#practical effects

[rhetthammersmithhorror]

The Astronomer's Dream | 1898 — La Lune à un mètre

[georgeharris0n]

PRACTICAL EFFECTS AND WILLEM DEFOE?? Letterboxd is going to devour this

[cynicalclassicist]

It really is incredible art. I just appreciate this sort of stuff over CGI!

Kind of like how I prefer Ray Harryhausen-esque effects.

Before the computing era, ILM was the master of oil matte painting, making audiences believe that some of the sets in the original Star Wars and Indiana Jones trilogy were real when they weren’t. They were the work of geniuses like Chris Evans, Michael Pangrazio, Frank Ordaz, Harrison Ellenshaw and Ralph McQuarrie ! Forever thank you, to their handmade art and the work of their colleagues, that made us dream of impossible worlds and fantastic places across Earth and the Universe.

There are more background paintings on this article, featuring comments by the masters/artists themselves ! 

Some of the following pieces were made by other artists 2:

[prokopetz]

Big-budget sci fi epic where one of the principal alien characters is a puppet whose operator is clearly visible at all times. Like, it's a really good puppet, you can totally see where the hundred million dollar budget went, but the puppeteer is right there. You can see them. This is never acknowledged.

[allwhiterain]

Barbie Wilde behind the scenes of Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) listening to music in full makeup

[ophelialoveshandsomemen]

Say what you will about Van Helsing 2004; hate it, love it, be indifferent, But the All-Hallow's masquerade ball went sooooo hard and it had zero right to do so! It's a fun, campy, monster mash movie with wonderfully dated ( and expensive) cgi and non-stop action meant to be a popcorn flick one takes out to watch around spooky season. And it has this* chef's kiss* GORGEOUS 6 minute sequence plopped arbitrarily in the second act, which unexpectedly surpasses nearly every other ball in the last 30+ years of film( notable exception being the Cinderella 2015 ball) for literally no reason other than to be dramatic af.

Like feast your eyes on this Gothic masterpiece!!! Who doesn't want to immediately live in this picture?!??

They used those candles with oil in them so that they would have real candles, real string orchestra( I believe), probably around 100 real life extras( something which is tragically absent in modern film), said extras are all in beautiful fully decked-out costumes( which are in luxuriously dark colours, but nearly no fully black, another thing you cannot say for much modern cinema), REAL CIRQUE DU SOLEIL PERFORMERS for all the acrobatics!!!! Hell, instead of filming in a sound stage, where they could control the reverb and the acoustics and the size of the set and the bloody lighting ( they apparently had a heck of a time emulating the firelight for this sequence) and the temperature( it's very cold in stone churches!) better, they filmed in a Baroque church in Prague! As I said, peak dramatic splendour, jfc...

Think about that a second...They filmed a vampire masquerade in a Baroque Catholic Church( St. Nicholas' in Lesser Town, if you were curious) with amazing over-the-top acoustics and marble statues and real, tiled floors and marble pillars and a choir loft which they very much utilized, covered the pipe organ and the altar with a grand brocade curtain so it wouldn't be so obviously a, you know, a church! And there's a gold gilt elevated and canopied pulpit into which they put two vampire kiddies for, again, the sake of being dramatic.

And the costumes! They remind me of the 25th anniversary Phantom of the Opera Masquerade costumes. Same quality, like they're old, well-cared-for costumes pulled out of a warehouse, instead of fast industry churn-outs. With lots of trim and colour and masks and lace and feathers and..just...ugh.. they are all perfect! Just look at all the head pieces on the ladies and the hats on all the gentleman ( save Dracula of course) and the powdered wigs on the musicians. ANNNNDD! The dresses are historically correct!!!!!! It's the 80's bustle era! Nobody does the 80's bustle era in film anymore and it's a bummer. Oh and one other thing! Anna's ( and other women's) hair, at least here in the ball, is also historically accurate because it's all pinned up! None of those fucken modern beachwaves at a ball! Everybody's got updo's!

Gah, I swear, Dracula in his gold cloak really does things to me in this scene!

By the way, the acrobatics are bonkers in here for just background stuff!! Especially the random guys on unicycles and the dude playing the violin whilst standing on a ball...Like....WHAT?

Anyways, all this to say, that this masquerade ball feels sooo real and tangible and because of that it blows every other film out of the water, and no, I will not change my mind!!!!!

Here's a few more gifs, bcuz, why the hell not, this scene is sexy as fuu*ck?

Alright I need to go to bed now.

[realgrade]

Kamen Rider Ryuki (2002) - Behind the Scenes

[skiplo-wave]

WHOLE ASS ANIMATRONIC XENOMORPH

[vermilllionsands]

The cybot Godzilla skeleton in all her glory

[rhetthammersmithhorror]

Visitors from the Arkana Galaxy | 1981

[atomic-chronoscaph]

The Terminator (1984)

[prokopetz]

I love practical effects as much as the next nerd, but sometimes I watch a making-of feature about a movie from the 1980s that's like "this rig could only be operated by a puppeteer with congenital dwarfism standing on their head, and they had to do each scene in one take because if they wore it for more than 25 minutes they had to call an ambulance", and I think, you know, maybe CGI has its place after all.

[horygory]

An American Werewolf in London (1981)

[kekkuda]

this project is gonna be the death of me it is never ending but I’m locking in we ball

[victusinveritas]

This is one of the best things I’ve ever seen. I need more werewolf in jorts in my life. I'd like to meet his tailor.