15 Movie Effects You Thought Were CGI (But Weren't)

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