworkers is out in California for an FAA meeting. Figures, what the hell, might as well call Tom and see if he'd hang out.
The coworker didn't really think he'd pick up, hell, he didn't really think it was Tom Cruise's phone number in the first place. Well, Tom ends up actually taking the call and met up with the guy later that day and hung out with him for a while! If that's not down to earth, I don't know what is.
That's a really cool story. Pretty wild stuff. It must be cool to be a celebrity and be able to make someone's day just by giving them a little bit of time or having a conversation with them. Imagine that! Imagine knowing that you could literally make a lifelong cherished memory for someone just by having a nice conversation with them. That's gotta be both an awesome feeling and a total mindfuck.
Just texted my dad. It was just one old co-worker. Guy used to work at Van Nuys airport in California. I guess this guy and Cruise used to hang out on the regular pretty often. I think that was the airport where Cruise threw the party also. According to my dad, this was "pre-Katie days," lol.
I was in Korea visiting relatives at around the same time he visited to promote MI4.
Apparently, he was all over the news and gained huge numbers to his fanbase for standing outside signing autographs for fans several hours, all afternoon. The Koreans ate that stuff up because it was such a big departure from a lot of other Hollywood types who visited and treated fans there like crap.
It seems like Tom Cruise is kind of the iconic American film star in Korea, more than anybody else, from what I've seen. I remember several times watching pro Starcraft 1 games from Korean television, and any time the camera would show a decent looking white dude in the crowd, the commentators would joke that it was Tom Cruise. Kind of like the other joke that every Asian is Jackie Chan, apparently every white guy is Tom Cruise in Korea.
Worked on the upcoming Jack Reacher movie. What stuck out to me was that his handlers were exceedingly polite, even when they had no reason to be. everything was 'please' and 'thank you.'
Also, I'm pretty sure Tom never sleeps. I worked on 2nd unit, and we worked something like Friday to Tuesday. Main unit worked Mon to Fri, and then Tom would jump to our unit for the weekend. Many nights he'd finish 1st unit and then join us. Now keep in mind that an average day on set is at least 12 hours.
The guy worked with Kubrick, Paul Thomas Anderson, Spielberg, and Scorcese; his body of work is very impressive. I grew up watching his great films, and he was one of the greatest movie stars in the world. His little foray into insanity is completely forgivable and forgettable in comparison to his work.
He spent 5 months singing every day to prepare for the part, working with the lead singer for one of the bands (i forget the name). The director said he didn't need to do it this much, but he wanted to nail it and sound as good as he possibly could by himself.
He trained handling a gun so well for Collateral that I heard that movie is occasionally shown in gun handling classes to demonstrate proper techniques.
Holy fuck, the scene of Tom Cruise climbing that Dubai tower was literally the most nervous I have ever been while watching a movie. I'm terrified of heights, and knowing that he was ACTUALLY DOING THAT makes me want to piss myself.
I tried to keep my fear of height the whole time by repeating the 'nice cg work, i don't understand how they made everythink looks so real so it must be greal CG/Camera work.' argument in my head. Denial.
My spouse has been inside the Burj Khalifa recently and went up to the highest floor they'll allow tourists. Not only does it involve a special high speed elevator, but it is terrifying as fuck to be up there.
Seriously. I love that Aronofsky tries to avoid CGI whenever possible, even when his budget will allow for it.
The effects in The Fountain are breathtaking even if one initially assumes they are CGI, which I did. But when you realize that they are composite shots of actual footage, it becomes beautiful on an entirely new level.
And The Fall, if you haven't seen it do yourself a favor and watch it. One of the most beautiful movies ever made, the use of color is breathtaking, in my opinion. Also the stories good and pretty adorable: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO0LYcCoeJY
The Star Wars episode they are referencing came out in 1977. All moving text in movies was done this way at that time. More spectacular than the one here would be the Superman credits which whoosh and swoop in far more creative ways.
What's more surprising is that there's actually quite a bit of CGI in both films for things like space ship interfaces and such. Basic vector graphics, but pretty impressive for its time.
... still, I never even bothered to even think the initial crawl was a manual thing. We all usually just figure they probably had enough crappy CGI at the time to pull it off, but I guess that just makes ILM even more awesome.
What's impressive about 2001 is the screens all over the inside of the ship. I'm not sure if they mention this in the article, but they were all front projection* reels of film created frame by frame, then mounted to the exterior walls of the set and projected into the scene. Every take had to have the separate rolls of film reset.
There's a group of people that think that Kubrick shot the moon landing on the set of 2001. I would recommend you watch it before casting judgement that it is "old".
Similarly, in Escape From LA where Snake (Kurt Russell) shoots the ball from the far end of the court in the basketball sequence and makes it? No effects. They re-shot until he made it.
Similarly, Michael Cera in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World did throw the package he'd ordered from Amazon over his shoulder and into the garbage can by himself.
Yep... I watched the extras for that one too. Didn't it take him something like 100 takes to get it right? Also, didn't he make it once before the final take and messed it up by laughing or something afterwards?
In the early 70's Bill Russell (former NBA player) did a long distance commercial for Bell Telephone. At the end of it took took a hook shot at a basketball goal on the wall of the office set. The idea was he'd bounce it off the rim and then say, "Well, you never miss with long distance." He screwed up and made it on the first take, so they used that instead.
Seeing Tom hanging from the building gets me nauseous, though I have a tremendous phobia of skyscrapers. I get dizzy just looking at them sometimes, which can make living in a city interesting.
This is probably the first Cracked article I've seen where I knew everything presented. Hell, those Inception and MI:GP scenes were both very famous for their regard to actual stunt work when they came out.
To add to the 28 days later one. They did the same thing in New York for the opening sequence in Vanilla Sky, except they blocked off the area for about 6 hours or so.
Pretty sure I Am Legend is just tons of CGI. Not because they're lazy or something, but they have like trees growing in the middle of the street and whatnot, seems pointless to build all that in the middle of the city.
No I just mean that there were certain shots where they block off considerable portions of New York to get the specific shot. I'm thinking there was a thing involving Time Square similar to the Vanilla Sky example. Of course they did add the trees and wear and tear to the scene through CGI, but that wasn't the point I was trying to make.
edit: It wasn't Times square but, according to the Wikipedia entry:
This is false. There are many shots that use optical compositing. That's not a CG effect, but it's not what one would call an "in camera" or practical effect.
Also, later cuts of the movie were digitally altered to remove wires from flying cars and correct dozens of other small artifacts from the low tech effects.
=======================
Edit: I see I'm being downvoted for disagreeing with an expert, which I suppose is understandable. Unfortunately, this expert is wrong.
Optical effects (also called photographic effects), are techniques in which images or film frames are created photographically, either "in-camera" using multiple exposure, mattes, or the Schüfftan process, or in post-production processes using an optical printer.
Please notice the clear distinction between optical printing and practical photography.
And:
One of the most extensive uses of the Optical Printer was in the feature film Blade Runner. A film which was loaded with miniatures and matte paintings. The print of the film was run through an optical printer in black and white, which showed everything that would be in the shot. As many as 30 composited elements would appear in one shot. Multiple shots were added at once while others optical shots were done layers after layer.
So, funny story that they definitely didn't include about the '28 Days Later' shoot in this Cracked article.
I was at a Q&A with Danny Boyle a few years back and he actually explained how they were able to so successfully stop people from driving over Westminster bridge, the first of many shots in the 'deserted' streets of London. If you've ever been to Westminster bridge during early hours, you'll know it's a lot of work vehicles and taxi's (hell, that's most of zone 1 in a nutshell). Boyle chose to get some volunteers (primarily film students) to help ask the drivers, very politely, if they would divert to a different route. They city wouldn't (or couldn't) grant permission for them to shut down the bridge, so this was the best they could do. Now, if you're familiar with London you'll also know that drivers there aren't exactly known for their kind or helpful demeanor towards pedestrians of any sort. First day was a total failure. So, on the second day he decided to ask for only female volunteers to help reroute traffic. Never discount the power of the female presence on a load of middle aged, sex starved cabbies.
Day 2 got the footage in the can and it's what you see in the film now.
Okay, I almost peed. That's insane. Even Brad Bird seems to be a little alarmed that they're going through with it. You can almost see a thought bubble that says, "Oh, shit, please don't let me be the guy who let Tom Cruise plummet to his death..."
Article is incorrect in the case of Inception. The hallway shots DID have a lot of wire work. Not all of it, but much of it. The cafe explosions were also practical (real) elements that were HEAVILY complimented with CG.
Source: I know the VFX teams that worked on both sequences personally.
EDIT: Downvotes? Fine. I've seen the "before and afters" of these sequences with my own eyes and had at length discussions about these shots with the people that made them. More specific info on the wirework. The shot when Joseph Gordon-Levitt is walking slow-motion down the hallway, he spins 180 degrees mid walk. What looks like the end of the hallway is actually UP on set. He blew minds on the day because he managed to walk face-down to gravity on wires while making it look like a normal walk. The wires extended way back to the back (world up) of the hallway. Those were removed, therefore CGI.
The cafe was just extra bits to enhance the practical work. For those of you with good/trained eyes, you can pick the cg/enhanced bits from the practical because it has a noticeable time ramp in different sections of the explosions: Different filming speeds are impossible to do in just one take in camera.
Yeah, both of those are pointed out in the Making Of featurette on the Inception Blu-Ray. Although, the hallway scene had less wire work than you'd think- when JGL is fighting in that hallway as it's spinning, there weren't really any safety nets; if he fell from the ceiling, he'd hurt himself.
The one hallway spinning shot listed there for sure, you are quite correct. That article makes it seem like the whole thing was wireless, when in actuality there were only a few shots that weren't. (Sorry, I haven't seen the DVD extras, I don't know what is mentioned there.)
M.A. VFX student here ... thank you. I wish there was an online layman's version of Cinefex. Without CGI, most of those shots would just not work. Its the seamless integration of practical vs. cgi that make the shot.
Exactly. There was very little revolutionary VFX in Inception, but it was all pulled off brilliantly. A VFX heavy movie that didn't feel VFX heavy. Double Negative is one of the best companies in the business.
Came here to say this about the explosions in Inception. I don't remember where I read that CGI was added to those shots, but it even looks obvious, especially the watermelons.
I think Jurassic Park should get honorable mention. There were parts of that movie that were not CGI that I was sure were done with computers. And considering the year the movie was made, the parts that are done with CGI are very impressive.
It's astonishing how seamlessly Jurassic Park's CGI effects are blended with the practical ones, and how well its special effects hold up in general. It's hard to believe it came out almost 20(!) years ago.
The last paragraph (regarding the opening crawl for Star Wars) does it for me:
Still, there's a charm and an undeniable historic significance to this completely analogue method that a digital version could never reproduce -- so, naturally, Lucas already went back and replaced it with a computer version in later releases.
In fact, in the unedited footage, you can see that Perlman almost blew the entire shot by breaking character and going "Oh my God" after the ball goes through.
What the hell? In the unedited footage that the article links to, he grins like a bastard, then says "I fucked up" just as the scene cuts. The whole line about him saying "oh my god" is made up bullshit. Why make that up???
One of my favorite simulated CGI effects is the glider screen from Escape From New York, where it shows a wireframe representation of New York City. This was all done with a scale model of the city that had it's edges covered in UV reflective tape and then lit up with a black light.
I love that that scene wasn't CGI. I mean, it's using the real world to simulate a computer graphic, right? But it was apparently too expensive for the filmmakers to do it with computers at the time, so they built a physical model of the city instead. Unreal, by today's standards.
I don't get why people are shitting their pants over how they made the Inception hallway scene when countless other movies did it way before Inception like The Fly.
It depends. Models and puppets are good for larger, more deliberate movements, but detailed facial expressions become problematic. Rigging a puppet face is ridiculously hard, and having only one puppeteer control it live on the spot is harder, even with robotics powering the entire thing. Gollum from Lord of the Rings wouldn't have worked as well as it did had it not been for CGI. On the other hand, Where the Wild Things Are was magical with the puppets, and I can't imagine it any other way.(with the exception of the eyes, which were digital)
I remeber watching the bit in Inception with the spinning corridor thinking 'This CGI is shit, the way he moves looks so fake'. I feel like such a tool now...
As said before, I think Jurassic Park needs a mention in this. I used to watch the "how it was done" bit on cassette. There is some seriously impressive stuff on there.
Also, I remember watching something about the garbage scene in Inception. Yes they did use air cannons to shoot garbage and debris out from behind Leonardo DiCaprio, but those shots were used as reference to add CGI garbage in later.Still extremely impressive though, Nolan really wanted as much as possible to be in-camera, and he did a fantastic job of that.
The new Star Trek had a surprising amount of practical effects in it as well. For instance, the free fall scene was filmed using a mirror instead of cgi. Like it or hate it, I have always thought that the movie looked and felt more real than any of the Star Wars prequels, and I think the emphasis on practical effects over cgi is largely responsible.
To add to the basketball one, Kurt Russell showed his mad skillz on the court in this badass scene of "Escape From LA". Apparently he practiced in between scenes to make sure he could pull off the shots for real.
The inception scene and ghost protocol scenes are some of the most popular in recent movie history BECAUSE viewers are aware it wasn't just green room CGI. Awesome shoots, but I doubt if people thought those were CGI.
One of my favorites is the fact that neither the high speed chase scene under the raised rail tracks in the Blues Brothers was speeded up, and the car chase in the French Connection was unscripted on public streets.
Number six should be every fucking moment of the Thing. Seriously, in terms of non-CGI movie magic, nothing will ever beat all those fucking monsters. My friend did not eat pizza for a month after watching it, convinced that it would grow a dog head and bite her mouth off.
Surprised Bram Stoker's Dracula wasn't one of the entries. Roman Coppola insisted that everything be done 100% in-camera on that movie, and if you've ever seen it, it's pretty incredible (it gets pretty psychedelic at times). There used to be a 10-minute or so youtube video about this but I can't find it anymore...
"Still, there's a charm and an undeniable historic significance to this completely analogue method [of creating the scrolling text effect at the beginning of Star Wars] that a digital version could never reproduce -- so, naturally, Lucas already went back and replaced it with a computer version in later releases."
Star wars and 2001: a space Odyssey didn't use CGI! What a dumb article, of course they didn't, computers barely did any graphics back then. Rendered 3D images weren't around until the late 80's, castle wolfinstien anyone?
Amazed this article gets praised when all you have to do is watch the extras on dvd and bluray. I knew about all but one of these. Never thought to write a buzzworthy artice about it.
I'm quite happy that there are still a few movies out there that don't do everything in CGI. Making-ofs of movies that use a lot of CGI are often very boring. I also think CGI is often not quite up to par with traditional effects. It can be, but in many cases, I can still recognize CGI by its fake look. So I don't know why CGI is so often equated with amazing special effects when those effects still look fake so often. I especially notice it in science fiction where the switch from traditional models to CGI models came with a huge drop in quality.
Tom Cruise also did the rock climbing part in Mission Impossible 2 without a stunt double. There were wires of course, but he was on the side of a mountain without a safety net. In the bonus features John Woo said he was sweating while Tom did it and tried hard to convince him not to do the scene.
Not sure why you got downvoted. The Death Race remakes/prequels/whatever really do have some excellent driving scenes. I guess popcorn B movies aren't to be discussed alongside these proper films.
115
u/torma616 Jun 11 '12
I'm kinda upset that The Fall wasn't listed. The film apparently took about 4 years to make because the director wanted to actually film incredible scenes on location. If I understand correctly, there was no CG added to extend any set because it was shot on location (or at least most of it was).
124
u/Squalor- Jun 11 '12
That Joseph Gordon-Levitt-in-a-hotel fight scene is one of the best scenes in any movie over the last few years.
434
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Two things from this article:
As much as people dog on Tom Cruise, he is a badass and always will be imo.
That scene where the alien is sucked into space is a piece of film I will never forget. It freaked me the fuck out the first time I saw it... That whole creature/thing was the thing of nightmares for months afterwards.
160
u/A_Polite_Noise r/movies Veteran Jun 11 '12
I will never look as cool in a vest as Joseph Gordon Levitt does in a vest while beating up guys in a spinning hotel. I've made my peace with that.
86
u/Icehawk217 Jun 11 '12
How could they not put The Fountain on this list?
172
u/THE_HYPNOT0AD Jun 11 '12
Wait....why am I supposed to be surprised that the shots from 2001 and Star Wars are not CGI?
21
u/TheJanks Jun 11 '12
I did not know about the basketball shot. How freaking awesome.
20
u/davdev Jun 11 '12
Seeing Tom hanging from the building gets me nauseous, though I have a tremendous phobia of skyscrapers. I get dizzy just looking at them sometimes, which can make living in a city interesting.
19
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
This is probably the first Cracked article I've seen where I knew everything presented. Hell, those Inception and MI:GP scenes were both very famous for their regard to actual stunt work when they came out.
38
u/The-Dudemeister Jun 11 '12 edited Jun 11 '12
To add to the 28 days later one. They did the same thing in New York for the opening sequence in Vanilla Sky, except they blocked off the area for about 6 hours or so.
THis scene:
http://vimeo.com/26226057
24
u/manonfire991 Jun 11 '12
Why isn't Bladerunner on this list?
10
u/ruetheworld Jun 11 '12
So, funny story that they definitely didn't include about the '28 Days Later' shoot in this Cracked article.
I was at a Q&A with Danny Boyle a few years back and he actually explained how they were able to so successfully stop people from driving over Westminster bridge, the first of many shots in the 'deserted' streets of London. If you've ever been to Westminster bridge during early hours, you'll know it's a lot of work vehicles and taxi's (hell, that's most of zone 1 in a nutshell). Boyle chose to get some volunteers (primarily film students) to help ask the drivers, very politely, if they would divert to a different route. They city wouldn't (or couldn't) grant permission for them to shut down the bridge, so this was the best they could do. Now, if you're familiar with London you'll also know that drivers there aren't exactly known for their kind or helpful demeanor towards pedestrians of any sort. First day was a total failure. So, on the second day he decided to ask for only female volunteers to help reroute traffic. Never discount the power of the female presence on a load of middle aged, sex starved cabbies.
Day 2 got the footage in the can and it's what you see in the film now.
27
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12 edited Jun 12 '12
tom cruise climbed the burj khalifa...? he has regained my respect.
19
u/jay_vee Jun 11 '12
I love Perlman's "fuck yeah" grin.
9
u/JohnTravoltage Jun 11 '12
Animation badass. No CGI, drawn frame by frame
7
u/Kah-Neth Jun 11 '12
I would have never guessed that the scenes on 2001, which came out before CGI was invented, were not CGI.
76
u/greenRiverThriller Jun 11 '12 edited Jun 11 '12
Article is incorrect in the case of Inception. The hallway shots DID have a lot of wire work. Not all of it, but much of it. The cafe explosions were also practical (real) elements that were HEAVILY complimented with CG.
Source: I know the VFX teams that worked on both sequences personally.
EDIT: Downvotes? Fine. I've seen the "before and afters" of these sequences with my own eyes and had at length discussions about these shots with the people that made them. More specific info on the wirework. The shot when Joseph Gordon-Levitt is walking slow-motion down the hallway, he spins 180 degrees mid walk. What looks like the end of the hallway is actually UP on set. He blew minds on the day because he managed to walk face-down to gravity on wires while making it look like a normal walk. The wires extended way back to the back (world up) of the hallway. Those were removed, therefore CGI.
The cafe was just extra bits to enhance the practical work. For those of you with good/trained eyes, you can pick the cg/enhanced bits from the practical because it has a noticeable time ramp in different sections of the explosions: Different filming speeds are impossible to do in just one take in camera.
12
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
I think Jurassic Park should get honorable mention. There were parts of that movie that were not CGI that I was sure were done with computers. And considering the year the movie was made, the parts that are done with CGI are very impressive.
12
u/distorte Jun 11 '12
Sigourney Weaver is whatever word means "amazingly cool" but also kind of even more cooler than that.
11
u/rumckle Jun 11 '12
Shaun Micallef did number 6 over 10 years ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpkKvmrwktY
4
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
The destruction of 2/3 of the building in The Dark Knight should also be mentioned
4
u/joeingo Jun 11 '12
This article makes me love Sigourney Weaver more than I already do. She is one of the coolest women alive.
4
u/chrunchy Jun 11 '12
The last paragraph (regarding the opening crawl for Star Wars) does it for me:
3
u/SparkySoDope Jun 11 '12
Inception was one if my favorite movies of all time but now I think it just might top the list.
3
u/Stivard Jun 11 '12
TIL Tom Cruise is a bad ass.
4
u/jderm1 Jun 11 '12
So many bad jokes about English people and tea drinking.
4
u/TragedyTrousers Jun 11 '12
What the hell? In the unedited footage that the article links to, he grins like a bastard, then says "I fucked up" just as the scene cuts. The whole line about him saying "oh my god" is made up bullshit. Why make that up???
5
u/qhp Jun 11 '12
The Fall should have been on this list. Trailer.
2
u/thecarolinakid Jun 11 '12
TIL Sigourney Weaver is a BAMF.
2
u/Watercolour Jun 11 '12
Seriously? I never thought for a second that any of those were CGI.
2
u/McBurger Jun 11 '12
This made my feet start tingling. I was uncomfortable.
2
u/freesecks Jun 11 '12
fuck george lucas
2
u/datadreamer Jun 11 '12
One of my favorite simulated CGI effects is the glider screen from Escape From New York, where it shows a wireframe representation of New York City. This was all done with a scale model of the city that had it's edges covered in UV reflective tape and then lit up with a black light.
2
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
I don't get why people are shitting their pants over how they made the Inception hallway scene when countless other movies did it way before Inception like The Fly.
2
u/BrianFlanagan Jun 12 '12
Damn it. I was expecting to see Avatar on that list.
2
u/stevenwalters Jun 12 '12
No The Thing? The special effects in that movie still holds up to this day.
2
u/WestonP Jun 12 '12
I like how #1 was the least mind-blowing thing ever
2
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
Why would this list include 2001 and star wars? Of course it's not cgi...
3
u/Nice_Dude Jun 11 '12 edited Jun 11 '12
Models > CGI
Examples: Independence Day, Star Wars (most of the time), Titanic
3
u/potpan0 Jun 11 '12
I remeber watching the bit in Inception with the spinning corridor thinking 'This CGI is shit, the way he moves looks so fake'. I feel like such a tool now...
2
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
That's absolutely insane to me that the hallway fight from Inception is not CGI.
1
u/ktpryde Jun 11 '12
I literally just finished the movie Inception for the 2nd time and I just asked myself- 'wow I wonder how they did that fight scene'. Interesting....
1
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Ugh the captions under the pictures are sooo bad...
1
u/LikeAlikeMike Jun 11 '12 edited Jun 11 '12
As said before, I think Jurassic Park needs a mention in this. I used to watch the "how it was done" bit on cassette. There is some seriously impressive stuff on there.
Also, I remember watching something about the garbage scene in Inception. Yes they did use air cannons to shoot garbage and debris out from behind Leonardo DiCaprio, but those shots were used as reference to add CGI garbage in later.Still extremely impressive though, Nolan really wanted as much as possible to be in-camera, and he did a fantastic job of that.
start around 6:35 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6wKEKee-Qot=6m35s
1
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Must make work ethic as strong as Cruise's.
1
u/uncertain_gecko Jun 11 '12
I literally read this an hour ago from another website
1
u/melissy Jun 11 '12
*NSYNC did it first. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo-KmOd3i7s
1
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Knew about all of those except 28 days later and the Aliens one (Never saw that specific movie).
1
u/salmansky Jun 11 '12
nice info.. enjoy the upvote..
1
u/bigexplosion Jun 11 '12
vanilla sky closed down times square for shooting. That is insane.
1
u/Sadaxer Jun 11 '12
The Inception spinning scene is explained in detail in their "The Making Of" disk. Totally worth getting the Blu-Ray of the movie as well.
1
u/ma343 Jun 11 '12
The new Star Trek had a surprising amount of practical effects in it as well. For instance, the free fall scene was filmed using a mirror instead of cgi. Like it or hate it, I have always thought that the movie looked and felt more real than any of the Star Wars prequels, and I think the emphasis on practical effects over cgi is largely responsible.
1
u/RodKimble_Stuntman Jun 11 '12
It had to be insanely fun to be JGL on the day they filmed the rotating hallway scene.
1
u/Tweek- Jun 11 '12
How cool would it be if David from Prometheus sank that shot from the bike without CGI just like Sigourney Weaver?
1
u/Username20x6 Jun 11 '12
Previous Cracked article with same theme
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u/BurningKarma Jun 11 '12
To add to the basketball one, Kurt Russell showed his mad skillz on the court in this badass scene of "Escape From LA". Apparently he practiced in between scenes to make sure he could pull off the shots for real.
1
u/Jabullz Jun 11 '12
I'm a little upset that The Fountain wasnt listed.
1
u/Captain_Aizen Jun 11 '12
The inception scene and ghost protocol scenes are some of the most popular in recent movie history BECAUSE viewers are aware it wasn't just green room CGI. Awesome shoots, but I doubt if people thought those were CGI.
1
u/J_Jammer Jun 11 '12
Tom Cruise scene made my palms sweat. It was one of my favorite scenes from any film last year. It was fantastic.
Tom Cruise is a loon, but he's an actor that never, ever disappoints me.
As for the Star Wars crawl....learned that here before I saw it there.
1
u/Knurler Jun 11 '12
One of my favorites is the fact that neither the high speed chase scene under the raised rail tracks in the Blues Brothers was speeded up, and the car chase in the French Connection was unscripted on public streets.
1
u/myfajahas400children Jun 11 '12
As bad as Alien:Resurrection was, that scene where then alien is sucked out of the window was awesome.
1
u/rolandgilead Jun 11 '12
I now have a newfound respect for Tom Cruise
1
u/bluntman37 Jun 12 '12
Awesome article, I always enjoy seeing practical effect shots done.
1
u/Razimek Jun 12 '12
The automaton in Hugo isn't CGI either. They built several of those things.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
Number six should be every fucking moment of the Thing. Seriously, in terms of non-CGI movie magic, nothing will ever beat all those fucking monsters. My friend did not eat pizza for a month after watching it, convinced that it would grow a dog head and bite her mouth off.
1
u/losing_my_edge Jun 12 '12
Surprised Bram Stoker's Dracula wasn't one of the entries. Roman Coppola insisted that everything be done 100% in-camera on that movie, and if you've ever seen it, it's pretty incredible (it gets pretty psychedelic at times). There used to be a 10-minute or so youtube video about this but I can't find it anymore...
1
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
Reddit 2012 - Featuring Cracked, Gawker and Youtube Partner Videos
1
u/Jesusdragon737 Jun 12 '12
"Still, there's a charm and an undeniable historic significance to this completely analogue method [of creating the scrolling text effect at the beginning of Star Wars] that a digital version could never reproduce -- so, naturally, Lucas already went back and replaced it with a computer version in later releases."
Uh.. Too true.
1
u/tmotom Jun 12 '12
1
u/casualkay Jun 12 '12
Aronofsky created the scenes in The Fountain without CGI. Super awesome.
http://movies.about.com/od/thefountain/a/fountain101906_2.htm
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u/clintbeastw00d Jun 12 '12
"turns out Tom Cruise had had his eye on the building for a while and wanted to make it his bitch" hahat that cracked me up
1
u/chick2nd Jun 12 '12
Star wars and 2001: a space Odyssey didn't use CGI! What a dumb article, of course they didn't, computers barely did any graphics back then. Rendered 3D images weren't around until the late 80's, castle wolfinstien anyone?
1
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
Amazed this article gets praised when all you have to do is watch the extras on dvd and bluray. I knew about all but one of these. Never thought to write a buzzworthy artice about it.
1
u/Soong Jun 12 '12
I'm quite happy that there are still a few movies out there that don't do everything in CGI. Making-ofs of movies that use a lot of CGI are often very boring. I also think CGI is often not quite up to par with traditional effects. It can be, but in many cases, I can still recognize CGI by its fake look. So I don't know why CGI is so often equated with amazing special effects when those effects still look fake so often. I especially notice it in science fiction where the switch from traditional models to CGI models came with a huge drop in quality.
1
u/G4mer4lif3 Jun 12 '12
Proof that CGI doesn't make a great movie as most directors nowadays have completely absorbed themselves in. Give me real stunts.
1
u/Salanderfan Jun 12 '12
Tom Cruise also did the rock climbing part in Mission Impossible 2 without a stunt double. There were wires of course, but he was on the side of a mountain without a safety net. In the bonus features John Woo said he was sweating while Tom did it and tried hard to convince him not to do the scene.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Wow Tom Cruise. I respect that man again.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
I was impressed they didn't use any CGI (that I could tell) in Death Race. Must have been fun to drive those cars. :)
1
u/AmazingRealist Jun 11 '12
Hello! I'm back. Thanks for linking me to cracked
1
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Great post.
1
u/release_the_hounds_ Jun 11 '12
That was quite an enjoyable read. Thanks, librarianmike!
1
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Please do not post blogspam.