Amazing Effects in Classic Films - How Did They Pull It Off? Part 2

▼ Timestamps ▼
» 0:00 - Intro
» 0:53 - The Man with the Rubber Head
» 2:38 - San Francisco
» 4:49 - The Palm Beach Story
» 6:20 - 5DayDeal
» 7:25 - 2001: A Space Odyssey
» 8:40 - The Shining
» 9:39 - Escape from New York
» 10:39 - The Abyss
» 12:22 - Terminator 2
» 13:17 - The Fugutive

#FilmRiot #ClassicFilm #SpeciaEffects

-----------------------------------------------------------------
**GEAR WE USE**

COLOR GRADING LUTs:

SOUND FX:

MUSIC:

VFX ASSETS:

Envato - 50 Million Resources for $10:

CAMERAS:

LENSES:

PLUG-INS:


AUDIO:

TRIPOD:
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Connect with us:

TWITTER:

FACEBOOK:

INSTAGRAM

WEBSITES:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

[JJ-sqjj]

The man with the rubber head thing is actually insane. Not only the effect, but the fact that he figured that out. It's so inspiring

[mandolinic]

The earthquake sequence is just astonishing. If it were in colour then you'd easily think it was made in the last few years.

[angelthman]

4:43 I'm pretty confident I know how the twin FX in Palm Beach Story was done. They had a dolly either on tracks or some precise surface operated by a motor. It's possible there was no motor, and just grips timing their moves precisely using a stopwatch. There appears to be a circular motion because of the angle, but the camera is really just pulling straight back.Two versions of the shot were filmed, with Claudette Colbert on either side. They likely did dozens of takes to get the timing right. In the editing, they found the two takes that were closest in time and stitched them together. Any discrepancy in the timing, which would have been minor, was remedied by speeding up the slower of the two sides by literally removing frames. You can actually see some minor jumps from the missing frames on the right side.

[DarthHater]

They imply that when Jack Nicholson looked down on the hotel lobby's hedge maze, that it was the miniature used for the overhead shot. There was actually a smaller "model" set up in the hotel, but it only superficially looks like the overhead shot. For that, they did a separate miniature. Adam Savage built the maze for some museum show, and does a video where he goes into detail regarding the maze.

[Bettiephile]

"Darby O'Gill and the Little People" would be wonderful for a part 3. It's a master class in forced perspective and several other techniques. The effects team behind the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy studied the film extensively and there is at least one shot where the modern effects crew could not figure out how it was done in 1959.

[doublet]

I wish it wasn't so expensive (nowadays) to do a lot of practical effects (including minis, puppets, etc.). The movies with PFX age really well. Movies with PFX & supplemental VFX are sublime-the perfect combo.

[ajm]

Please make a Part 3! This is such a fantastic series. It’s both fascinating and really informative (the Abyss effect blew me away)!

Edit: should’ve waited till the end before commenting. But HOORAY for part 3!

[SadDetonator]

I discovered your channel through part 1, immediately subscribed, and now am so happy that the genius Méliès got his due in part 2. Thanks so much for these videos! 😊

[GlennDavey]

Went on a huge silent movie jag in the late 2000's to "educate myself" about early film-making because I felt like my knowledge was lacking, even as a film-making student. Totally immersed myself in George Melies, through Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin and other movies so much that I became really acquainted with the quality/style, so to my eye it looked like it could have been filmed yesterday. It was all I watched for a while. This culminated in finally watching the best copy of Citizen Kane I could get my hands on and it literally looked and sounded like the MOST modern thing ever. "I'm not sure about these new talkies" I thought, "but this looks incredible".

[Grendel]

Check out Keaton's "The Playhouse" from 1921. He replicated himself nine times on the playhouse stage in one scene, rewinding and refilling each time as he played a different instrument. Keaton was anybody's equal with a camera.

[HairyDalek]

I know how those Abyss sequences were filmed - the late great CineFex magazine covered it in detail. The thing to remember is that those model subs were suspended on wires, so they had to wait for them to stop swinging before taking the next shot. Basically: move model, advance frame in projector, wait, take shot. And repeat. It was a very long process.

[EricLefebvrePhotography]

The rear projection inside the miniature subs!!! MIND BLOWN!!!

You guys should collab on this with inCamera.

[petergivenbless]

You missed a trick with the composite shots of Harrison Ford and the train crash in 'The Fugitive'; Ford was combined with the train crash shots using Introvision's front projection system, in which foreground elements as well as the background are covered in retroreflective material, allowing the projected image to appear both in front of and behind the live action on camera (in the shot of Ford jumping off the bus before it gets hit, he was actually jumping off a platform hidden behind retroreflective material, making it "invisible" when the background is projected over it).

Also, I noticed in the unused mirror gag in 'Terminator 2: Judgement Day', Edward Furlong briefly looks at the camera during the take (although that may not be why the shot was not used)!

[LeviAmes]

Excellent Video. I'm learning quite a bit from this.

[ianmarks]

What a surprise to see Todd Vaziri's face pop up on my screen! I worked with Todd for a short time at Banned From the Ranch, where we were working on shots for Dr. Dolittle, Soldier, and Star Trek: Insurrection simultaneously. You've never met a nicer or a smarter guy.

[swandive]

Thanks for this! I'm always amazed by the practical effects from such classic movies.

[TheFPSChannel]

The Abyss models were something I was obsessed with in film school. My fave trivia is the batteries to run the projectors and lights on each model kept dying too soon. So they doubled the length of the battery life by turning the power off when the shutter was closed on the camera requiring precise timing between each of the models and the cameras. I mean… 🤪

[WTDoorley]

I love visual effects. I think it goes back to when I was a toddler and I saw an ad for "The Blob" (the original with Steve McQueen) on TV. It frightened me so badly that I had nightmares. My mother finally explained that the shot of people running from the Blob as it poured through the theater doors was just "axle grease" (her term). After that, I was always trying to figure out how the shots were done. Though I worked in film and video for 30 years or so, it was on sponsored films and what we used to call "industrials, " so I never worked in VFX myself. I'm still fascinated, though. Thanks, Film Riot. I look forward to the next installment.

[SingleStepStudios]

That Fugitive train shot was shot on and is located on the Great Smokey Mountains Railroad in North Carolina if any were wondering.

They even shot in the nearby town of Bryson City.

[Voodoomaria]

George Melies was originally a stage magician, and when Motion pictures fist started, he wanted to see if he could somehow use them in his act.
Experimenting one day, he was filming a Paris intersection.
At one point, a horse drawn omnibus pulled up to the stop at the intersection, at this moment Melies stopped cranking the camera while he made some adjustments before continuing to crank, and film.
During this interval, the omnibus moved on, and in it's place a horse drawn hearse took it's place at the stop.
When Melies screened his film from that day he was astounded to see an omnibus stop at the intersection, then "Magically" change into a hearse.
This happy accident set his imagination on fire, and became the birth of cinema special effects.