VFX Artists React to Bad & Great CGi 148

Sam, Wren, and Niko unearth what is potentially the first disaster film ever made and explain the problem with modern lightsaber VFX.

This episode was Directed by Nick Laurant, Produced by Christian Fergerstrom, Edited by Austin O'Reilly

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Chapters ►
0:00 Welcome Back to VFX Artists React
0:23 The Acolyte
5:32 The Evolution of Lightsabers
8:38 Lost in Space
10:44 The Johnstown Flood

[marcofioretti]

Never thought a disaster movie from 98 years ago would look that good

[MaxBaraliuc]

Those 100 years old VFX shots are wild.

[ninjaduckk]

1926 - "Many actors and animals were definitely harmed in the making of this production"

[Michael-ebnf]

11:31
"Not even the babies."
Spoken without hesitation or inflection, Wren just being a straight-up psychopath for a few seconds. Love it.

[paddyshaw]

I'm an older production manager and artist. When referencing screen fights, I believe the best is 1974 Three Musketeers. It's unmatched in it's authenticity and pace. Taking a breath is great.

[vezokpiraka]

That hundred year old movie is absolutely insane. Actual visionaries. To come up with the framing of the shots and show the disaster in as big a scale as possible is visionary.

You reacted to many CGI shots of disaster movies and conceptually, they look identical to what we are seeing here. And the effects themselves aren't even bad, barring the lighting limitation of that era. They managed to combine the people with the miniatures almost flawlessly.

[idknils]

We need an emergency episode for the Minecraft Trailer. You guys saved Sonic, you can do it again!

[grandmasterj]

One thing you guys didnt mention that impressed me massively, was the scale matching of the people/horse and cart used in the miniatures. There's no wobble or misalignment of the overlayed objects from frame to frame either.
Really impressive stuff for that long ago

[bzqp]

As for the 10:50 claim that there were no disaster scenes filmed before - I'm pretty sure Georges Melies filmed such stuff way before. To give examples - "Les Dernires Cartouches from 1897 " has a partially collapsing house, "The Impossible Voyage" from 1904 has a bus and a train crash scene, " The Inventor Crazybrains and His Wonderful Airship" from 1905 has a passenger blimp explosion. He probably made a lot more, but only a fraction of his works survived.

[ChristopherAndersonPirate]

I saw Lost In Space in theaters in 1998 when it came out with my dad, may he RIP. All the dad stuff in the film always reminds me of my dad sticking around to raise me when his dad did not. I miss him.

[naikouproductions]

You guys HAVE to check out Virus (1999). They're able to transition seamless between almost photorealistic CGi and giant, fully functioning 10-foot tall animatronics! The whole movie has great effects, but the final sequence with the Goliath cyborg is arguably the best part.

[pvolt]

I'm originally from Johnstown, so this was wild to see. There were multiple floods there, every 40 some years, last one being in 1977. I think the 1889 one is one of the USA's worst natural disasters in terms of life lost. Check out the photographs of the aftermath, and you'll see this film is pretty on point and not really an exaggeration. Never knew the film existed though--thanks for doing it!

[deanthemachine]

Every time you guys check out pre-computer visual effects I am SO impressed because, while VFX now still take hard work, those olden day VFX had to be *invented* at the time for *that* movie while now there is a commonality of VFX technique and language. Great work

[OhThatAlan]

I'm imagining the VFX artists a hundred years ago getting stuff back from the lab, watching it excitedly, seeing how well their ideas sold everything, and just laughing and yelling and cheering. What a job.

[ccosmin]

3:10 questioning Niko's magical powers to conjure opaque objects

[TheAtkinsoj]

It's a blink-and-you-miss-it moment, but the cart explosion from Django Unchained is really amazing, next to multiple live horses at close proximity, I'd really love to know how that was achieved.

[DoctorNerderer]

I never realized the lightsabers are reflecting on the floor in The Phantom Menace until now

[KlyeKlyeKlye]

To be there in 1926 and see that kind of film must have been mind blowing! They were constantly pushing the possibilities.

[tlanfer]

This episode reminded me of an idea for a corridor video, a "Tour of firsts" basically. First visual effect, first greenscreen effect, first digital composited movie, first CG protagonist, first full CG movie. Its always interesting to hear about the firsts on vfx artists react, it could make for a nice little history of vfx documentary!

[Akuratyde]

I love Wren. He's got such a great personality and I love his energy. He's also crazy talented. But my favorite videos are the ones where Wren is like, "It's alright! This looks okay!" and then Nico schools him on some aspect of how light works that literally only 1% of people would know. Nico's knowledge of light is astounding.