VFX Artists React to Bad & Great CGi 106

I remember in the BTS footage for Dantes Peak they mentioned that something like 6 cameras failed during the flood scene, and they were only able to do one take. But they were prepared for this exact failure, so they had multiple redundant cameras and were able to get the footage they needed. Blew my mind as a kid.

Heyo I worked on Rorschach! Some of my shots are in this video. The team at Intelligent Creatures in Toronto did an amazing job on Watchmen. Hands down my favorite film I've worked on.

Thanks for your kind words about Rorschach in Watchmen, I was the CG Supervisor for Inteligent Creature Inc in Toronto, we were responsible for all the Rorshach mask shots in the final movie. One correction I'd like to make is that you showed tests carried our in pre-production by Frantic Films (you can see their name in the top right) but we won the contract over them.
We didn't just have 5 shapes we moved between, we animated all shots bespoke from scratch using a 2D animation setup I created in Maya.

I love how collected Sam is when he says he has food poisoning. I would've just puked all over the set.

Whether you like Watchmen or not, one thing for sure is that it’s aged super well at least on a visual and technical level. As for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, it’s actually not aged badly either in terms of VFX

My step dad actually worked on Dante's Peak and Watchmen. Working on Watchmen was really cool, but a physical nightmare because it was built in the middle of the desert in the summer.

Dante's peak miniature shot is absurdly well done

I don’t love the Watchmen movie but the way they portrayed Rorschach was literally perfect. Such a brilliant move to make the mask flow and change organically rather than have a few different ones for each scene. This is why movie and TV adaptations for comic characters can be awesome, it can allow new little details that aren’t possible on a comic page.

The Abyss has some of the best miniature work in any movie. Apollo 13 the launch sequence is amazing. The spider in The Wild Wild West. The list goes on. The world of miniatures in film is a deep dive that deserves a few episodes. There are so many out there that you would never know were miniatures.

I'm blown away by how you can still find astonishing VFX scenes to talk about after all these episodes!

As someone whose life is often interrupted by gastric distress, I feel Sam's pain and hope he recovered fully.

Dante's Peak have the best miniature shot ever, we need more of this than crappy CGI. Mixed good CGI in just few scenes and miniatures is the key.

Watching these videos every Saturday is like the adult equivalent of watching Saturday morning cartoons.

The bad fortune of Dante's Peak is that it premiered almost next to Titanic here in Mexico City, I went to see it because the rooms to see Titanic were impressive and without knowing almost anything about it, except what appeared on the poster and I was more than grateful for my fate. I've seen it about 20 times and it never bores me

I'm so glad you all went over League of Extraordinary Gentlemen; I had a date that I was explaining the movie to, and swore I must have been making it up. We watched it together finally...and let's just say, we both were freaking out about how good the movie still holds up today. He always lost is shit whenever invisible guy come on

You guys definitely need to get some miniature experts on the show. That would be an interesting watch

Dante's Peak is the superior volcano movie from that year, super underrated .

Peter Jackson's _King Kong_ and the _LotR_ trilogy had some awesome, _huge_ miniatures, to which Jackson literally referred as "big-atures"...
Also, in _Close Encounters of the Third Kind,_ Doug Trumbull did some impressive forced perspective with the curved road on which the UFOs zoom by (and don't forget R2D2 being very visible on the hull of the Mothership).

Miniature artists react is definitely a category I'd love to see more of on this channel.

Dante's Peak is a gem, does not deserve some of the hate it gets, masterfully done VFX

You guys need to have Coffeezilla on to talk about the work of his VFX artist. His set work on such a small budget is unreal and i'd love to know how he works with his artists and gets such good looking animation etc. Plus his work is incredibly important so a platform for him would do some good.

Hopefully Sam recovers. Good episode today. Yeah, I would definitely watch an episode or two dedicated to just miniatures.

Wow, a show on Netflix! Good for you guys, well done! A massive inspiration.

If only there was a renowned miniature maker and absolute subject expert that you could invite to do another episode.
And yes, please, more miniature stuff.

I worked on the first Harry Potter film in the model unit (miniatures) and I can tell you first hand, working on the miniatures was an absolute blast!
We made various different scale sections of the school for close ups/fly by shots, as well as the full Hogwarts. We also made a bunch a forced perspective streets etc, and it was incredible to work on a fantasy style film that required plenty of models with such high detail.
Even on the school windows, every single window pane was made of plastic transparency film and scored across with a pen, so any reflected light scattered in different directions to give the illusion of individual tiny panes of glass with lead piping.
That one i know far too well as i did nearly all of them 😆
(We also stole some pre-made model trees that were left from Sleepy Hollow... Shhhh) 😆

Lord of the Rings had some of the best miniature work set to film. The environments from Isengard, to Minas Tirith, Minas Morgul, the caverns of Moria, Helm's Deep, were all miniatures (nicknamed "bigatures" due to their size).

Dante's Peak is still one of my favorite movies!! so many good effects shots in there.
You guys need to react to new Star Trek ;)

I actually really liked the extraordinary gentlemen back then. Still has a place in my heart. Miniatures are a win for me, as are many special or practical effects with great craftsmanship. Cool episode.

It amazes me every time Niko start talking about filmmaking technology and techniques. He's such a pandoras box of knowledge on the stuff.

Love all the sound effects during this episode. The knee slap lol

All things considered, League of Extraordinary Gentleman still holds up after 20 years.

Would love to see you guys do an episode on Bed Knobs & Broomsticks - the final battle where the witch takes on the Nazis with her substitutiary locomotion spell. I always remember that having some fun and impressive FX for the time.

I would love to see you guys do an episode looking at Wes Anderson use of miniatures.

back in the late 90s in China, we had a show called Movie Magic on our local Movie Channel. This show, which I later found out was created by the James Camera, explains all kinds of incredible special effects in movies like Independence Day and True Lies, most of which I had never heard of back then, but I was so in love with that show. And I suddenly realize why I keep returning to your channel to watch these great videos. You guys bring me back to my good old younger days.

Lord of the Rings and King Kong probably have some of the most extensive miniature work ever done. Batman Begins and The Dark Knight also had some miniature work for the Tumbler sequences that totally fooled me. That shot of the Tumbler going underneath the garbage truck and ramming it up into the ceiling of the tunnel was miniature.

Great video, I'm glad you guys appreciate the quality VFX done in films and recognize the quality, I can tell in many films the poor quality these studios choose to do, it's very noticeable. Keep up the videos thanks guys

The VFX in Watchmen still blow my mind. That movie is so unflinching that one bad shot would completely break the world

I loved League of Extraordinary Gentlemen as a kid, I'm glad it still holds up!

I think the invisible man’s face looks so good when it’s CGI because they had so much reference to his actual face that it was easier to match

One of the best episodes yet! I love miniature work - when it's done as great as in these examples. Thank you guys, for always bringing us really GREAT content.

So happy you looked at League of Extraordinary Gentlemen!! I've always been amazed by the FX

I want to see way more miniatures on here if possible! I used to get VHS tapes at model train shows that were made by the model communities to show off their huge transformed basements into beautiful model train world's. I will always love miniatures. I would like to see you guys do some cool work with it if ever (even with cool new technologies)

yes more miniatures please! I love when miniatures are used in movies...wish we had more minis and less CGI honestly.

Dante's Peak was a film I loved as a kid, it scared me so bad. I also saw Watchmen 2009 in theaters with my dad, rip to dad was his first dead bday yesterday age 59
I am always amazed by how much Niko knows, he is like a super guru for everything CGI and film.

Dante's Peak effects work is amazing. Well put.

The thing that gets me about the invisible man in LoE is the next scene in the car is just the actor with his head painted white. You go from CG which you can see through the holes in his head to just white paint. Most everything in the movie is pretty good.

League of extraordinary gentlemen is an absolute golden gem of a movie!
No clue how many times i watched it when i was younger :D

Wore my “media offline” shirt for the first time today and had at least five people come up and ask me about it. Well done CD. Love your content!

The segment on the blue LEDs is really interesting. I've experienced this shortcoming of digital sensors while filming music videos with blue stage lights. To get around it, I've pushed green into the light so it shifts teal, then in post I was able to shift the hue back to blue. Having this knowledge has come in handy on other productions.

The best miniatures have to be the Terminator 2 nuke scene and the Independence Day initial destruction scenes. Blowing up New York, LA, and Washington DC looked sooo good. And the method they used for explosions so they blew out sideways instead of up was so good.

Great video guys! Missing the 'bad cgi' part though! Would love to watch you guys laugh at some awful stuff again ;)

Wren is such a nice person. Just a great guy. I wish I could see Wren play lika a maniac. There is something hidden deep inside Wren, the dark version of him... I wants to see that version come to life haha 😂

More miniature stuff!
Adventures of Tin-Tin would be a nice movie to cover. I remember thinking in 2011 times that it was pretty incredible. Pretty sure Blade Runner's been done before but that whole miniature, future L.A cityscape was crazy. I don't think Dark Crystal has been done. Metropolis for some old school love. Love seeing deeper dives into miniatures. Woo! Miniatures!

I'm so glad you guys looked at Dantes Peak again. I was so sad when you didn't cover the flood.

I like how you guys take more time to talk in these. I watched your videos a long time ago and just recently came back after seeing Peter's newest video on my feed. I remember the older react videos very quick and didn't leave much for conversation around each individual shot. It was like one statement, move on. I can feel how the pacing is a lot slower here which may turn some people off the video but it seems more natural to me and I appreciate you presenting it more as the natural conversation. I mean... that's why we're here - to watch you guys do your thing.

Wow it’s inspiring to see how far all of you guys have come. Congrats on the Netflix show 🎉

Love seeing how practical effects are used and the creativity of them. Can we get a TOP 10 list of the crews favorite practical effects? Of maybe sub categories of practical effects with motion cams, perspective, miniatures, and more?

4:54 I love how he says "do it" to "I feel like im about to throw up" cuz that's a very accurate response and absolute what anyone should do when they feel like that but he just says it so casually.

The Harrier Attack scene from True Lies - a pretty good "realism" feel to the attack - great miniature work all round.

Does Niko really know all that stuff off the top of his head? He’s like a film encyclopedia.

The original Indiana Jones movies have some cool miniatures. The mine card chase in Temple of Doom sticks out the most to me. Blew my mind as a kid.

Gotta do a video on scenes from "Zathura." The space scenes were so cool, and the way they made the Gorgon's and the Robot were so cool. Still one of my favorite movies

Definitely a series looking at miniatures would be fantastic!
Of course the LOTR ‘bigatures’ are probably the peak miniature work ever done in film, but would also be interested in you looking into the pioneering work of Gerry Anderson on Thunderbirds and other supermarianation of the time.

I once watched the full movie Yesterday in theatre while food poisoned, about 2 hours of sweating and cramps, I feel you Sam.

I love miniatures too! great episode, would love you guys to do more episodes. Also puppetry is pretty cool as well, the amount of work Jim Henson put into movies like the Dark Crystal is amazing and the Netflix Prequel the Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (I'm still extremely salty about Netflix canceling the series) they did some great work too, the amount of detail they put into it you could see on the making of documentary.

You guys should've done like a Doctor Who-style regeneration of Sam into Jordan for the swap

I was always impressed by the miniature in the opening of Logan's Run (1976). It doesn't look real, but the model is so vast for just an establishing shot of the city.

Movies like Watchmen and Avatar and Pirates of the Caribbean really are incredible technical feats, and I really appreciate the fact that they also work as evidence to support the fact that blockbuster vfx is getting worse. I hope to see an eventual return to form, as movies from the late 00s and early 10s were really beginning to blur the boundaries of fiction and reality.

I've never seen Dante's Peak, but that flood scene looked terrific.
Some day you guys should take a look at the bridge scene from the 1977 movie Sorcerer.
I guess it would have to be a Stuntmen React episode though, because Friedkin shot it for real, and it's mind blowing.

I do toy photography and I've struggled with some of my shots, specifically those where I've used a lot of blue emitting LED lights, this totally explains my problem! So thank you so much!!!

The Abyss has some incredible miniature work: the crane collapse; the entire Deepcore model; shooting the miniature submersibles dry-for-wet

Watchmen has some of the best Effects. They catch the feel they are meant to while looking very real, a very well done movie overall.

Been following this channel pretty much since the inception of the react series and feel like I've been hit by the Mandela effect as I feel like I've seen certain movie break downs until you bring them up. Same thing with RLM, pitch meeting and honest trailers. When they bring new content I'm like " wait, haven't I seen this already ?"

You guys all work so hard, yet you always seem to be having such a great time too!

I recently did a rewatch of 3 Ninjas. Such a silly movie and peak 90s, but you guys should react to the stunts, fighting and choreography in the film. It's surprisingly well done.

Great episode as always. Batman Begins and The Dark Knight have some good miniature work.

Journey to the Beginning of Time from 1955 contains actors in conjunction with stop-motion animation of dinosaurs, alongside other clever techniques, way before Jurassic Park. I recommend taking a look.👌

The obvious miniature film to look at is Star Wars e4 but Total Recall (1990) has some great landscape miniatures and Aliens (1986) has some amazing miniatures too.

The HBO Watchmen series was amazing and worth a watch!

interesting how it happens with blue specifically but not red. It makes me wonder, could the Kenobi show have prevented this issue by having a green lightsaber instead, or would that pose the same problem?

The Abyss has alot of really crazy miniature work. The sub chase near the end, and the scene with Flatbed with the divers on top of it going down to the wreck of the sub is a miniature.

I love Niko man. He's so cool and chilled

What I continue to learn from this series is that Hollywood needs to use more miniatures.

2:30 That red van shot has to be the best miniature shot in the history of filmmaking. Incredible!

I'm so glad I had the opportunity to work in an era where miniatures and CGI complemented each other.

I would love to see a breakdown and behind the scenes for Small Soldiers!

Id like to see some big time vfx artist and movie directors do honest reactions to corridor shows and movies.

I REALLY wished you guys would do a cgi look at falling in reverse's musc videos! They are super cool!!

I'm sure I'm not the first to suggest The Lord of the Rings for miniature work, but The Two Towers has some especially excellent sequences -- Helm's Deep of course, but the Ents' taking of Isengard is honestly almost more impressive with how much miniature work was involved with the dam breaking, flooding the sets, etc. There's some pretty hefty BTS on the Extended Editions to pull footage from, as well.

The "CHARGE " Blender short would be awesome
for the VFX series. As well as *Aslan from the Chronicles of Narnia!* where you could do a comparison to the "live action" Lion King. Also at the end of second Chronicles of Narnia movie there's a big water creature, so it might be cool to see what you think about that.
Maybe also, Max Schneider's Gibberish music video, the editing kinda breaks my brain there.
The *last agni kai fight from ATLA* would be perfect for for the Animators React. It's so stunning!
And for stuntmen react It would be cool to see you react to the duel from "Potop", it's really good sword fight

I was wondering why the shots with Kenobi's blue lightsaber ended up so dark and weird looking. Good explanation.

That "you should go do it." after Sam mentions being sick is a sign of a good friend and teammate.

I’d love to see you guys take a look at Small Soldiers and compare it to the tech trailer for Small Soldiers: War for the Necron that dropped recently. The CG from the movie is a bit dated, but the puppet work holds up incredibly well.

There is a really well-done scene in Mission Impossible 3 where Ethan Hunt puts on a mask as Philip Seymour Hoffman but I'm pretty sure something was digital in the scene very well done! love the channel ❤

Me personally loved how the vader and obi VFX looked, added to the fight scene.

Nice to see a classic episode with just the regular crew on the couch

miniatures practical effects ara insane. Hope to see more of this in the future. MAybe non hollywood miniatures practical, that would be great

3:30… What’s most amazing is seeing that these miniature shots were accomplished in early to mid January 1997…AND THE MOVIE WAS RELEASED FEBRUARY 7th!! Three weeks later!

i think they should again make "League of extraordinary Gentlemen" it was so awesome movie, dont know why it was flopped

The invisible man technique was well executed