Top Gun Without FX! Hollywood Camera Tricks from the Original Movie

Nowadays, VFX in movies are so commonly used that it's easy to assume that every film uses them at some point or another. However, back in the day, for movies like Top Gun, CGI wasn't advanced enough to create believable CG planes, and even 10 years after Top Gun was released, CG planes were still… well… yeah. So, in order to get shots of real planes in dogfights, the filmmakers had to enlist the help of the US Navy. And surprisingly, the Navy did actually agree to help out. They allowed them to put cameras on F-14s and a MiG-28, which was actually a Northrop F-5 painted black, and film them landing and taking off from the aircraft carrier. They allowed them to film scenes actually on the USS Enterprise. And they even allowed them to fire a missile. A missile. Just the one. This is why in the movie, this missile, this missile, this missile, and this missile are all the same one that was just flipped and reframed to make it look like different missiles. Even though they had real footage of a missile being shot, the effects team still had to produce shots of the MiG-28 shooting a missile and different Nowadays, you can achieve some of these effects quite easily using action effects, by just dragging and dropping assets into your project timeline. Like for example, gun muzzle flashes, smoke and debris, energy bursts and explosions like these aerial explosions. And there are many more VFX assets just waiting there ready for when you need to enhance your project. And if you're interested in getting a discount for action effects, then click the link in our video description. Now, as handy and time-saving as this is, way back then they didn't have such a commodity because things like this didn't exist. So in order to create these shots of missiles firing, aerial explosions and planes being shot out of the air, they had to be more ingenious using the techniques that were available at the time. And so they did this by building a of both the F-14 and the MiG-28, ranging from 50cm long up to 2.75m long. Next they had to find an area where they could shoot these models and blow them up. And this brought its own set of problems. Obviously, the most realistic place to shoot model planes is outside. This meant that they needed to find an area with a wide expanse of sky and nothing on the horizon. This area had to be paved or graveled so that there was no risk of causing a wildfire with their pyrotechnics. And they also needed an area where they could be sure to have relatively clear skies most of the time. They eventually found an area of land that was underdeveloped on a hilltop in Oakland, California. And this became the base where they shot all of the special effects shots. In order to create tension in the dogfights, Top Gun's aerial photography was shot to look like a documentary. This meant that planes were almost entirely in frame, and there was also a lot of camera movement and vibration. In order to replicate this, the effects team used cameramen whom all had experience in filming documentaries. However, when filming explosions on miniature models, effects teams normally increase the camera's frame rate up to 120 frames per second, or even 300 frames per second, because this gives the explosion more scale and weight. But unfortunately, it almost eliminates any camera movement or vibration that the cameraman applies. So, to remedy this, the effects team attached a drill to their camera rig, with an off-centered mass attached to the driveshaft, kind of like this. Now, by increasing the drill's speed, the team could control the amount of vibration that appeared on their explosion shots. And you can see that actually happening on this looped explosion. Notice how the vibration seems to be rotating as the drill would. For the internal cockpit scenes, they removed the radar from the F-14s and replaced them with cameras. However, after various fights, they found that the G-forces involved in the dogfight manoeuvres were just too brutal, and the actors had trouble just keeping their heads in frame, let alone say their lines convincingly. This meant that the internal cockpit scenes had to be shot on a set. Contrary to the original film, in the 2022 sequel Top Gun Maverick, the filmmakers started the process with the previous knowledge of exactly how brutal it was inside these aircraft, and so they adapted the screenplay around what would be physically possible for the actors to portray whilst undergoing these extreme G-forces. Even though in this day and age they could have reproduced these shots fairly convincingly on a green screen soundstage and using CGI, they didn't. This is because in order to capture the way the actors' faces reacted to the G-forces, and the facial micro-expressions caused by the adrenaline and fear they experienced whilst flying, they preferred to do them practically. To shoot the cockpit scenes in the first movie, the effects team brought an old F-14 fuselage from the Navy and set it up on a gimbal. They also had the cameras on its own gimbal and allowed them to rotate 360 degrees. Then they built a 25 foot rig up over the cockpit upon which they mounted a 10K light. This was their key light. When the plane was supposedly banking or rolling, they could move the light around the rig so it would look like the sun rolling around the plane. Behind the cockpit was a rear screen projection showing plates filmed by the stunt pilot art school for the background of each scene. And in front of the cockpit was a front screen projection that was used to put reflections on the windshields of the cockpit.