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Think that epic burning forest in 'Civil War' was all digital? Guess again. This video pulls back the curtain on 15 jaw-dropping movie moments that look like cutting-edge CGI but were created with incredible practical effects. Prepare to be amazed by old-school movie magic.
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00:00Now, I don't know about you, but if you happen to dabble in the online discourse, as it were,
00:06you'll see an understandable desire to see practical effects employed in films where possible,
00:12because it's incredibly difficult for VFX to match the tactile quality of something that you feel you could pour with
00:18your grubby, grubby hands.
00:21And while you probably assume that these moody moments were all achieved through cutting-edge VFX magic,
00:26as it happens, that's not quite true. You're watching WhatCulture, and here are the movie effects you thought were CGI,
00:33but weren't.
00:34The Burning Forest, Civil War
00:37Perhaps the single most visually striking sequence in Alex Garland's Civil War
00:42occurs when the central characters drive through a burning forest late in the story.
00:47Watching the car and its occupants surrounded by flickering embers,
00:51it seems evident that the scene was shot against a green screen or similar environment,
00:56with the combustible elements being composited in later for the sake of convenience and, well, you know, safety.
01:03But surprisingly enough, most of this sequence was executed in camera.
01:08The flaming trees were simply rigged up with flamethrower-like devices to give the impression that they were burning,
01:14as was augmented with CGI in post,
01:17while the embers were created on set by technicians who burned dry charcoal in vehicles both in front of and
01:24behind the character's car.
01:26This allowed the car to be showered with sparks and embers,
01:29giving the scene a more tactile feel without endangering the cast members inside said car.
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02:47Alpha Zombie's Horse, Army of the Dead
02:50Zack Snyder's Army of the Dead is a film so thoroughly awash in glossy CGI
02:55that you'd be forgiven for assuming that almost everything that isn't the actors themselves was a visual effect.
03:00And when it comes to animals, often VFX stand-ins are the most logistically sound,
03:04hence why the film's famous zombie tiger was an entirely digital creation.
03:08And so, while you might then assume that the undead horse belonging to the zombie's alpha leader Zeus
03:13was created in post with the actor simply sitting on a green-screen pommel horse on set,
03:18that's actually not the case at all.
03:19A flesh-and-blood horse was indeed used for these scenes,
03:22with the film's makeup effects artist covering the horse in light zombie prosthetics
03:26designed to ensure the animal didn't get distressed during filming.
03:29Munchkin Land's Tulips
03:31Wicked
03:32Though it has to be said that much of Wicked has such a plastic, post-produced digital sheen to it,
03:40director John M. Chu was nevertheless adamant that the musical's grandstanding sequences
03:45be shot on as many practical sets as possible.
03:49And one of the most important sets was naturally Munchkin Land's Munchkin Village,
03:54which, in addition to being recreated on a massive production stage,
03:58was surrounded by real massive fields of tulips.
04:03A staggering 9 million of them, in fact.
04:07God, Homer must be salivating at their prospect.
04:10Warner Bros. Brass reportedly wasn't too thrilled about the prospect,
04:14as creating a tulip field digitally is probably less logistically taxing and time-consuming,
04:21but Chu and his production designer Nathan Crowley insisted that it had to be done for real.
04:26Take that, Zaslav!
04:27And so, at this point, the crew hired a tulip farmer to plant and grow the bulbs in time for
04:34production.
04:34Where they're heavily featured in the opening musical number,
04:37no one mourns the wicked.
04:39The Knife Grab
04:40Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
04:42Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings boast the VFX-driven mastery that you would expect from
04:47any Marvel Cinematic Universe movie, but some of its best moments were actually captured totally
04:52in-camera.
04:53Case in point, we have Shang-Chi's early fight scene against the masked assailant Death Dealer.
04:58Though the bulk of the scene is clearly the result of endlessly rehearsed fight choreography,
05:02there's one moment that many likely assumed was CGI-assisted.
05:05Because mid-fight, Shang-Chi manages to knock Death Dealer's knife out of his hand and catch it in a
05:10single fluid movement.
05:11Which is so damn slick and balletic that it would actually be reasonable to expect the knife was 100%
05:16CGI
05:17and just simply painted in during post-production.
05:19But it was confirmed on social media that the moment was actually pulled off entirely practically,
05:24stating that it took 175 takes and a truckload of gauze.
05:28All that's stop motion.
05:31Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice.
05:32Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice features several sequences which appear to have been produced through stop-motion animation.
05:38Though given the expense and difficulty of producing stop-motion and director Tim Burton's increasing reliance on VFX in recent
05:47years,
05:48much to everyone's detriment, it was a fair assumption that these scenes were actually the work of digital tomfoolery.
05:55But it turns out that Burton wasn't lying when he tried to make the Beetlejuice sequel as handmade and practical
06:02as possible,
06:03as these scenes were indeed achieved with traditional stop-motion animation.
06:08A fantastic behind-the-scenes featurette, which you all need to go check out,
06:12shows the back-breaking amount of practical work that went into building and animating the plane crash sequence
06:19and also the scenes featuring the sandworm, with the creature being composited into live-action scenes as necessary.
06:26Burton, who himself has a background in stop-motion animation, evidently couldn't resist the urge to pull it off the
06:32old-fashioned way
06:33rather than cutting corners with VFX-produced faux stop-motion.
06:37And thank God, because it's the best thing he's made in literal decades.
06:41The Plane Crash, Tenet.
06:43It's no secret that Christopher Nolan is a huge fan of employing practical effects wherever possible,
06:48and tends to only use VFX when absolutely necessary.
06:51But when he decided to feature a plane crashing into a building in his new movie Tenet,
06:55most audiences likely assumed Nolan conceded to using digital effects,
06:59or at the absolute most relied upon elaborate practical miniatures.
07:03But Nolan being Nolan, he had the clout to order his crew to literally buy a Boeing 747
07:08and just crash it into a building for real.
07:10Nolan and his team ultimately realised that it was actually cheaper to do it the old-fashioned way
07:14rather than splash out on a VFX or complex miniature set.
07:18And so that's what they did, at a real airport no less.
07:21Xenomorphs and Facehuggers
07:23Alien Romulus
07:25While Alien Romulus certainly features its fair share of CGI,
07:29including in that terrible deepfake sequence involving Ian Holm,
07:34director Fede Alvarez was insistent that every single creature in the film be built practically.
07:41Now, to be clear, that doesn't mean that VFX weren't employed for shots where practical effects were difficult or impossible,
07:48and that CGI wasn't used to provide cosmetic touch-ups, but the basis was almost always practical.
07:55Most of the creature shots, facehuggers, and xenomorphs alike were achieved through either animatronics,
08:01rod puppets, or actors in suits, depending on their complexity.
08:06And while Romulus has its divisive elements,
08:09the practical forward manner in which Alvarez presented the creatures was basically faultless,
08:14setting a standard that future sequels will hopefully follow.
08:18Flying Kitchen Appliances
08:19F9
08:20The Fast and Furious movies of course incorporate extensive visual effects to achieve their cartoonish action sequences,
08:27and with the recent F9 even taking the series to space for the first time,
08:31more VFX than ever was required to achieve director Justin Lin's vision.
08:35But it's also fair to say that the cars themselves are actually a lot less digital than you probably think,
08:39with a lot of the spectacular car crashes actually achieved through clever compositing of real-life action elements
08:45which were filmed separately and then stitched together.
08:48Perhaps the most technically challenging sequence in the movie is the chase scene,
08:51in which an electromagnet is switched on and starts launching around anything metal in the surrounding area.
08:56Now, one of the most startling beats in the scene involves large kitchen appliances being ripped out of a shop
09:01window,
09:01smashing the glass and flying towards the passing cars,
09:04which is so intense and obviously dangerous that one would surely assume that the flying appliances were just digital props.
09:10But incredibly, it was achieved for real,
09:13with stunt coordinator Andy Gill explaining that the appliances were launched through the window at the cars using compressed air.
09:19Everything from the appliances to the cars, the glass window, and the human extras were 100% practical.
09:25Wow.
09:26The Transformation
09:27Wolfman
09:28It's reasonable to assume that any modern movie based on Universal's Wolfman is going to feature its fair share of
09:36CGI.
09:37Because why wouldn't it?
09:38And while Leigh Whannell's new take on the IP rocked a relatively modest $25 million budget,
09:45the Saw and The Invisible Man director has demonstrated a knack for wringing every last penny from the money given
09:51to him.
09:52And so, though most may have assumed that the Wolfman's practical makeup effects were augmented with CGI,
09:58were now confirmed before release that the title character was 100% practical,
10:03achieved only through makeup, with no CGI elements whatsoever.
10:08While the Wolfman's design in the film has ultimately proven divisive,
10:12it's still an impressive achievement to pull it off without even a sliver of digital assistance,
10:18especially considering how often the character's look changes as the story progresses.
10:23The Green Knight
10:23The Green Knight
10:24Though it's mere $50 million budget limited director David Lowery's use of VFX through it,
10:30it was fair to believe that the title character's impressively intricate design received some sort of post-production touch-ups.
10:36And yet, The Green Knight's design in the film is actually executed completely practically,
10:41combining the lead actor's mesmeric performance with state-of-the-art makeup effects.
10:45The director said,
10:46There are no VFX at all.
10:48We went through a lot of crazier designs, but ultimately, I wanted him to be an actor underneath that makeup.
10:53The River of Skulls
10:55Deadpool and Wolverine
10:57Director Sean Levy did sneak an unexpectedly practical element into one of the film's most memorable images.
11:04When Deadpool searches the multiverse for a new Logan,
11:07one of the many rejects includes one who is seen crucified in a giant X and surrounded by a literal
11:15river of bloody skulls.
11:17This is, in fact, a loving recreation of the cover for Uncanny X-Men number 251.
11:23And though CGI was used for the background, the foreground elements are almost entirely real.
11:29Shortly after its release, Levy posted some behind-the-scenes images from the shoot,
11:34revealing that not only was Jackman strapped to a gigantic X for real,
11:39but that there was also a sea of thousands of skulls in front of him.
11:43The production probably went practical in this case,
11:45because Ryan Reynolds had to land on the skulls when he emerged in this timeline.
11:50Even so, that the crew made so many real skulls rather than simply creating a small patch Reynolds to interact
11:57with,
11:57handling the rest in digitally, is impressive and respectable.
12:02The recurring man on fire, Free Guy.
12:04With its $125 million budget and fantastical setting inside of a video game,
12:09Free Guy, of course, makes no attempt at all to hide how pervasively it uses CGI effects.
12:14Almost every shot of the movie contains some sort of VFX element,
12:18and during the more chaotic moments inside Free City,
12:20it's fair to assume that a lot of the NPCs in the background were simply added to the scene in
12:24post-production.
12:25But there's one background character who appears throughout the film in numerous scenes,
12:29and rather than simply create him in post,
12:31an actual human being was present on set to do it all for real.
12:35And we're talking about the flaming man, who can be seen fleetingly in many scenes, always on fire.
12:40The director said,
12:41We decided early on, like a lot of the effects, we wanted to do it for real.
12:44We have this man on fire who just runs through the background of frames,
12:47half a dozen times in the movie.
12:49That guy has to be lit on fire to the second,
12:51and put out within a certain number of seconds or it gets very dangerous.
12:55But there's something so fun about seeing real people do real things.
12:59Elizabeth's Melting Face
13:00The Substance
13:01Given that The Substance had a budget of just $17.5 million,
13:07making it easily the cheapest film spotlighted on this list,
13:11director Coralie Farge really had little choice but to focus on practical effects over VFX.
13:18And that seemed to suit her filmmaking style just fine.
13:21The Best Picture-nominated Body Horror Masterpiece features extensive effects work
13:26to convey protagonist Elizabeth Sparkle's various grotesque physical transformations.
13:31Though there's one effect at the end you might well have assumed had to be CG.
13:37In the closing sequence, what little remains of Elizabeth's disfigured form,
13:42basically just her face sitting in a pile of goop,
13:46melts beneath her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
13:49Now, surprisingly, this effect was done entirely with practical means,
13:54with Farge's crew creating a mold of Demi Moore's face,
13:57covering it in gore,
13:59and blasting the thing with heat until it melted,
14:02with the resulting footage being sped up for the final shot in the film.
14:06Sometimes, the old ways really are the best.
14:08Polka Dot Man's Transformation
14:10The Suicide Squad
14:11James Gunn's The Suicide Squad cost a beefy $185 million
14:16and features creatively over-the-top visual effects in basically every single scene,
14:21but one of its more grotesque effects was actually executed 100% for real.
14:25The film makes an unlikely hero out of niche comic book character Polka Dot Man,
14:30who is stricken with an interdimensional virus
14:32and must purge his polka dots twice a day or grow glowing pustules all over his body.
14:37And given the effects-heavy nature of the production,
14:39why wouldn't it simply have just been added in post?
14:41But shortly after the film's release,
14:42James Gunn posted behind-the-scenes photos confirming that Polka Dot Man's glowing pustules
14:47were indeed totally practical,
14:49with a combination of makeup, prosthetics,
14:50and lighting effects being employed to bring it to life on set.
14:53The Baby
14:54Pieces of a Woman
14:56Oscar-nominated drama Pieces of a Woman
14:58opens with a jaw-dropping long-take scene
15:01in which Martha gives birth to her child,
15:03who heartbreakingly dies shortly after being born.
15:06The mind-boggling technical complexity of the sequence,
15:08namely the fact that it's captured in a 24-minute single take for real with no digital joins,
15:13left many convinced that the baby had to be a digital creation.
15:16Considering that the baby appears in just the final two minutes of the scene
15:19and could easily risk blowing the entire take,
15:22a CGI baby would have made a certain amount of sense, right?
15:25But the director instead made the bold decision to use a real one.
15:28The baby and its mother waited outside of the apartment while each take was being shot
15:32and were quickly sneaked into the room for the climax,
15:35where the baby was placed beneath Martha following its birth.
15:38Considering that the likes of Twilight and American Sniper
15:41have proven how janky digital babies can ruin pivotal emotional scenes,
15:45it was most definitely the right decision to go practical here,
15:48and creates a haunting image if ever there was one.