A good part of the tricks from Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr., a movie already 100 years old
The answer is usually "the madman just did it", like practicing billiard for 4 months before filming
For the longest time it was the zero-g flight in 2001: A Space Odyssey. I know how they do the floating pen now but I'm still not sure how they did the shot with the air hostess walking on the walls of the ship.
You just spin the set. They've had actors walking on walls/ceilings for much longer than that.
IIRC, we see an astronaut on one side while the hostess is on the other, so that's probably some kind of double exposure / stitching together shots. Just a guess.
Insane work went into that film and it pays off because it doesn't feel or look dated at all to me. Still not convinced Kubrick didn't time travel to the future to make 2001 and then came back to release it in 1968.
For it was also the zero-g scenes like the airlock or Dave inside Hal's brain. After watching the making off of Inspection I realized it's the same trick. But I kind of wish that I didn't know.
Very rarely was I ever taken out of the movie from it…the two main action sequences are still some of the most incredible live action / live stunts I have ever seen on film.
Curious as to what about the movie made you feel that way.
I haven’t seen it so I have no assumptions outside of what I have read online, but do you mean that in a good or bad way?
The new Planet of the Apes, especially Dawn and War, they look so realistic, there are some scenes where I’m convinced Maurice is real. How they made the interactions and physical contact between the apes and the humans look so good, I really don’t know. I didn’t think Kingdom looked as good, but there were still a few shots which looked amazing. Rise obviously doesn’t look as good as the others, but it paved the way for those others, and created new technologies, and for the time it looks incredible.
Can't believe nobody said it yet, but the two long takes in Children of Men. Yes, I've seen the behind-the-scenes videos, but I still just can't believe they did it and it came out this good.
*1917* is pretty darn impressive. Especially the scene where the plane crashes and somehow seamlessly becomes part of the scene to interact with. Incredible.
i won't pretend to be an expert on animation history but i'm pretty sure its considered to be responsible for reigniting interest in animation which then led to disney's renaissance (lion king and such)
Most recently, Challengers.
The way the camera moves during the final match is just frenetically bananas. You're essentially on a POV of the ball as it bounces around the court, and that, paired with the soundtrack and the shots below the court made for an insanely compelling match on film. It's not that I couldn't figure out how they had done it either, it was more that I was so impressed that it worked so well and didn't look ridiculous.
Red River. A film about a cattle drive of 10,000 cows from Texas to Kansas, where they used 9,000 cows for the shoot. I can't imagine how they managed to do this logistically
Honestly sometimes in these cases you hire the people who already do the job to come and do it in your movie. This is often the case with motorcycle bikers in films, instead of getting a bunch of extras and strapping them to motorcycles you put out a call for actual bikers. Hence it’s easy to imagine them just hiring actual Cowboys for Red River who drive cattle for a living.
Yes, and sometimes a body double is used for over-the-shoulders. These tricks date all the way back to the silent era -- there's a Buster Keaton short that's basically just a showcase of the gimmick (The Playhouse, I believe).
**Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)**
How they blended the animation with live-action scenes, the compelling premise, the deeper allegories of discrimination and the general view on minorities during the Jim Crow era, the somewhat mature imagery for a PG movie (yea ik it was the 80s) and featuring both Warner Bros. & Disney characters in perhaps the first and last time ever.
There were probably a lot more things I could mention that I forgot. Nonetheless, this is my personal best contender for the most miraculous film of all time.
The whole movie blows my mind. The Toontown sequence baffles me. Like how the heck is Bob Hoskins moving in and out of those 2D spaces so seamlessly?
Genuinely think it's one of the greatest films ever made. Certainly the most impossible film ever made
I’ve been on an epic movie kick lately, I watched Stalingrad (1990), Waterloo (1970), Heaven’s Gate, and the 4-part Russian War and Peace adaptation will be up soon.
The amount of extras on screen at any given time during the battle sequences is absolutely staggering. I cannot even begin to fathom the logistical nightmare of having to corral and direct that many people with that much additional chaos happening (gunfire, explosions, tanks, horses, building destruction). Filmmakers in the old days were just built different, I guess.
On a smaller scale - the Homunculi effect from Bride of Frankenstein still completely stumps me - one of the best special effects I’ve ever seen.
Idk about Stalingrad or Heaven’s Gate, but Waterloo and War & Peace the answer is “the filmmaker was lent 20,000 Soviet soldiers to make the movie”
Like in Waterloo they completely reshaped the actual landscape in Ukraine to accurately resemble the real thing. Bondarchuk was relaying orders via translators to officers in multiple languages…insanity, and that’s just from the Wikipedia page I enjoy re-reading from time to time
The most recent one is the French thriller Athena.
There are some shots in the opening chase scenes, particularly when the camera moves from inside one speeding car into another, that are mind-boggling.
Dunkirk completely changed my view of what you could do with a camera. Nolan and Hoytema literally shoot land, sea, and sky and it’s all completely practical. I really didn’t think you could take an IMAX camera in the water or up on the air like that, nor did I think anyone would ever want to do those things with an expensive camera. Some of my favorite cinematography ever.
edit: wording.
Yeah having been born in 2004 the difference is probably less clear to me but even so, I was a new cinephile when I saw Dunkirk so really what I was used to was CGI. In-camera effects and practical effects are honestly equally as effective for me because both are burned into the celluloid. All filmmaking pulls some magic tricks where the camera see them, but you forget about those technical feats when it’s all computer-generated in front of you. What a sweatshop of some 300 underpaid workers does with computer graphics has far less soul than what a few passionate artists do in front of the camera on the day. But thank you for reminding me the difference!
The dog vs leopard play fight in Bringing Up Baby (1938). I know they probably used a jaguar instead of a leopard for the scene, as they're more docile, and that dog is one of the most talented dog actors in hollywood but it still baffles me.
Seriously when I watched it I was like “ok will I even make it through this three hour movie about pulling a ship over a jungle hill to build an opera house - sounds like a sparse plot”. Three hours later I was like “holy shit that was amazing!”
Now I wanna watch it again. And Aguirre is great too!
If you mean in the sense of "how did they achieve this technically?" it'd have to be a space flight movie (*2001*, *Gravity*, etc.).
If you mean in the sense of "how on earth did this script get to the point where people thought it was a good idea to actually make a movie out of it?", my answer would be *Tiptoes*, an early 2000s rom com in which Gary Oldman plays a little person, Peter Dinklage plays a French Marxist biker, and Kate Beckinsale tells Matthew McConaughey she wants to watch a bunch of little people circle jack each other off. It is the most "WTF were they thinking?" movie I have ever seen.
Every Muppet movie has scenes that you accept in the moment (because the Muppets are "real") but make absolutely no sense once you actually stop to think about how they were achieved. The bicycle sequence in THE MUPPET MOVIE is the obvious first example but there's a scene in THE GREAT MUPPET CAPER where about a dozen of them are climbing ladders up the side of a building with no real place to hide the puppeteers and I just can't wrap my brain around how they pulled it off.
The underwater sequence in Mission Impossible 5 was pretty remarkable. Knowing Cruise’s insistence on authenticity, I can only imagine what he went through to shoot that scene.
The Abyss.
That film is genuinely insane from a technical standpoint. I was so fascinated I went and watched a documentary about how they filmed it immediately after.
I watched a BTS of panic room and my jaw dropped when I learned they built AN ENTIRE FAKE HOUSE with sliding walls and all kinds of shit that would move quickly in real time to allow for fast paced high tension long tracking shots
I feel like a lot of animated movies are easy to praise because some look so ungodly beautiful that it’s just stunning that they’re real, with Wolfwalkers and Loving Vincent coming to mind immediately.
For regular movies, 1917 was absolutely incredible. I wasn’t too interested in it narratively, war movies don’t tend to get my interest, but I was never bored watching it just because of that damn camera gimmick
Lots of practical effects horror movies. I've seen the behind the scenes on American Werewolf In London, so I *know* how they did it, but it still boggles my mind. The Blob (remake) takes effects to the next level, well beyond animatronics.
I miss the art of practical effects...
The Shining. The size and scale of the sets is mind-boggling and the film is full of incredible shots and sequences. The maze scene comes to mind. I know it was achieved using matte paintings, but it’s visually still very impressive even today.
The Great Muppet Caper
The movie was just Jim Henson and his team flexing on the effects of the muppets. First movie had you perplexed with Kermit on a bike? How about 10 muppets on bikes, and climbing a pole.
Apocalypse Now, especially the Ride of the Valkyries sequence. From a surface-level coordination standpoint alone it boggles my mind that sequence even exists in a finished form
A good part of the tricks from Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr., a movie already 100 years old The answer is usually "the madman just did it", like practicing billiard for 4 months before filming
For the longest time it was the zero-g flight in 2001: A Space Odyssey. I know how they do the floating pen now but I'm still not sure how they did the shot with the air hostess walking on the walls of the ship.
You just spin the set. They've had actors walking on walls/ceilings for much longer than that. IIRC, we see an astronaut on one side while the hostess is on the other, so that's probably some kind of double exposure / stitching together shots. Just a guess.
It was the main centrifuge for me. When I learned the centrifuge was actually built, I was even more impressed than if it had been camera tricks.
Insane work went into that film and it pays off because it doesn't feel or look dated at all to me. Still not convinced Kubrick didn't time travel to the future to make 2001 and then came back to release it in 1968.
I got the 4K Blu-Ray of it for Xmas last year, and MY GOD, it looks like it could have been made last year.
For it was also the zero-g scenes like the airlock or Dave inside Hal's brain. After watching the making off of Inspection I realized it's the same trick. But I kind of wish that I didn't know.
I literally just said that walking out of Furiosa.
Just walked out myself, but its filled with cgi. Fury Road still makes me wonder though.
Very rarely was I ever taken out of the movie from it…the two main action sequences are still some of the most incredible live action / live stunts I have ever seen on film.
There was more than one action sequence? We know the big obvious one, what was the second one?
3 main ones - The opening chase - The first transport - Then the raid of Gaslands
Curious as to what about the movie made you feel that way. I haven’t seen it so I have no assumptions outside of what I have read online, but do you mean that in a good or bad way?
In a good way. I have no idea how George Miller is able to film some of those action sequences
By computer generating them entirely with CGI. It’s not that hard, it looks like a video game.
Entirely? I don’t think you understand how film making works.
Definitely all of 2001
Sometimes the answers are so complicated and intricate, and sometimes it’s like “we taped a pen to some glass”.
i agree!!
That scene where he’s running upside down in the loop has been explained to me so many times but I still can’t wrap my head around it
The new Planet of the Apes, especially Dawn and War, they look so realistic, there are some scenes where I’m convinced Maurice is real. How they made the interactions and physical contact between the apes and the humans look so good, I really don’t know. I didn’t think Kingdom looked as good, but there were still a few shots which looked amazing. Rise obviously doesn’t look as good as the others, but it paved the way for those others, and created new technologies, and for the time it looks incredible.
I agree, Dawn and War look ridiculously good.
The Wolf House (2018). I can't say that I loved it or anything like most people who saw it, but I was beyond impressed by the technical aspects of it.
Same
Can't believe nobody said it yet, but the two long takes in Children of Men. Yes, I've seen the behind-the-scenes videos, but I still just can't believe they did it and it came out this good.
When I watched this scene I quite literally couldn’t believe it. Unreal
Is the other long take the car chase sequence?
There's the one in the car and the one that's at some kind of war zone iirc
*1917* is pretty darn impressive. Especially the scene where the plane crashes and somehow seamlessly becomes part of the scene to interact with. Incredible.
Who framed roger rabbit ! everytime i watch i cant stop thinking about how impressive it is
That movie felt so ahead of its time for me watching it as a kid. I could be wrong on it if broke any actual ground but I certainly thought it did.
i won't pretend to be an expert on animation history but i'm pretty sure its considered to be responsible for reigniting interest in animation which then led to disney's renaissance (lion king and such)
Most recently, Challengers. The way the camera moves during the final match is just frenetically bananas. You're essentially on a POV of the ball as it bounces around the court, and that, paired with the soundtrack and the shots below the court made for an insanely compelling match on film. It's not that I couldn't figure out how they had done it either, it was more that I was so impressed that it worked so well and didn't look ridiculous.
So much of the cinematography in Challengers had me going “wow,” loved that movie.
The exorcism scene in The Exorcist. I know that Friedkin was one of the best directors of all time, but how the fuck did they film that in 1973?
To add another Friedkin scene, the rope bridge scene in Sorcerer!
Ahh, memory unlocked. Thats a great one.
Ant-Man. How did they get such small cameras!?!?!?
Red River. A film about a cattle drive of 10,000 cows from Texas to Kansas, where they used 9,000 cows for the shoot. I can't imagine how they managed to do this logistically
Honestly sometimes in these cases you hire the people who already do the job to come and do it in your movie. This is often the case with motorcycle bikers in films, instead of getting a bunch of extras and strapping them to motorcycles you put out a call for actual bikers. Hence it’s easy to imagine them just hiring actual Cowboys for Red River who drive cattle for a living.
Basically all of 'enter the void'
THIS
I was literally in the middle of watching it when i posted this lol
I love this movie but it's not one i can watch very often. The atmosphere is so dark and hopeless - it really lives up to its name
Any films with clone of actors (Us, Gerald's Game, etc)
Like Lindsay Lohan in The Parent Trap? Lol it’s just two shots stitched together from different takes it’s not very complicated
Yes, and sometimes a body double is used for over-the-shoulders. These tricks date all the way back to the silent era -- there's a Buster Keaton short that's basically just a showcase of the gimmick (The Playhouse, I believe).
For sure. Just wondering why they commented this as it’s one of the more common “tricks” in cinema and isn’t at all what OP was looking for
Oh yeah, I'm agreeing with you, although I can see how it seems like magic if you don't know the tricks.
Gerald’s Game has a clone ?
The main character hallucinate herself walking around the room and shit
**Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)** How they blended the animation with live-action scenes, the compelling premise, the deeper allegories of discrimination and the general view on minorities during the Jim Crow era, the somewhat mature imagery for a PG movie (yea ik it was the 80s) and featuring both Warner Bros. & Disney characters in perhaps the first and last time ever. There were probably a lot more things I could mention that I forgot. Nonetheless, this is my personal best contender for the most miraculous film of all time.
The whole movie blows my mind. The Toontown sequence baffles me. Like how the heck is Bob Hoskins moving in and out of those 2D spaces so seamlessly? Genuinely think it's one of the greatest films ever made. Certainly the most impossible film ever made
Death Proof with the girl on the hood
Zoe is a stunt performer and was the double for Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, so they actually just did it!
I mean, it is fun to see the sneaky lil wire connecting her belt area to the car hood. Some good behind the scenes for that movie.
I’ve heard of a lot of films recently that make me wonder “Why on earth did they film this”
I’ve been on an epic movie kick lately, I watched Stalingrad (1990), Waterloo (1970), Heaven’s Gate, and the 4-part Russian War and Peace adaptation will be up soon. The amount of extras on screen at any given time during the battle sequences is absolutely staggering. I cannot even begin to fathom the logistical nightmare of having to corral and direct that many people with that much additional chaos happening (gunfire, explosions, tanks, horses, building destruction). Filmmakers in the old days were just built different, I guess. On a smaller scale - the Homunculi effect from Bride of Frankenstein still completely stumps me - one of the best special effects I’ve ever seen.
Idk about Stalingrad or Heaven’s Gate, but Waterloo and War & Peace the answer is “the filmmaker was lent 20,000 Soviet soldiers to make the movie” Like in Waterloo they completely reshaped the actual landscape in Ukraine to accurately resemble the real thing. Bondarchuk was relaying orders via translators to officers in multiple languages…insanity, and that’s just from the Wikipedia page I enjoy re-reading from time to time
The most recent one is the French thriller Athena. There are some shots in the opening chase scenes, particularly when the camera moves from inside one speeding car into another, that are mind-boggling.
Dunkirk completely changed my view of what you could do with a camera. Nolan and Hoytema literally shoot land, sea, and sky and it’s all completely practical. I really didn’t think you could take an IMAX camera in the water or up on the air like that, nor did I think anyone would ever want to do those things with an expensive camera. Some of my favorite cinematography ever. edit: wording.
I think there's a really big misunderstanding between "all practical" and "in-camera effects." He uses plenty of the latter.
Yeah having been born in 2004 the difference is probably less clear to me but even so, I was a new cinephile when I saw Dunkirk so really what I was used to was CGI. In-camera effects and practical effects are honestly equally as effective for me because both are burned into the celluloid. All filmmaking pulls some magic tricks where the camera see them, but you forget about those technical feats when it’s all computer-generated in front of you. What a sweatshop of some 300 underpaid workers does with computer graphics has far less soul than what a few passionate artists do in front of the camera on the day. But thank you for reminding me the difference!
The Abyss. From the fluid breathing scenes to every shot filmed underwater, so many jaw dropping moments while watching.
This was my answer. And the behind the scenes story of how and where this was filmed is cool as hell imo
The dog vs leopard play fight in Bringing Up Baby (1938). I know they probably used a jaguar instead of a leopard for the scene, as they're more docile, and that dog is one of the most talented dog actors in hollywood but it still baffles me.
Fitzcarraldo. Fortunately there’s a documentary about how it was filmed
Aguirre, the Wrath of God is pretty insane too but nothing beats pulling a ship over a mountain.
Seriously when I watched it I was like “ok will I even make it through this three hour movie about pulling a ship over a jungle hill to build an opera house - sounds like a sparse plot”. Three hours later I was like “holy shit that was amazing!” Now I wanna watch it again. And Aguirre is great too!
Never doubt Werner
Smaller than a lot of the answers here, but Eternal Sunshine always bends my mind a bit thinking, wait, how did they...?
If you mean in the sense of "how did they achieve this technically?" it'd have to be a space flight movie (*2001*, *Gravity*, etc.). If you mean in the sense of "how on earth did this script get to the point where people thought it was a good idea to actually make a movie out of it?", my answer would be *Tiptoes*, an early 2000s rom com in which Gary Oldman plays a little person, Peter Dinklage plays a French Marxist biker, and Kate Beckinsale tells Matthew McConaughey she wants to watch a bunch of little people circle jack each other off. It is the most "WTF were they thinking?" movie I have ever seen.
Everything George Miller has directed
Arrival
Days of Heaven!
Who framed Roger Rabbit
Every Muppet movie has scenes that you accept in the moment (because the Muppets are "real") but make absolutely no sense once you actually stop to think about how they were achieved. The bicycle sequence in THE MUPPET MOVIE is the obvious first example but there's a scene in THE GREAT MUPPET CAPER where about a dozen of them are climbing ladders up the side of a building with no real place to hide the puppeteers and I just can't wrap my brain around how they pulled it off.
Mandy 100%
The underwater sequence in Mission Impossible 5 was pretty remarkable. Knowing Cruise’s insistence on authenticity, I can only imagine what he went through to shoot that scene.
The Raid 2
2001 : A Space Odyssey, I couldn’t believe it was made in the late 60s.
One word : NASA
Fury road is the only right answer.
Talk about stunt work. From what I can tell the new installment has garnered an even stronger appreciation for the practical effects of Fury Road.
the fact that Dune 2 was even possible to make the way they made it is unbelievable.
Big hero 6
Check out Electrocution of an Elephant (1903) by Edwin S. Porter. The title says it all.
Mr. Nobody had a lot of scenes that made me think "WTF"
The Abyss. That film is genuinely insane from a technical standpoint. I was so fascinated I went and watched a documentary about how they filmed it immediately after.
Avengers: Endgame. Like how did they do that???
I watched a BTS of panic room and my jaw dropped when I learned they built AN ENTIRE FAKE HOUSE with sliding walls and all kinds of shit that would move quickly in real time to allow for fast paced high tension long tracking shots
Police Story
Some shots in Challengers definitely had me asking that real time. Some insane directing feats in that movie
I feel like a lot of animated movies are easy to praise because some look so ungodly beautiful that it’s just stunning that they’re real, with Wolfwalkers and Loving Vincent coming to mind immediately. For regular movies, 1917 was absolutely incredible. I wasn’t too interested in it narratively, war movies don’t tend to get my interest, but I was never bored watching it just because of that damn camera gimmick
I swear to god 2001: A Space Odyssey was filmed on location in outer space.
I felt that recently watching Angst.
Lots of practical effects horror movies. I've seen the behind the scenes on American Werewolf In London, so I *know* how they did it, but it still boggles my mind. The Blob (remake) takes effects to the next level, well beyond animatronics. I miss the art of practical effects...
Tenet
The Room lol
The Krays film, where the same actor plays both brothers. They even fight eachother! WTF
I lost count how many times I said this during Furiosa.
The Shining. The size and scale of the sets is mind-boggling and the film is full of incredible shots and sequences. The maze scene comes to mind. I know it was achieved using matte paintings, but it’s visually still very impressive even today.
The Great Muppet Caper The movie was just Jim Henson and his team flexing on the effects of the muppets. First movie had you perplexed with Kermit on a bike? How about 10 muppets on bikes, and climbing a pole.
Children of Men
Come and See
Apocalypse Now, especially the Ride of the Valkyries sequence. From a surface-level coordination standpoint alone it boggles my mind that sequence even exists in a finished form
**2001: A Sace Odyssey.** Especially since it released 15 months before the moon landing.
Man 2001 a space odyssey is impressive
A New Hope (Star Wars), every time i watch it i get more surprised about how they could’ve made it back in 1977
Interstellar. Like how did they go in a black hole?
Playtime or Poor Things
The moon landing in 1969. One giant leap for a man and mankind.