Practical effects

How your movie magic is made.

As regular readers will know (from my previous miniatures post here, as well as other behind-the-scenes film posts which can be found here, here (about Return of the Jedi), here, here and here), I am fascinated by movie miniatures and how they can trick the viewer into completely believing the world the film-maker presents to them. When I wrote my first miniatures post, I didn't want to talk about the ILM work on "Star Wars" as it's been so well documented in the past (though I couldn't…

godzilla

This is the alien from the thing (1982 version) interesting fact: it can take anyones dna and transform into them, making it really hard to tell who is human and who isnt!

Interesting moments from movie sets that only insiders typically get to see.

The visual effects and animation studio, Mr. X, presents a fascinating breakdown of how Mr. X and Legacy Effects used a magical mixture of practical

While working on a feature film called The Grind, filmmaker Vashi Nedomansky had to come up with a way to shoot a flashback scene, complete with Humvee,

You may think that most movies use computer imaging in order to add in their effects. Well, in many cases that would be true, but there are a bunch of other ways to make these things happen like practical effects and motion capture. Back in the day, practical effects were pretty much the norm and many of the movies on this list use such effects. You wouldn't normally get to see them, but if you keep reading you just might be able to understand how these effects come to be.

More miniatures were created for any one of the Star Wars prequels than the entire original trilogy combined. LEts look at Star Wars Prequels Miniatures.