16 Truly Fascinating Movie Secrets That Just Prove Filmmakers Are Magicians
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1.In You People (2023), Jonah Hill and Lauren London's characters kiss during the final scene when they get married, but the kiss itself was actually CGI, according to their costar.
Andrew Schulz, who played Cousin Avi, explained, "I'm there, I'm watching the wedding, and I see them go in for the kiss and their faces stop [six inches apart]." He added, "And I'm like, 'I wonder how they're going to play that in the movie. Oh, they're probably just going to cut right there,' But in the movie, you could see their faces come close, and then you can see their faces morph a little bit into a fake kiss."
2.In Knives Out (2019), because there were several close-ups with characters who wore glasses, Matt Mania, the movie's Key Grip, created appliques to put over the lights so that the film crew wouldn't be seen in the glasses' reflections.
#KnivesOut subtly features art by Matt Mania, Key Grip. We had many closeups of characters with eyeglasses, so he cleverly sculpted mattes to reshape our lighting equipment into scenery you'd realistically expect to see reflected in the glasses.#NerdyFilmTechStuff
3.In Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018), to get the shot of Tom Cruise's character jumping off the plane, the cinematographer also had to sky dive with him.
Director Christopher McQuarrie explained that they wanted to film the scene at dusk, so there was only a three-minute window that they could shoot it each day. Between the practices and actual filming, Tom Cruise jumped about 106 times.
4.In Sh! The Octopus (1937), since VFX weren't as far along in the 1930s, the filmmakers used an optical illusion to create the effect of a woman turning into a creature before our very eyes.
Warner Bros.
In a Corridor Crew video, Niko Pueringer explained just how the effect was achieved. He said, "This is an effect that's only possible in black and white. It's quite simple actually. It's just a red and blue filter. Just like when you have like 3D glasses, and where the red side doesn't let you see the red lines and the blue side doesn't let you see the blue lines." He explained, "So, you have a red filter in front of the camera and it's filtering out any red on her. So, you have all these red marks on her face but you can't see any of that because the red filter is cutting all of it out. You transition it to a blue filter and suddenly all of those red splotches become bright and you can see all of the luminance difference."
5.In Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), BB-8 was controlled by a group of puppeteers wearing greenscreen suits who would literally push him around the set.
6.In The Menu (2022), the first shot of the movie (where Anya Taylor-Joy's character is lighting a cigarette) is actually stock footage.
In an interview with Filmmaker Magazine, Peter Deming, the cinematographer, confirmed it. He added, "When I saw the first cut, I was like, 'Oh, that’s interesting. They got a stock shot that fit into the movie.' And the more I looked at it, the more I had issues with it. Thematically, it’s a perfect way to start the movie. There are some technical issues with the shot itself, which I won’t bring up, but no one notices it. Even I didn’t notice [those issues] the first two or three times I saw it. It wasn’t until we got into the color correction on the film that I was like, '….wait a minute.'"
One of the technical issues with the shot is that the person lighting the cigarette is indoors, but just a few seconds later we see Anya and Nicholas Hoult's characters outdoors.
7.In Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Josh Brolin wore a giant floating Thanos head so the other actors would know where to look when they were talking to him. Then, the actual Thanos-ification was done in post with CGI.
To record his performance, motion capture cameras had to be installed all over the set. This allowed for other actors to have more space while interacting with Josh, but to also pick up all the subtle movements he made as Thanos. All of the close-ups were shot with an HD camera that was attached to a helmet and then pointed back at his face for comparison. Then, all the footage was put into a database so his expressions could be used when crafting Thanos's computer-generated face.
8.In Titanic (1997), all of the water scenes were shot in a giant pool that was actually only waist-deep.
9.In the Guardians of the Galaxy (2014–) movies, Sean Gunn plays Rocket's body double on set, so while filming, he crouches and crawls around to match the character's height. Then, Bradley Cooper voices the CGI character in the final version of the film.
10.In Baby Driver (2017), because the car chases were so complex, a stunt driver would sit in a contraption on top of the prop car and drive from up there.
Stunt driver Jeremy Fry explained, "What that does is it lets the actor who is behind the wheel concentrate on the acting. From every camera that sees it, it looks like they're driving."
11.In Iron Man 3 (2013), during the final scene, Robert Downey Jr.'s head was actually CGIed onto a body double because, at the time, RDJ suffered an injury that halted production for six weeks.
The movie's VFX supervisor Chris Townsend told IGN, "Together with face replacement and full-body doubles, somewhere there was a solution to the problem of not having Robert Downey Jr. on set for the time. The collective VFX Supes and unit leads ran into a room as soon as the incident happened to try to ascertain what sequences could they shoot." He added, "It was also very important with regards to VFX that they were able to collect background plates, data, lighting, and lens info, and the rest of the crew were incredibly obliging with regards to that. We were able to reconstruct RDJ as Tony Stark onset, with the help of that body double and the facial captures we'd collected afterward."
12.In The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), the hotel used in the movie isn't even an actual place. It's a miniature model designed and built specifically for the film.
13.In Dunkirk (2017), an extra who was spotted smiling during the movie's teaser trailer was CGIed to appear like he was frowning for the film's actual release.
14.In Jurassic Park (1993), the sound designers used the noises of mating tortoises to make the sound for the film's velociraptors.
“It’s somewhat embarrassing, but when the raptors bark at each other to communicate, it’s a tortoise having sex,” said sound designer Gary Rydstrom. “It’s a mating tortoise! I recorded that at Marine World … the people there said, ‘Would you like to record these two tortoises that are mating?’ It sounded like a joke, because tortoises mating can take a long time. You’ve got to have plenty of time to sit around and watch and record them.”
15.In Inception (2010), a rolling hallway set was built and actually spun around while filming so it looked like the actors were on the walls and ceiling.
16.And finally, in The Matrix (1999), in order to capture Keanu Reeves' iconic bullet-defying moment, 120 still-cameras were placed around him all capturing photos within milliseconds of each other. Then, those photos were stitched together to achieve that slow-motion effect.
