Creating 'Robocop': Special effects then and now | Behind The Scenes

RoboCop (1987)
Behind the Scenes
Playlist: is.gd/r46u8f
Storyline: In a dystopic and crime-ridden Detroit, a terminally wounded cop returns to the force as a powerful cyborg haunted by submerged memories.
Directed: Paul Verhoeven
Writing Credits: Edward Neumeier, Michael Miner
Cast: Peter Weller (Alex Murphy / RoboCop), Nancy Allen (Lewis), Dan O'Herlihy (The Old Man), Ronny Cox (Jones), Kurtwood Smith (Clarence), Miguel Ferrer (Morton), Robert DoQui (Sgt. Reed), Ray Wise (Leon), Felton Perry (Johnson), Paul McCrane (Emil)
Production Companies:
Orion Pictures
#RoboCop
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'Flashback Film Making' on this channel you will find BEHIND THE SCENES, TRAILERS, FEATURETTES, INTERVIEW etc. related to COMICBOOK SUPERHERO MOVIES «DC Comics»
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[@herrlogan17]

We will forget dozens and dozens movies with cgi graphics, but Robo still remains classic.

[@trashyraccoon2615]

Good writing, edgy social commentary, dark humor, compelling premise… all the stuff that today’s dumbo CG movies lack

[@kennethc2466]

All these wonderful artists, set builders, puppeteers, etc...all replaced by a computer program used to make video games. CGI movies should be called animated movies, NOT films. Modern kids think Marvel movies are 'art', and Dracula, Lawrence of Arabia, Ben Hur, etc are 'boring', and 'ugly'. We live in a world were art is not valued anymore, even by the consumer.

[@trashyraccoon2615]

@@kennethc2466 You’re right about a lot there. To be fair, a lot of masterpieces were considered boring and dumb when they were released. The Magnificent Ambersons by Orson Welles for example. Now considered a masterpiece. The studio actually re edited it without his permission

[@kennethc2466]

@@trashyraccoon2615 The film was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, that year. It also won in National Board of Review Awards, and New York Film Critics Circle Awards. I'd hardly call 'considered boring' as the consensus at the time.

[@joebloggs2857]

The dumbing down of human ingenuity....all by design.....🤑🤑🤑🤑😷😷😷😷😷😷😥😥😥😥

[@Demonmixer]

The special effects in this film are awesome. The whole film is a pure masterpiece.

[@cheulesyigess1187]

This is absolute top notch material for one of the best movies ever created!

[@catmeow11111]

Amazing that the design for ED209 and Robocop still look cool as fuck and not dated at all. What a movie!

[@theshapeexists]

Yep, and kanes cyborg was wicked looking for part 2 as well.i love the scene where he's flying up the elevator shaft to get RoboCop

[@vinilima1227]

Nothing better than watching the behind the scenes process of my favorite movie of all time !! ❤❤❤❤❤

[@Chewligan1]

Robocop's pre CGI animation was brilliant - nothing needed improving and that's why it's a classic.

[@trashyraccoon2615]

But they weren’t using CGI, it’s almost all analog and traditional film FX

[@jayjay53313]

​@@trashyraccoon2615we need 1 last sequel of Robocop 4 with full size movable robotic ED209 with Peter Weller returning as Robocop with his face motion capture imposed on body double that will wear the suit. Murphy would age so Peter Weller fits this character. We all wanted to see Robocop ending, whether he gets to reunite with his family

[@trashyraccoon2615]

@@jayjay53313 Yo, that would be sick

[@keithfulkerson]

The guy falling out of the window could definitely be improved.

[@Chewligan1]

Yeh but it was a classic funny bit when he bounced of the mattress !! @@keithfulkerson

[@wormskull2454]

“Ya know our hearts were in it so much that compensation, even, wasn’t necessarily important. Just contributing to this whole, kind of process.” Aaah that passionate punk rock drive to create art regardless of compensation. That’s the mark of high quality.

[@arashnikoubashman6946]

Crazy how much work went into „simple“ things like muzzle flash. Mind blowing creativity

[@bigmanfrank5708]

I absolutely love this inside scoop of making of such an iconic film

[@southlondon86]

4:48 Sorry but the extra long arms are hilarious. With all the attention to detail in this film how could they have messed that up!?

[@21stcenturyscots]

Not messed up at all. Those arms are long for a very good reason. They are the Long Arms of The Law.

[@DrVink86]

I feel very vindicated that I'm not the only one that's annoyed by the extra long stretch armstrong arms haha

[@Jedi007c6]

I always loved how long the arms were when he was falling off the building.

[@clarenceboddicker6679]

The long arms of the law

[@samik83]

Yeah wonder how they messed up the arms so bad. Like double the lenght

[@oRealAlieNo]

Slenderman

[@clarenceboddicker6679]

@samik83 If you respect the law you will understand why the arms were so long

[@keithdavison2960]

Weird he was proud of that

[@EVCarGuy]

So THAT'S the effects guy who's responsible for giving the falling Dick Jones puppet extremely long arms!

[@dianewilliams1125]

I'm even more freaked out that there was an actual model! 😮😮😮That thing scares the hell out of me!

[@cellularpeptidecake]

Dick Jones falling out the window is probably the worst effects shot from the entire decade. It'd be interesting to know the rationale behind using a foam puppet vs. a stunt double against a green screen. Someone must've really loved stop motion.

😂 thats true, I would have cut this made off out because even when I was a kid, we laughed at those long arms 😂

[@DrVink86]

all I can ever look at are those long ass arms

[@andreatomassini5521]

" the worst effects shot from the entire decade" you obviously weren't around back then...

[@TheHonestFoodTeller]

ED-209 was one of the coolest movie robots of my childhood. The design was so unique, only the villain from RoboCop 2 beats him somehow.

[@theshapeexists]

Kanes robot was just so much more detailed, and knowing the brain inside controlling it was a drug addicted murderer made it even more terrifying.

[@tlgaezn319]

Every pennie worth...this was Art

[@rickytoddbotelho9555]

Excellent job with this upload 💯❤️😄

[@nestoraoc32]

Great Video! Thanks!

[@Spee78]

People....... we proudly present you....... Robocop!! *what people remember till today**............. ED-209...... me included :D

[@GraveyardNo6]

Thanks for video. Very interesting.

[@Bunz685]

Personally I think the perfect special effects recipe is practical with a slight touch up of computer graphics.

[@Ganiscol]

ED-209 - My second favorite badass robotic killermachine after the Terminator(s) 😊 "He didn't hear the gun drop!" 😂

[@goonerfactor62006]

Get a god dam paramedic

[@ian-read]

Good to see the Cinefex in Paul Sammon's office - RIP Cinefex, the whole industry should be ashamed that they refused to help save it.

[@NipItInTheBud100]

Robocop is and always will be one of my favorite movies! Just a great movie!

[@emailchrismoll]

@4:13 is the man responsible for the worse special effect in the entire film! haha

[@haywoodyoudome]

He's so proud of his work and totally oblivious that we've been laughing for years at how piss poor it was,

[@emailchrismoll]

HAHA. yep...one of the most notoriously bad special effects out there@@haywoodyoudome

[@emailchrismoll]

he had one job!@@haywoodyoudome

[@MyCatInABox]

True Masters of their craft😁👍

[@schumy1975]

absolutely fascinating, salute to these genius movie makers!

[@meowmeow1733]

The creativity is amazing....."thinking outside the box" as they say. But now.......there's sora.

[@paulbarfo4079]

These guys are geniuses

[@21stcenturyscots]

@Paul Sammon, Craig Hayes, William Sandell, and Rocco Gioffre That idea of cotton and electronic flash for muzzle flash is brilliant. Thank you for sharing it!

[@signalenergie]

This is unbelievable.

[@JCD87]

I still amazed watching this, for that time... and love the 'clunky'ness of the animation. Also agree with the current tech would replace StopMotion alltogether, but somewhere in my mind; that old stopmotion would still have it's charm. And ED-209 will become reality one day, like Knightrider is basically covered in automobiles these days; videocall, turboboost, articulating spoilers, self driving (!) and whatnot.

[@Thesmartestmanalive81]

9:41 this film has stood the test of time because of the designers and creators love for their project. if only todays films were made with more heart and passion instead of corporate greed in mind.

[@clarenceboddicker6679]

The years I spent working for Dick Jones were the best of my life.

[@Thesmartestmanalive81]

@@clarenceboddicker6679 🤣🤣🤣

[@0508toya]

내인생에 로보캅은, 2편으로.끝났다👍✨️

[@randywatson8347]

That mech looks and functions pretty genuine.

[@DaboooogA]

Some of the best stop motion work ever, though Robocop 2 also had excellent stop motion.

[@RedHeadKevin]

Hearing about how the used to do matte paintings physically is fascinating given how it's done today. Now they can just digitally cut-and-paste the foreground over the matte, and it's pretty much all set.

[@anthonycarlisle6184]

The ed 209 versions [big version and narrower headed version I thoughtl they were just different iterations às if they produced a bunch

[@Westkane11]

Legend!

[@dennisneo1608]

Why were his arms so ludicrously long??? I'll never get that.

[@MimicusIM]

Imagine behind the scenes video like this about the Moonlanding.

[@crazyivan030983]

Robocop fx is a masterpiece.

[@RA-uj3nm]

Very talented people 👍👍

[@Riceshiro]

When I was watch this as a kid, I didn't understand the story. But I rewatch this mostly for the special effects.

[@jackbuff_I]

5:15 that is truly awful! 😂 interesting though.

[@Psycandy]

worked on a TVC with Robo in 2019. IMHO these guys are geniuses, legends of an altogether different order. I also work in-camera, also experienced the joy of compositing with emulsion and equally moved into CG as quickly as possible. I feel it is a great loss to the craft, to the magic of storytelling and spellbound audiences, that practicals are vanishing, mattes, miniatures... but also know that 98% of the work is in camera and some 2% post, so all digital does is speed everything up but that's about it

[@karaloca]

What’s with his super long arms as he’s falling through the glass window?

[@hamzaouamrouche57]

Amazing Visual and digital effects

[@anthonycarlisle6184]

They're on my special edition dvd robocop.🤷

[@BRMakesStuff]

Wish there was an explanation of the squeal.

[@Prjm87]

Are these all from the documentary bluray

[@PhantomHelix]

ripped from ROBODOC, shamefull

[@Tweekend27]

There's footage of Roco explaining why the arms were a fail in that shot. Yes, he's acknowledged the blunder.

[@dafrog491]

Stop motion and matte painting over cgi any day of the week.

[@GoodMrDawes]

It is great

[@Duraltia]

@16:39 Yeaaa... Stop motion in predominantly Live Action films like RoboCop are probably a thing of the past and barely missed albeit still kicking ass and taking names in pure Stop Motion Movies like the 2016 Kubo and the Two Strings. Still tipping my Hat to Phil and his work on RoboCop 2 with RoboCain... Pure Sex-Appeal how they animated that monster which made appreciate it even more when I played the 2023 RoboCop: Rogue City with its atrociously bad choreographed and animated final Boss Fight sporting an unnecessarily unrecognizable move set for that Enemy when compared to the Movie.

[@williamshaw9047]

Rocco Gioffre also did matte paintings of the Grand Canyon and Walley World for National Lampoon's Vacation.

[@Mophonic]

these people knew what they were doing.

[@carlosalbertovarela8873]

genial ❤

[@metern]

Why did ED-209 sound like a squealing pig when it falls down the stairs 😂

[@johnwatson3948]

Had not heard about killer whales - but an interview in Cinefex said the look of ED-209 was inspired by the nose of the LTV A-7 fighter jet.

[@barclaybehie7787]

Still rather watch a movie with practical effect than CGI.

[@hamzaouamrouche57]

Robocop before and now a good job

[@prltqdf9]

The matte painters of yore were magicians.

[@massapower]

Better then Crappy CGI..

[@jorgezarco9269]

Ronny Cox action figure.

[@jorgezarco9269]

I almost puked while watching Paul Verhoeven's Spetters(1980). What a wild movie!

[@colossuses]

He broke the puppet. Probably doesn't realise how valuable it is at an auction

[@joshoshea3194]

But he must've known at that point the fore arms were far too long?

[@skylerrutherford9870]

"I'd buy that for a dollar!"

[@ragnarlothbrok7306]

Why are the arms to long?

[@alexanderdgray]

I'd buy that for a dollar.

[@vincecotton127]

Why did you make his arms so F%^king LONG!!!?

[@kevindarkstar]

4:45 oh so YOU'RE responsible for the huge monkey arms on that shot, certainly nothing human looking there 😂

[@cheulesyigess1187]

two meters arms of falling Dick Jones are now legendary :)

[@Thesmartestmanalive81]

@@cheulesyigess1187 the actors arms were actually really long and they had to make shots where his arms didn’t seem quite so long.

[@HocusFocusProductions]

"You can go to a store and you can buy the software, the hardware..." I'm over 50 and even I know you don't go to stores for that stuff anymore. I'm guessing this is an older video.

[@leiag201]

Movies are just cartoons now. I won't even bother seeing the sequel to Avatar cause it's just all CG'd to hell and back. It might as well be a Pixar production. At least the first one was grounded in realistic looking special effects

[@vincialessandro6612]

Phil sono creatori di tremors 2

[@kevinhartmann7887]

Some of the FX are really Rubbish, but some are great.

[@MM-ig1iv]

looked way more real back then than it does now! I can tell very very easy when it's this newer current cgi. and it's in damn near every movie now, and It turns me off. it takes the realism away for me. sorry.. I'm old school I guess? but them effects were perfect. real vs pc.. I'm going to choose REAL every time! no wonder people think we're in a simulation? we're screwed!

[@mikesilva3868]

Huge fan of the 1987 robocop movie the sequel was good robocop 3 and the 2014 remake was terrible in my opinion 😊

[@ashhawk2346]

Robocop 3 wasn't the worst of the lot but I absolutely agree! The moment they didn't use Peter Weller, it wasn't Robocop any more..

[@spiralfirst6488]

My first girlfriend looked like ED-209.

[@user-qm5ho5cs7u]

Есть рободок

[@user-pk1gt5pm2j]

в 2024 выкладывать видео в 360р.. вы чего?

[@joeskis]

I wouldn't want to be associated with that human model falling out the window. The proportions were way off. It looked terrible.

[@yuikaili6088]

本來啊就算係我啊知道一個人 男有問題 就算我哋我個頭都有問題 有machin e autO lkill 加大件事 dangerOu s明白

[@ToyFiend]

A masterpiece of a movie, ruined by that ridiculous Dick Jones puppet falling. Verhoeven should have cut that shit out and inserted a practical shot of dude splatting on the street or something. And only 1 year later, Die Hard did the same shot by dropping Allan Rickman from camera and it was perfect.

[@mehere3013]

now all movies are done the cheap and easy way , cgi

[@Buck3366]

Seeing the Dick Jones model cast you can now see how ridiculously long the arms were. What an awful looking thing it was that only went on to make a bad effect look worse. They should have just cut that fall scene completely and just had Cox go through the window backwards and cut away with him screaming as he fell off camera.

[@Dr.W.Krueger]

They explicitly wanted the fall in a wide shot. Back then you would usually get the actor back for that part, put him in a harness in front of blue screen and pull the camera back on a very long track(30 meters and more). That apparently wasn't an option so far into post at that point. It is what it is. 🤷‍♂

[@piotrwillow6440]

4:16 I am surprised he brags about this shot, it's absolutely awful, then and 30 years later, the puppet is abysmal, funny this guy was not fired for this

[@scifiguy26]

So that was the guy that was responsible for Dick "long arms" Jones 😆

[@subseeker]

They ruined ED-209 by the pig squeel, after falling down the stairs, it's just... No.

[@samuelwilliams8575]

The shot of Dick Jones falling from the OCP building, is the worst shot in the film. Love that film, but his arms being too long, makes it obvious that he isn't real

[@devileyes8769]

на русский озвучить забыли?)

[@przemysawpawlinski5536]

4:47 What that guy is saying???? The fall of Dick Jones looks like shit.

[@trashyraccoon2615]

It’s supposed to be comical, dude

[@przemysawpawlinski5536]

@@trashyraccoon2615 Sorry. I don't care how it should look. One thing matters: It looks like shit.