Amazing Effects in Classic Films - How Did They Pull It Off? | Part 11

Glowing eyes, pirate ships, and demons pulling people through walls. All on today's amazing effects. But can you guess how the effects were done before we tell you? — As always, I'm going to show you a clip and you're going to have to try to figure out how they did the effect with what they had available to them at the time it was made. — Yes. — Deal. — And then I kiss — and then — press play. — Yes.

— This movie is exactly 100 years old and that's crazy. literally 100 years ago. — Wo. — Wow. That is interesting. — I don't know if this is the trick, but this seems like that trick that's been used before where they put that reflective tape on their eyes and just shine a light to where it reflects off of it. — They have some sort of like almost like a coin in the eyes of the actor and they like get some sort of sheen off of it. Directed by one of the most influential filmmakers of the silent era, FW MNau's 1926 FA tells the story of a divine wager on whether or not the best of man can be turned evil. And in this moment where the lead meets meto, we have this great glowing eyes effect that is still effective to this day. To achieve this effect, the filmmakers use double exposure, meaning they had to shoot the scene twice. In the first take, they captured the scene with the correct lighting, during which the cameraman would count the number of frames during the take, then rewound the film to that exact moment where the special effect needed to begin. Then, for the second take, the lights would be turned off to create a dark set with just one light focusing a beam of light directed at the actor's eyes where he wore special reflective makeup, giving them that strong glow. And by slowly fading in the exposure on the camera, the filmmakers could create the effect of this demon peeking out of the darkness before the rest of his face is revealed. It's incredibly impressive how well this worked given they had to rewind the film to the exact right spot and the actor had to hit all the same marks at the exact same time. And of course, this sort of effect is easily done in post now. But you still have modern films finding ways to do it in camera, like the horror film Lights Out, where they use reflective tape on the actor's eyes to kick light back to the lens.

Yes, daddy. That's awesome. — I'm so freed by not being a genius. — I don't know. That's crazy. That is an awesome effect, though. — I mean, it's not hard to stump an idiot, but like I don't know. My guess would be they're like burning something on the paper. — No idea, bro. It's awesome. That's sick, dude. To accomplish this one, the filmmakers used a stamp to press asbestous threads onto the parchment to cover the letters. When it was time to shoot, a special self-igniting liquid was applied to the asbestous thread. But the problem came with timing. The parchment would burn too quickly or at the wrong time, forcing the short sequence to take an entire day to film with hundreds of sheets being set ablaze before they achieve the result they were looking for.

— That vignette is insane. — Oh, okay. — That's awesome. — I think it's just a set there with no glass. So, they're just shooting through an open window as his first person POV. He's just on the other side of the wall and there's no mirror there. and they just have like duplicates of the candle and all that stuff to give that mirror effect. There's no doubt that most people watching this already know how this one was done. They didn't use a mirror at all. Instead, it's a sheet of clear glass. And on the other side of that glass is an identical duplicate of the set the camera is standing in with the actor positioned where his reflection would be. So, like in this later moment in the film, when the camera moves closer, it looks like Jackal's reflection is approaching a mirror, but it's actually the actor approaching the camera. They also reinforce the illusion here by using foreground elements. A body double holds the glass close to camera, helping sell that we're in Jackal's point of view. And though the movements don't sink perfectly, it's still clever and effective. And this exact technique has been used countless of times over the years to increasingly impressive effect. Like the chip removal scene in Terminator 2 and my favorite from Sucker Punch. This is a very elaborate shot with no mirrors. Here at first we're seeing into another set with doubles mimicking coordinated movements in the foreground. As the shot goes on, it moves to the side here, then through a mirror and to the other side of the room. Some of my favorite details are like this picture here. It just sells it so well. And obviously the movements are impressively synced. But to cap off the movement, once the camera moves to the other side, actual mirrors were dropped into place while the frames were offcreen. So when they finish the move here, you're finally getting a true reflection.

alien. Put it in my ass. This is how I view seafood. — Oh, that feels very asslike. I shouldn't have said that. — I'm not interested. That's disgusting. — Speaking of seafood, it looks like they just got some googly gobbly goodies. Just smacked it down on a face hugger. — It looks like an oyster. Like that. That's some sort of sea creature that they just got and replaced. They just like, "Here's an oyster. " Alien is one of my favorite films of all time and to me completely holds up. And a part of the reason for that is all the clever decisions they made to make this whole world feel organic. Like this moment here which Josh nailed where they used actual organic material. And this effect might feel too simple to look at and it is on the surface. But what I love about this is that it's a studio film. They could have modeled all those parts inside. But in 1979 it wouldn't have looked nearly as good. And the actual best solution was also the simplest and cheapest one. After creating the prop shell for the face hugger, Ridley Scott had the crew bring in buckets of clams, oysters, and muscles to place inside the prop and arrange it to look best on camera. So, in the end, you have a surprisingly convincing moment, even in close-up, that feels real because there is some reality there. And I love this shot so much because it is a reminder that the right tools aren't always the right tools. more expensive and complicated doesn't always mean better. And speaking of real things being real

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It's kind of like that kid at the playground who's playing with his hacky sack and he just keeps showing you over and you're like, it's sick, man. — That's David Bowie. He just did that. He is magic. — I feel like you got your David Bowie character sitting there and then there's some sort of hand double who has a very unique skill. Labyrinth was an amazing achievement for all kinds of special effects. Many massively complicated as well. But like the others that we've looked at today, this is hilariously simple. And no, Bowie did not actually do this juggling himself. It was performed by a professional juggler that director Jim Henson was a huge fan of. The hilarious part is that it's just his hand instead of Bow's, not CP. So, the juggler had to hide behind Bowie and wrap his arm around him to replace Bow's actual arm. This means the juggler had to perform blind, and that required a ton of rehearsal to be able to nail these moves without seeing what he was doing. And of course, they ended up needing a ton of takes to nail the illusion. But in the end, they created this iconic and convincing moment.

Wa, that's sick. — I finally get the meaning of the title now. — I get it. Labyrinth. I get it. — I don't really have a good answer. I don't think that was a lot. — That is awesome. — That was just a lot of stairs. I was like, "Oh man, that's just You got to get out of there, Jennifer. " — David Bowie doing his little bat dangle thing. They just like either reversed or is on a string and pulled it up. — There's a baby. Whose baby is that? I don't know. That baby can't be here. — How the labyrinths work. And they definitely just shot a bunch of different angles and then comped them together, — right? Oh, that's stairs everywhere. I did say Labyrinth was filled with complicated special effects, and this is a great example of one of them. Creating an optical illusion like this in 2D is already incredibly challenging. So, it's even more incredible how effective this 3D set is. Jim Henson wanted nothing to indicate what was up or down and for everything to visually intercut to prevent orientation. and all on a massive practical set. And it wasn't just set construction that made this work. Lighting also had to be designed in a way that gave no clues as to what was top or bottom. The sequence was very carefully storyboarded and followed more closely than anywhere else in the film. Rigs and pulley systems had to be built to pull doubles and make it appear as if characters instantly transported to different parts of the stair maze. And of course, plenty of optical compositing to piece different sections together at different orientations. So, it's really a mixed bag of effects that makes the whole thing work in the end.

I've never seen this movie. Bummer, bro. Oh, that was a Texas switch for sure, dude. Is that Shadow Facts? I love how much stunt work is happening right here. Oh, wow. Um, I'm sorry. What? That was hot. Be honest. her coming out the window as a stunt person that fell into a safety pit and then the actress is already in the carriage and then they just stitched the two shots together. It feels like two shots. The shot is on sticks. The stunt is real. The wagon was not there so they probably fell on boxes and then they did the same shot with the horse and they had the real female actress do the Texas switch. Coming right off the massively successful actioner cliffhanger, Renie Harlland's next directorial outing was Cutthroat Island in 1995, which unfortunately became one of the biggest box office flops in Hollywood history with a budget of $98 million while going on to just make $10 million domestically and often blamed for the decline of pirate films in Hollywood until 2003 with the release of Pirates of the Caribbean. However, this film was notable for its large-scale practical effects and stunt work during a transitional era toward digital effects, like this shot here, which was achieved by digitally combining two practical shots. The first shot has a stunt person breaking through the window and falling down, likely into a pad of some kind, and the second shot where Davis was already in the carriage, and plays out the scene post landing. If you slow it down, you can see the moment the switch takes place and before that, how this area here of the carriage where Davis is all blacked out. But in motion, it's an incredibly impressive effect, even by today's standards. And this whole film has massive scale on top of some insane stunts. There's also huge set pieces using huge sets like these two fullscale pirate ships they built from scratch for the film, each costing around a million dollars. and one of them even caught fire during production, forcing them to rebuild it. The primary location for the sea battle was this genius shallow tank built right on the coastline so that when they filled it, the water overflowed into the actual ocean and created a completely seamless horizon line. Although for simpler stuff, they actually shot on the open water. Renie Harland also had three cameras rolling simultaneously on all scenes, burning through insane amounts of film, staging massive explosions, blowing up ships, actors swinging across rigging and so on. And for the really dangerous destruction shots like the initial fireballs and ship being torn apart, they built a quarter scale 35 foot long miniature ship and then blew it up with one of the best explosions in Hollywood history in my opinion. Cool

jacket. — Good god. — Okay, — they actually crashed a car into like a pole and had him just react and then stitch the tube. — Static shot behind feels like the real plate and then it cuts to some sort of like rubber double almost with a sped up practical car doing the impact. This moment in Constantine is a tightly coordinated blend of practical destruction and visual effects planning. To pull it off, a thick steel pipe was buried in the ground at the location, placed exactly where the body would be at the moment of collision. For the car, they removed the engine so that the front of the car would violently collapse inward on impact, then mounted it on a track system powered by hydraulic pumps and highly pressurized air valves, generating 43,000 lb of force, launching it into the steel post. The only problem was the back end didn't lift up with the main crash. So, a second rig was needed, which worked great for dropping the car, but couldn't launch it up fast enough. So, they used one of the drops and reverse that footage in post. After that, they composited the actor in and they had

their moment. God, I love this movie. I don't care how many people don't like it. — Dude, that's dude kaboom. — That looks so good still. — It's like live action Looney Tunes, — dude. — That's like 6 months of shooting. It feels like they're definitely mixing effects like her just on like a wire rig, but the walls actually breaking. It kind of feels like they just did it. — I mean, there's definitely practical stuff. All the explosions of the debris, the cubicles, the all the paper in the foreground, the background, and then I think there's a lot of the effects to kind of color in for them. Our last effect uses a mixed bag of techniques as well, like building full scale hallways and conference room sets with breakaway wall sections that could blast apart on Q. Then they filmed actress Rachel Wise on a green screen hanging down instead of sideways and later composited her into those shots. The cubicle section was handled a bit differently though. They built this as a miniature set, then mounted a doll version of Rachel Wise onto a track system that would be pulled through using a motion controlled cart while they then triggered dozens of practical wall breaks and debris effects all at the same time. After that, they composited CG elements like paper, staplers, and debris. Interestingly, the scene itself was originally planned as a car chase sequence, but after director Francis Lawrence watched the trailer to the Matrix sequel, he didn't know how he could top that chase sequence, which forced them to think differently and come up with one of the best and most iconic shots of the film. What I love most about today's list of effects is the simplicity of a lot of the ideas involved. Some more complicated than others, sure, but even then, it's really just scale that's increasing. It's about the creativity of the idea, not the resource, or the willingness to shift gears and think completely outside the box to come up with a whole new sequence, which in the end definitely worked out better for the film overall. It's a great lesson in my opinion. But that's it for today. If you're hungry for more, check out our amazing effects playlist in the notes below. And until next time, don't forget to write, shoot, edit, repeat. — See you later, tall.