- [Narrator] Have you ever watched a movie and had your mind blown
by the special effects, and wondered, how did they do that? Well, I'm going to take that question all the way back to the beginning of film, looking at the magic
used on the silver screen to bring its stories to life. From stop-motion monsters to
computer-generated marvels, this is the evolution of movie magic. (soft music) Silence is Golden. Camera tricks have existed since there were cameras to trick us. One of the earliest techniques
was forced perspective, used to whimsical effect
in the silent comedy era, like here in the 1909
short "Princess Nicotine". (mellow music) It's a basic a technique
that uses relative distance to make objects appear
farther away, closer, larger, or smaller than they actually are. Jump forward to the 1920s and
people are still using it. Check out this classic
scene from "Safety Last", with silent comic actor Harold Lloyd. How do you think this stunt
was done? Green screen? That'd require CGI, or
computer-generated imagery, and digital computers
weren't around in those days. In reality, the crew built
a set on top of a building and rigged the camera to
make it look like Lloyd was dangling perilously above the street. Ingenious. Now, Charlie Chaplin was
the icon of this era. Check out this scene from
the 1936 film "Modern Times", where he skates around
the landing of a mall with a blindfold on. Now don't worry, he
wasn't ever going to fall. The crew painted that
image of the lower floor on a piece of glass and placed it in front of the camera, so it only looks like
there's a great drop. Now that's a shift in perspective. As comedic as Lloyd and Chaplin were, they didn't compare to Buster Keaton. Despite being a funnyman, his
stunts put Tom Cruise to shame because unlike Mister Mission Impossible, Buster never used wires. When shooting his 1932
comedy "Three Ages", Keaton was supposed to jump
from one building to another without support wires. The jump was 13.5 feet, so unsurprisingly, Keaton missed the mark. If he had made it, he would've broken the
world's long jump record. Thankfully, there was a safety net underneath the camera line. However, this failure was a
success with the film crew, who found it so funny that Keaton decided to
incorporate it into the story. Just remember, kids, nothing's funnier than a near-fatal fail. Wait, that's a terrible moral. Fearsome 30s. You know what I love
about movies? Monsters. And back in the 1930s, the world met the biggest
of them all: King Kong. The great ape first appeared in 1933, brought to life by the
stop-motion animation of Willis O'Brien. Kong himself was created
using stop-motion models, with aluminum skeletons
and rubber muscles, which they moved slightly frame by frame to make it seem as if the
model was moving in real time. To make it appear that Kong and the other creatures of Skull Island were interacting with real humans though, O'Brien projected live action
footage one frame at a time onto a miniature set from behind. Doing this meant the animators could blend the live action
footage with the creatures one frame at a time, making it seem like real actors and beasts were inhabiting the same space. When Kong needed to touch the humans, they used a 20-foot-tall head. Makes the modern-day Kong look cute. And a giant hand big enough to
cradle leading lady Fay Wray. If you look closely here,
you can see the line where live action footage meets animation. Kong wasn't the only movie monster to get his big break in the '30s, however. In the world of sci-fi horror, there was "The Invisible Man". The biggest trick here was getting lead actor
Claude Rains to vanish. When he needed to look invisible, they shot things without him, carefully timing the action to happen without him in the shot. Once this was complete, the same set would be entirely
draped in black velvet, with Rains covered in
black from head to toe. Over this, the actor would wear any clothes needed for the shot. From the footage of the
unsupported clothes, they created two high-contrast
duplicates known as mattes. One matte blocked out the background, while the other blocked out the partially clothed invisible man. Then, all four pieces of film, the background, the clothes,
and their respective mattes, were blended into a single shot. And that wasn't all. To capture the invisible
man's iconic footsteps, a custom wooden platform was built with foot-shaped
blocks cut out of them. When covered with artificial snow, the blocks would be released one by one, creating the illusion that someone was walking unseen
over the snow in the shot. These methods were tedious and expensive, but the results had to ironically
be seen to be believed. Word About Ray. From the '50s right up to the early '80s, Ray Harryhausen was the
undisputed king of monsters. To breathe life into his creatures, the animator developed a
technique called Dynamation. It worked like this. Harryhausen would use a
specially modified projector that he could advance one frame at a time. In front of that was the
animation stand, model, and 35-millimeter camera. To position the creature between the background and the foreground, the animator would slip
a sheet of matte glass between the model on the
animation table and the camera, essentially creating two
versions of the same take. For the first shot, he'd paint the glass black
to block out the background, allowing only the model and rear projector to be seen on camera. Frame by frame, he then
animated the creature behind the blackened-out foreground. For the second shot, the
opposite would happen. The background would be blacked out and the creature would be
sandwiched between two layers, placing the monster in the real world. When a live action actor needed
to interact with a creature, Harryhausen used contact points, where a live action fragment would be replaced with stop motion. Obviously, when filming, Sinbad's sword wasn't striking anything. So, in his studio,
Harryhausen added a section of Sinbad's sword to the skeleton's, making it appear that
the characters' blades were hitting each other. The switch was so quick that
most viewers don't notice it. Whilst Harryhausen's
creatures were fantastic, the frames he used to
show them were unexciting, mostly medium or long shots. The animator regretted not having more interesting
camerawork in his films, but time and budget constraints forced him to keep things simple. While stop motion monsters have disappeared from the big screen, the techniques Harryhausen pioneered influenced special effects wizards at houses like Industrial Light & Magic, not to mention the dinosaurs
in "Jurassic Park". Forget dinosaurs, Harryhausen
is the real legend. Green Dreams. You're probably familiar
with green screen, you know, an actor steps in front of one, the background is swapped out to make it look like
they're somewhere else. How exactly this effect
came about, however, is less well known. Back in the 1940s when this
technology was being explored, the screen wasn't green at all, but blue. The blue screen, or chroma key process as
it's more accurately known, was first utilized in
the 1940 fantasy film "The Thief of Bagdad", a fantasy picture set in
a magical Arabic land, which later inspired the
Disney hit "Aladdin". The blue screen was used to bring all sorts of
wondrous sights to life, including a gigantic, insidious jinn, and a spirit from Arabic
and Muslim mythology. The clever inventor of the blue
screen was Lawrence Butler. He figured out that by placing a subject in front of a specific color like blue, he could later remove
that color from each frame to separate subject from background. The isolated subjects would then be placed on top
of a pre-shot background, known as a plate, to
create a single image. He chose blue as it seems to be the color furthest from human skin tones, unless you're Will Smith's version of the genie in "Aladdin". However, if the lighting for
the scene wasn't perfect, you'd end up with a weird glowing halo around characters and objects. Just look at that flying carpet, you can see where the two shots
have been spliced together. While it may not be perfect to us, it was a major breakthrough for filmmakers over 80 years ago, and the film won an Academy Award for best special effects that same year. Hmm, I wonder how those audiences would have reacted to Will Smith's genie? Faithful 50s. Back in the 1950s, Western audiences were
fanatic for biblical epics, and the most biblically epic of them all was 1956's "The Ten Commandments". Wanting to beat his earlier
1920 version of the same story, director Cecil B. DeMille employed the latest in special effects, particularly in the iconic scene where Moses parts the Red Sea. For this effect, DeMille filmed a trench
at Paramount Studios being pumped with 300,000 gallons of water and then played it in reverse. To make it look like the
sea walls were parting, they shot sideways footage
of the water cascading down. The filming of Moses and his
followers was shot separately to make up the foreground plate. The water shots were
slapped on top of this. To create the clouds, they poured gray paint into a
glass tank filled with water, resulting in the illusion of a dark storm. The finished scene showed off
DeMille's spectacular powers, even Moses only parted the Red Sea once. However, much like "The Thief of Bagdad", the film is plagued with
imperfect blue screen effects. A while later in 1958, master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock was working on his classic "Vertigo", and wanted a striking opening sequence. So he said, "I better call Saul." This Saul in question
was designer Saul Bass, who decided the opening
credits needed spirals, and lots of them. Spirals are a recurring
motif throughout the film, and Bass insisted that these shapes be based on Lissajou spirals, mathematically calculated
patterns so complex they couldn't be accurately drawn freehand and needed the motion of a pendulum on a moving animation stand. At the time, no animation
stand could continuously rotate without the wires getting twisted up. The crew decided to
use an M5 gun director. This is a mechanical computer used for aiming weapons at moving targets. These things can move non-stop and match the swing of a pendulum. So, the crew set up a
platform, laid everything out, and suspended a pendulum from the ceiling. This pendulum had a pen attached to it and was connected to a 24-foot-high
pressurized paint container. As the gun director rotated, the pendulum would swing back and forth, applying paint to the cels, and creating the spiral drawings you see in the opening of "Vertigo". This means the opening is technically the first example of
computer animation in cinema because hey, it was animation
created by a computer. Huh. Blue to Yellow. As the '60s swung in, an engineer called Petro Vlahos got sick of the odd, leftover
glow from blue screens. He wanted a much cleaner result, so he turned to the best
color there is: yellow. He developed this special screen for the Walt Disney company, which was used in one of
their most beloved films, "Mary Poppins", released in 1964. The process was used to
transport the characters to an animated wonderland. To achieve the effect, the actors would stand in
front of a white screen lit by a yellow hue from
sodium vapor lights, the same lights we see
in older street lamps. Sodium gas produces light at a very exact
wavelength, 589 nanometers, whereas blue screen
ranges from 435 to 500. Vlahos created a unique prism that isolated this specific
hue from other colors, narrowing the wavelength range. By shrinking the range, it made it easier to focus on a subject and capture fine details such as hair, smoke, motion blur, and shadows. You can see how the process managed to keep the fine mesh
detail of Mary's veil intact without any trace of a halo, which would have been
unthinkable on blue screen. It was better than blue
screen in other ways, too. Things on screen didn't
have to be lit perfectly, and there was no limitation to the colors of props or costumes. Dick Van Dyke could
twiddle his blue bow tie without worrying about it being absorbed into the background, a common problem with blue screen. It seems like yellow screen was practically perfect in
every way, except it wasn't. Despite multiple attempts to replicate it, Vlahos could only create
one working prism, which meant there was only one sodium vapor camera in the world. Not great for a company with a long list of projects
they want to develop. The tech would go on to be
used for almost 40 years in films like "The Birds" in 1963, and "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" in 1971. Pretty good track record
for one camera, huh? Spaced out 70s. In 1972 at the University of Utah, students Ed Catmull and Fred Parke studied the emerging science
of computer graphics. Using Catmull's left hand as a model, the pair created "A
Computer Animated Hand". This experimental short would become the first
computer-animated film ever. Okay, it's not exactly the most thrilling movie you'll ever see, but it might be the most important. The first use of CGI in a feature film was in 1973's sci-fi "Westworld". Computer effects were used for the pixelated point of view shots of the villainous robot gunslinger. To accomplish this, a computer scanned footage frame by frame and converted it into
numerical information. When shooting the scene, actors wore light clothing and makeup against a dark background, which was then contrasted in post. Each frame took a minute to scan, resulting in eight hours of rendering for a mere 10-second sequence. Then in 1977, a little
movie called "Star Wars" flew onto our screens. To handle the huge number
of special effects, director George Lucas needed to establish his
own effects company, Industrial Light &
Magic, or ILM for short. While Lucas's company nailed
traditional techniques like model construction
and matte paintings, they also used cutting edge techniques like computer-controlled motion cameras. To add some realism to
the film's dogfights, effects wizard John Dykstra
tried shooting the scenes like a cameraman in space, with off-centered frames
and uneven movements. Lucas would go on to toy with "Star Wars" in the special edition releases, applying CGI to the film like you might apply a
sledgehammer to drywall. Take the 1997 special edition, where Lucas retroactively introduced a deleted scene between Han
Solo and Jabba the Hutt, except in the 1977 version, Jabba wasn't a disgusting
slug monster, he's a Scotsman. Lucas originally shot the
scene with the intention of replacing the Jabba actor
with a stop-motion creature, something big and hairy, but was restricted by time and budget. The re-release gave Lucas the opportunity to slap a CGI Jabba over the actor, though this scene has been criticized for, well, being bad and pointless. Regardless, since the
debut of "Star Wars", ILM has gone on to be one of the biggest special
effects companies in the galaxy. CGI'd to Life. Back in the 1980s, a dude
called Steven Lisberger was playing a game of Pong. Clearly seeing the narrative potential of two paddles and a ball, he decided to make a film
inspired by the game, which became "Tron". This 1982 sci-fi was a
game-changer for VFX, featuring an unprecedented
15 minutes of CGI. - Blue bikes, run these
guys into your jet walls. - Copy, blue leader.
- Copy, blue leader. - This is gold one to gold two and three. Split up. Take 'em one on one. - [Narrator] "Tron" is a
mixture of live action, traditional animation, and CGI. Actors were filmed against an entirely
blank, black background. Animators then went over this footage, adding CGI scenes on graph paper to match the positions and
angles for every frame. Computer engineers then entered all the required numbers by hand, but wouldn't see the final results until the images were
printed on 35-millimeter film and shown in a test theater. Sadly, "Tron" was not the
big hit Lisberger hoped. They were even snubbed for the
best special effects Oscar, since computer animation
was considered cheating. Instead, the award went to
"E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial", with puppets being more their speed. Despite the loss, the film developed a cult
following over the years. They even made a sequel
three decades later, which also didn't light the world on fire. Maybe Pong just isn't very cinematic? Further advances in effects came from ILM, who developed the first LED
screen as we know them today, which was used for the
1980 "Star Wars" sequel "The Empire Strikes Back". ILM's quad-optical printer, which combined images from various reels, was ideal for miniatures, as well as adaptable to both
white and green backgrounds. The innovative filmmaking earned Empire an Academy Award in 1980. Man, "Star Wars" hogs all the good tech. Another unexpected stride in CGI came with "Young Sherlock Holmes" in 1985. It's a fun watch, and also
earned the Guinness World record for the first entirely
computer-animated character in a film. A knight made of stained glass digitized and animated by future
Pixar chief John Lasseter. This wasn't the only CGI pie
that ILM had their finger in. James Cameron's 1989 film
"The Abyss" had involved a mysterious creature made
of water, the pseudopod, which mimicked the characters' faces. To accomplish this, actors Ed Harris and Mary
Elizabeth Mastrantonio had their faces scanned
by a Cyberware scanner, to map the shape of their faces. It'd be hard to do that with my face, too round and featureless. Go-Go 90s. If the '80s marked the film industry dipping their toe in the water of CGI, then the '90s were a big belly flop in. This era embedded computer
graphics in movies like never before, which is when green
screen took center stage. When digital cameras came around, blue screens were
switched to green screens because camera sensors are
more sensitive to green light. Most blockbusters, like the "Matrix", were utilizing the green
screen instead of blue screen by the end of the decade, though blue screens are still used today depending on which colors
are present in the shot. Inspired by the success of
his effects in "The Abyss", James Cameron decided
to crank up the effects in his next feature, "Terminator 2". For this 1991 sequel,
Cameron wanted a villain that could match Arnie
from the first film. Eager to experiment with
CGI, he created the T-1000, a shapeshifting android
made of liquid metal. To capture T-1000 actor Robert Patrick's movements accurately, animators painted a four by four inch grid all over his body. They filmed Patrick walking and running, using the grid to rotoscope his body and determine how his muscles moved. Pressure was on to get this
film out by the 4th of July, so digital renderers worked 24-hour shifts and had to catch naps on
the floor of the film lab. While Cameron's team was
looking towards a sci-fi future, director Steven Spielberg was headed to the past
with "Jurassic Park". To bring his now-famous
dinosaurs back from extinction, the 1993 film was originally
going to use go-motion, a form of stop-motion, not entirely unlike Harryhausen's style. However, ILM test footage of a CG dinosaur wowed Spielberg so much that he swapped out his
stop-motion beasts for CGI ones. Saying that, Spielberg
still had enough faith in practical effects to use good old animatronics for nine minutes of dinosaur screen time, compared to six minutes of ILM's CGI. A few miles away from ILM HQ, a young Pixar Studios was breaking ground with the first feature-length computer-animated film, "Toy Story". It's fair to say that
the classic 1995 film had a tricky production. Those toys went through a few ugly stages to get to be the characters we know today. Ed Catmull, yep, the hand guy, built the studio a new
animation software: Menv. This allowed animators to
isolate specific motion frames, like the bend of an elbow, and then leave it to the computer to complete the whole animation sequence. This method sidestepped
the tedious process of frame-by-frame animation
you see in Disney cartoons. Interesting, though the less
I see of the test animation, the better. I don't want to look at
Buzz's death face anymore. Captivating Motion. The 2000s saw the rise of a
groundbreaking technology, motion capture animation,
or mo-cap for short. This is the process that involves an actor covering themselves in ping pong balls, which are actually reflective markers. These are tracked by infrared cameras during an actor's performance, so their movements are recorded, captured, and transferred to a computer. There, it's applied to a 3D
model to perform those actions. Early attempts to use this tech in movies like 2000's "Sinbad:
Beyond the Veil of Mists" and 2001's "Final Fantasy: The
Spirits Within" were mixed. One film that would've been
an early pioneer was "Shrek". Yes, the famous big, green ogre was originally meant to be
a mix of mo-cap animation for the characters and miniature models for the backgrounds. Only one clip of this footage and a few screenshots of the
animation process remains today and it, err, doesn't feel good. The film was completely reworked and became a smash success in 2001. That isn't to say there weren't a few technical glitches along the way. Mo-cap really hit its stride
with 2002's "The Two Towers" and "Return of the King"
the following year, when the world met Gollum,
or Smeagol to his friends. To create the iconically
disturbed character, director Peter Jackson shot scenes with actor Andy Serkis twice. Once with Serkis performing on location and then again months later, where Serkis would
recreate his performance in a motion capture studio. Here, the actor wore a specialized suit that tracked his movements
to a digital Gollum puppet. The result was like nothing
audiences had seen before, and now mo-cap is everywhere,
from "Iron Man" to "Cats". Not to be outdone in the
field of technical wizardry, James Cameron took mo-cap to the next level in his
2009 sci-fi epic "Avatar". Cameron shot the mo-capped actors performing on a stage, dubbed the Vault. Little boom cameras were
placed on top of their heads to capture the nuance of the
actors' facial performances, so that all aspects of their emotions would translate past
the technical barrier. Using live rendering, Cameron was able to see
an entirely digital world with the actors transformed
into Na'vi aliens, so he didn't have to wonder about how the CGI would look
in the end, which was nice. Techy Tennies. Ah, the 2010s. Not the most thrilling year for CGI. After all, it was the
start of Disney's era of live action remakes. While I'm not a fan of
these flicks clearly, I can't say they don't push
the effects boundaries. The first film to reach
new highs in photorealism was 2016's "Jungle Book"
remake from Jon Favreau. Weta Digital and Moving Picture Company went all out transforming an LA warehouse into a lush forest, using over 800 shots for
its spectacular visuals. Animal movements were studied to bring the creatures to life. To give Neel Sethi, who played Mowgli, something to act next to, Jim Henson's puppets
were used as stand-ins. These were later swapped
out with computer effects in the finished film. Even body parts of the young actor were occasionally replaced
by a digital double to make it seem like he
was really interacting with the CG animals. The success of this saw Favreau make the "Lion King" in 2019, but well, the less said
about that, the better. The 2010s weren't just about
Disney regurgitations, though. Starting with "X-Men: Last Stand", audiences have seen de-aging technology become increasingly used in films, allowing filmmakers to restore how actors once looked in iconic roles and create films spanning a lifetime without needing to change the actor out for someone older or younger. Look at 2019's "Gemini Man", which CG'd a whole new Will
Smith to life using mo-cap. Few films have taken de-aging as far as Scorsese's 2019
film "The Irishman", however. The team, led by, you guessed it, ILM, designed a fancy new camera rig that would allow director Martin Scorsese to shoot as he normally would, while simultaneously
capturing all the data needed to de-age the actors. ILM whipped out their
brand-spanking new software Flux, that merged data with the camera images to make masks out of each actor's face, basically, a young head on old shoulders. Let's be real, though, this film isn't always that convincing. To me, this shot of a de-aged De Niro looks like something out of a video game. Another thing about the 2010's
is how we, the audience, have access to computer technology closer to what Hollywood's working with now than ever before. YouTube artist Shamook even made their own
version of "The Irishman" using a deep fake to
replace De Niro's face with his younger self, which
is incredibly impressive. A deepfake algorithm understands the attributes of a person's face and manipulates the features while keeping the original
video's general style and look. Personally, I'm on the fence. Which do you think looks
best? Let me know down below. 2020 Foresight. Despite all these incredible computer animation advancements, sometimes I get tired of
seeing nothing but CGI whenever I go to the movies, and I'm not alone. However, there's been a shift in this decade's biggest blockbuster hits like "Top Gun: Maverick", "Everything Everywhere All
at Once", and "Barbie", where filmmakers have made efforts to blend practical and special
effects more seamlessly. "Star Wars" spin-off "The Mandalorian" has taken a step away
from the green screen, and incorporated
wraparound digital screens called StageCraft. I know "The Mandalorian"
first streamed in 2019, but it was in November. Sue me. Anyway, StageCraft creates
photorealistic 3D backgrounds that move in sync with the camera. If the camera swings
around and changes angles, the background shifts in
precisely the same way, maintaining the illusion. You see, the problem with green screens is that it projects a lot
of green light on the actors that needs to be fixed in post, leading to flat, unrealistic lighting. With StageCraft, light comes
from the background colors, making the footage a little more natural. Filmmakers can adjust settings constantly, like exposure, color, animation playback, and fill lighting. While more films might incorporate a blend of practical and
CGI effects in the future, the industry also might chase AI tech. Remember "The Irishman" deepfake? Shamook, that face-swapping YouTube artist who created "The Irishman" video, has recently been hired by ILM. In an industry where actors are increasingly replaced
by AI technology, like this clip from Disney's
2023 film "Prom Pact", man, that's tragic. It's going to be
interesting and terrifying to see how far it goes. What shape do you think practical effects will take in the future? Did any here really blow your mind? Let me know in the comments below and let me know if you
want to see more videos on filmmaking in the future. In the meantime, be sure to like, share, and subscribe for more amazing content.
