Sawyer
Definitely Not 40
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http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/177951/top_50_movie_special_effects_shots.html
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50: Alien: Resurrection (1997) - Ripley clone matures
Jean-Pierre Jeunet's quirky fourth entry to the Alien series boasts many eccentric touches worthy of mention, including an elegant solution for the astronaut who even has to carry his whiskey freeze-dried, as well as the first CGI examples of H.R. Giger's stunning creature design. But oddly it's Resurrection's use of a pretty old (and pretty cheap) CGI trick that really takes one's breath away, as the adolescent Ripley clone that those mad space-scientists are brewing up morphs into her adult state, with Sigourney Weaver's features. Both the child and adult maquettes were created by Tom Gillis and Alec Woodruff and morphed together by effects house Digiscope. Morphing was already old news from John Landis's video for Michael Jackson's Black And White, Casper (1995) and various others, but this was the first time the technique had ever been used as something more than a party-trick. Adolescent Ripley was created by Gillis and Woodruff using a base model onto which were imposed the features of young Weaver, and derived from pictures supplied by the actress.
49: Just Imagine (1930) - Descent to New York penthouse
David Butler's 'answer' to Germany's Metropolis (see below) apes Fritz Lang's astounding imagery whilst jettisoning its social message with utter abandon. This Buck Rogers-like tale finds briefly-popular US comedian El Brendel catapulted into New York, 1980, where the numbered citizenry get around in flying cars and where marriage is arranged by the state. Though the movie's early visuals are spectacular, they are strictly there to establish period, and Just Imagine soon descends into a poorly-written (and notoriously anti-Semitic) musical. One advancement on Metropolis is in evidence in this shot, however, as the camera actually begins to move around the city. Unfortunately the remarkable model-work and good camera-movement is unwisely used as a projection backdrop for a full-sized flying-car prop that is obviously too heavy to be suspended on wires. Nonetheless, the amount of motion in this shot, combined with excellent and mobile miniature-work, makes it perhaps the earliest predecessor to the 'Spinner' sequences in Blade Runner.
48: The Day After Tomorrow (2004) - Manhattan floods.
Roland Emmerich continues to destroy the world in this ecological disaster-movie, and Digital Domain won Technical Achievement awards for the fluid simulation tools used in the Manhattan flood sequence. Depicting water is one area of SFX where the CGI luddites tend, wisely, to shut up. SFX debacles such as those in Raise The Titanic (1980), The Dambusters (1955) and the 'Hoover Dam bust' in Superman (1978) only go to prove that water simply does not scale at anything but 1:1. Calculating (or impersonating) the confluences and counter-collisions that an incoming flood of water will make against the maze of Manhattan is a mind-bogglingly difficult task, and we can only pay this shot the compliment of saying that it 'looks right'.
47: Saving Private Ryan (1998) - Bullets in the water.
Just as efforts such as Cube (1997) and Robert Zemeckis' Death Becomes Her (1992) and Forrest Gump (1994, see #13) were beginning to bring 'body horror' into the CGI age, Steven Spielberg turned CGI mutilation to arguably its most serious use in recreating the visceral horror of the Normandy landings. If not the most violent film ever made, Saving Private Ryan must be in the top 10 somewhere, but has so sombre an ambit as to inspire respect instead of disgust. The shot in question was - at least for me - educational, since I had wondered before just how lethal a bullet could be through water. Soldiers fleeing into the sea from their decimated landing-craft found that the ocean was no protection against suitable artillery, and the zipping projectiles, complete with foamy trails, are totally convincing here.
46: The Fifth Element (1997) - Bruce Willis's air-taxi pulls out of the garage.
The surfaces and lighting are flawless in this shot of the flying yellow-cab setting off for work, but crucially it's the accuracy of the physics that sells it. As the cab brakes to avoid an oncoming vehicle, its weight settles back into its own suspension before forward-thrust takes it off again for a right turn. It's a little thing, but it makes a huge difference, and is arguably one of the biggest barriers CGI has yet to confront. Another excellent example of correct weight and movement in an exit is the 180-degree turn that the Millennium Falcon makes when exiting the Death Star in Star Wars (original 1977 release). That's ironic, since it's turning in zero-gravity and should have no weight. But then, there's no sound in space either.
45: Minority Report (2002) - Maglev hovership takes off
As in #46, above, the sense of weight and resistance is what sells this astonishingly elegant shot from Steven Spielberg's adaptation of the Philip K. Dick short story. One common technique (though it is a bit of a blunt hammer) for blending an incongruous element into a canvas is to dictate a limited or particular colour-palette for the work, and it must be admitted that Spielberg's almost entirely desaturated movie has a black-and-white advantage in terms of achieving verisimilitude. The one unfortunate aspect of this shot is the clumsy addition of exit-vent haze, a real cancer among Hollywood CGI artists, who all need to be shipped off to wherever Britain sold the last of its Hawker Harriers and made to take reference footage.
44: Brazil (1985) - 'Harry' Tuttle makes a dramatic exit.
Robert De Niro's improbably heroic plumber (and 'freelance subversive') makes two exits-by-guy rope in Terry Gilliam's enjoyable perversion of Orwell's Nineteen-Eighty-Four, but the second one is the real jaw-dropper. Gilliam stands with James Cameron (himself once a successful effects artist for Roger Corman) in the role of exemplary old-school FX guru, with a preference for build-and-film rather than adding anything later.
43: Dune (1984) - Worm attack.
Scaling sand is easier than scaling water, but even so this is an incredibly ambitious shot for the pre-CGI era. Part of the charm of the shot is Carlo Rambaldi's tripartite worm, which raises up its prey like a Venus flytrap before clamping down on it. Barry Nolan and Van Der Veer studios were in the firing line when much of the worm SFX was criticised on first release, but this shot would be ambitious even for current computer technology. Find out more about the worm SFX here.
42: The Abyss (1989) - loss of tension.
The idea of suspended fluid losing tension has been dabbled with in a number of science fiction movies over the years, including Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) and Event Horizon (1997). It's an effective trick which usually involves little more than a milliseconds' distortion of the composited element (sea-snake, blood droplets, water droplets, etc) before cutting into a horizontal split-screen where prop-water hits the floor, but it's one of those cases where a valuable connection is formed between an 'alien' (i.e. artificial) element and the real world. For The Abyss, James Cameron got to know all about transparency algorithms in 3D modelling, whereas the subsequent Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) was an object-lesson in reflection-mapping. One wonders what his third-stage would have been if Jurassic Park had not taken up the lead.
41: Howard The Duck (1986) - The Dark Overlord rises.
Just as there haven't been any fundamental changes to the principles of the internal combustion engine in the last 100 years, neither has a century wrought that much change in the art of stop-motion animation. Legendary creature-maker Phil Tippett added one wrinkle, however, with his 'Go-motion' technique, which is rather unscientifically explained as 'twanging' the model armature at the moment of exposure when motion-blur is needed. Tippett's go-motion dinosaurs were the first to become extinct when ILM began some interesting CGI experiments for Steven Spielberg and Jurassic Park. Tippett himself evolved very nicely as a specialist in CGI creatures with an unparalleled reputation for realistic movement inherited from years as a stop-motion animator. Star turkey Howard The Duck benefited from go-motion with an impressively animated finale.
40: Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) - Entrance to V'Ger
The entrance to the inner heart of TMP's monstrous space-urchin follows the organic motif established so impressively in Douglas Trumbull's (perhaps excessively-used) footage of V'Ger. The thing is, it's very hard to tell how that organic aperture is actually working. Is it an iris of some kind or are the 'petals' actually changing shape? Truth is that the gate segments are actually cones spinning in unison. Since the camera remains perpendicular to the circular bases of the cones, the secret is hard to guess.
39: Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1978) - The spores spread.
Very small-scale prop-work with moving parts is an incredible challenge often overcome by using an oversized environment. That trick was used to bring to life the plant-based alien life forms which arrive in spore-clouds to take over humanity in Philip Kaufman's atmospheric remake of the 1956 horror and sci-fi classic. The expansion of the tendrils is a reverse-effect (by SFX leader Howard Preston) that works because of the constancy of the zoom, and these are very convincing - if unwelcome - flora.
38: When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth (1970) - Leading the dinosaur.
Jim Danforth - twice nominated for an Oscar - was the powerhouse matte painter and animator called in by Hammer Films when Ray Harryhausen was too busy with The Valley Of Gwangi (1969) to take part in the studio's sequel to One Million Years BC (1966). Though not as quick as Harryhausen, Danforth - pre-empting 'go-motion' - experimented with motion blur and got better results out of his flying pterodactyls than the master himself. However, that's not why this shot is in here. What's exceptional about the dinosaur's pursuit of Victoria Vetri is how optical wiz Les Bowie has really inserted him into the environment, whereas so much stop-motion animation of the 1960s was clearly divided between freeze-framed background/foreground plates and the animator's work. It's a challenging piece of matting, particularly on one of Hammer's notoriously penny-pinching budgets.
37: The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967) - The party-crashers revealed.
Sometimes the oldest trick in the book is all you need. Thus reasoned Roman Polanski when his vampire-movie spoof required that the 'infiltrators' at a vampire ball be revealed as the only reflections in the ballroom mirror. Of course, the 'reflections' are out-of-focus doubles trying to 'mirror' principals Jack MacGowran, Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate, but once something works, anything more is pointless.
36: Dragonslayer (1981) - Vermithrax Pejorative rises.
Having made a notable foray into stop-motion in The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Industrial Light & Magic produced arguably their most impressive work in the field for Disney's stab at the sword-and-sorcery genre. It must be admitted that one of the reasons Vermithrax is so amazing is that you have to wait such a long time to see him, but in truth the lighting and movement of the evil beast is unparalleled in the field. This dragon wasn't seriously challenged until the CGI dragon's 'crash-landing' shot in Rob Bowman's under-rated Reign Of Fire (2002).
35: Transformers (2007) - Slow-motion motorway pursuit.
This is the only robot SFX shot in Michael Bay's harmless technological bash-fest that I totally buy, and the reason, I think, is to do with motion blur. Since this shot has been designed and rendered for slow-motion, the blur effect has been omitted (or at least greatly reduced, as one commenter suggested), and suddenly the robots really seem to be there, rather than impressively superimposed. Along with kinetics and physics, it's very early days yet for CGI artists as regards an understanding of motion blur in anything but a solid object constantly moving in one direction.
34: Fantastic Voyage (1966) - Journey into the alveoli.
Art Cruickshank and company created some spectacularly psychedelic special effects for Richard Fleischer's highly enjoyable tale of inner space, but the model work and filming of the interior of the lungs is really exceptional - if unlikely - stuff, and the difficulty of moving a camera down a totally enclosed set is handled with aplomb.
33: Jason and the Argonauts (1963) - Fighting the skeletal warriors.
Ray Harryhausen's most celebrated feat of stop-motion remains enduringly impressive, not only for the sheer invention of the skeletal warriors that rise from the 'seeds' of dragons' teeth, but for the sheer number which the grand master assembled for a series of enormously complex shots. The shot seen in the video is a composite of one single set-up with the inserts removed.
32: Apollo 13 (1995) - Blast off.
Derek Meddings (#5) has launched more orbital payload vehicles than NASA, but his efforts (in such films as Moonraker and Doppelganger) were finally capped by Digital Domain's superb recreation of the launch of ill-fated Apollo 13. Footage of the Apollo launches is part of the planet's iconography, so the challenge to recreate that experience is immense, and ultimately it's only the curse of the 'roving 3D camera' that turns an astonishingly detailed recreation slightly 'plastic'.
31: Diary Of The Dead (2007) - Acid to the head.
Spin VFX turned in a superb combination of motion-capture and CGI grue in George Romero's otherwise disappointing follow-up to Land Of The Dead (2005). Here our heroes have attacked a zombie with sulphuric acid, and the 'citizen' camera lingers at great length on the revenant's demise. With the actor moving and the camera hand-held, there are two fields of relative motion to take into account when calculating the position of the CGI acid-melt, and this is the kind of naturalistic CGI footage that - together with the hand-held work in Cloverfield - at least supplies some kind of reason to pursue the 'amateur footage' angle.
30: Dead Ringers (1988) - Track in on the twins.
Actors playing dual roles is an old story in Hollywood, though the cheap double-exposures have given place to sophisticated motion-control work. What has yet to be done effectively is shooting a scene with a 'doubling' actor hand-held - or shooting a scene outdoors (the light is likely to have changed by the time the actor is in his or her 'other' make-up; the exterior shots of 'young' and 'old' Thomas F. Wilson in Back To The Future Part II show the difference in lighting conditions between the 'split' takes). In Dead Ringers David Cronenberg is standing on the achievements of many before him, and pre-empts Robert Zemeckis' exceptional actor-doubling in the Back To The Future sequels, which used the 'Vistaglide' roving motion-control camera designed by ILM. Most of Zemeckis' motion-control repeat passes occurred from a locked-off base (with the camera swivelling on several axes but not itself moving), but Cronenberg dares to move his camera fluidly around the sets. The fact that the technical aspects of production must have been so daunting can only add to Jeremy Irons' achievement in creating two distinct personalities for the disturbed gynaecologist twins without going all 'evil Kirk'.
29: 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) - Entering the airlock without a space-helmet.
The pioneering rotoscoping and miniature work of Douglas Trumbull, Wally Veevers and Les Bowie often overshadows one of the most effective zero-gravity shots ever filmed - and, unlike on Apollo 13, the film-makers had no need to hire NASA's 'vomit comet' to obtain it. In the movie Dave Bowman - Keir Dullea - is forced to re-enter a spaceship without a space-helmet, and does so by depressurising his lungs and blowing the explosive bolts of his EVA vehicle, which is pressed hard to the airlock. The shot was accomplished by positioning the camera directly beneath the pod and airlock set and ejecting a roped Dullea from the prop pod with an accompanying puff of propane. The angle hides the support wires, and the lack of any sound (until the cabin repressurises) is what really sells the shot. Arguably the ejection of the oxygen in one blast might have moved the pod away, but that's perhaps an unreasonable quibble. There are too many other SFX shot contenders from 2001 to even begin to list them here.
28: Gladiator (2000)- Entering the coliseum.
A show reel shot for SFX company Mill Films and compelling trailer-fodder to boot, this recreation of gladiators entering the Roman coliseum is an exceptional meeting of superb cinematography and cutting-edge CGI effects. Arguably it's the fact that the actors are standing in front of a bit more than a green screen that really sells it - a large proportion of the lower sections of the coliseum were built on location in Malta, and blended seamlessly with the 3D architecture. Apart from anything else, this shot is a triumph of the rotoscoper's art, as Russell Crowe and company have had to be extracted from the 'missing' parts of the background on a frame-by-frame basis.
27: Blade Runner (1982) - Spinners in the rain.
Douglas Trumbull's work on Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (1977) took him out of the airless freedom of space and into the need to make flying saucers glow in the misty plains of Ohio. It was on CE3K that Trumbull perfected the very long exposures needed to get adequate and convincing depth-of-field in low-light conditions, combined with the use of a custom-built machine that dispersed fine oil mist into the air at a strictly regulated rate, which allowed the lights of the models to cut through a dense, Earth-like atmosphere. These techniques surfaced again in creating Philip K. Dick's bleak vision of the future for Ridley Scott, with flying police cars '('Spinners') floating through smog-drenched Los Angeles. Many beautiful city shots emerged, where Trumbull made the superimposition of stock rain footage realistic by obscuring areas of it that did not correspond to light sources in the background plate. For this particular shot Trumbull went the extra mile, and added a windshield with rain droplets as a foreground element to Deckard's journey to meet Eldon Tyrell. Such a shot should not have been possible in the days of photo-chemical SFX.
26: Forbidden Planet (1956) - Entering the Krell underground.
Inserting real people into matte paintings or hanging miniatures is an SFX technique predating motion pictures, but A. Arnold Gillespie and colleagues went one better for this introductory shot to Leslie Nielson's tour of the vast underground labyrinth left behind by an alien civilisation in this sci-fi classic: the camera filming the large Metropolis-like miniature pans around to a pre-fixed position, at which point footage of actors Walter Pidgeon, Nielson and Warren Stevens walking through the MGM car park is matted in. The same technique is applied to later shots but with rostrum movement and slightly less convincingly (one can plainly see that the actors are moving in daylight and also discern the concrete of the car park). The initial movement of the camera in our featured footage sets up the conceit that it can move any time it likes, and reinforces the realism of the shot.
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