Movie Magic HD episode 02 - Optical Effect with no CGI

How optical shots were composited, with an emphasis on the 1983 George Lucas film, Return of the Jedi. Practical special effects.
Documentary series dealing with every aspect of special effects in movies, from low-budget make-up to multi-million-dollar computer-generated graphics. The clear presentation includes descriptions of the creation and technical problems of the effects, and interviews with effects technicians, directors, stars and other crew. Each episode deals with one topic, effect or technician (eg theme park rides, CGI, Stan Winston), concentrating on one or more current or recent films.

[@ranemaka13]

I ADORED this series as a kid. So glad to stumble across this. Still such an incredible look behind the scenes. Thanks for sharing

[@Vim-Wolf]

The shots with the leopard are astounding, even stand up well today.

[@buda3d2007]

Had this series on VFX, watched it so many times, awesome to see it on youtube, reminds me of how obssessed I was with VFX as a kid, still am.

[@JustinBradleyPhotographer]

This show was my greatest inspiration. I tried to mimick some of this as a kid now I am rewatching to see what I can pick up for my channel. I do this professionally now but not in the movie business. I am literally editing professional photos and video right now while watching this and love it.

[@christophermitchellsr9492]

this was so much fun to watch had to pass it along to some groups on facebook that like things like this

[@chrismartindale3193]

This is great information from a historical perspective. I am an old guy... (I saw Star Wars ep 4 in the original theater run.) If you are young and are just getting into this, I suggest you learn to 3D model on the computer. Get Blender... its free. Being an old guy I still want to do physical model animation. I model 3D in either Blender or FreeCAD then export the model to a 3D printer. Then film the model against a green screen. I composite in either Premiere Pro or After effects. I am afraid in 5-8 years everything I know will be obsolete with the coming of AI.

[@donlee_ohhh]

Thank you for sharing these videos!

[@GuitarlordJohnBurton]

I love this channel so much.

[@chirbychoo]

So sad I can’t find this series on dvd I wanna watch it all

[@carvoloco4229]

Optical effects are difficult! Half the explanations sounded like Japanese to me.

[@JustWasted3HoursHere]

If I were in charge of Lucasfilm right now, I would announce that the next Star Wars movie is going to use 100% practical effects as much as humanly possible. State of the art practical effects. I think people would respond very positively to that.

[@RetroJack]

I think with all the rubbish films lately, most people are over Star Wars now.

[@JustWasted3HoursHere]

@@RetroJackI would definitely say that they (Lucasfilm) need to not release any new ones for a few more years. There are things they could do to help repair the damage done though. One thing they could do that would make Star Wars fans very happy would be to re-release the original trilogy as they originally appeared when they were released in 1977, 1980 and 1983. I know George doesn't consider those as "official" versions anymore, and Disney doesn't want to offend George, but I think if they say it will be a limited release etc he should be okay with it. That would be step one.

[@deadstar44]

General audience don't care about practical effects as much as the internet thinks it does.

[@JustWasted3HoursHere]

@user-hz6fj9xy4y It's not a cult. It's just people who can recognize sub-par computer graphics when they see it. And yes, we know that even if the effects are not as good as they can be, the people who actually worked on them put in many hours of work. Doesn't make them look any better though. And also yes, invisible effects like removing Lt. Dan's leg realistically in Forrest Gump are underappreciated. Are VFX artists underpaid? Their respective companies are to blame because they're the ones who made their bid to the movie studio to do those effects for a price. I hear some trying to blame Disney or whoever for the low pay these guys receive, but the "lowest bidder" has been how it's done for decades. Practical effects are expensive? Have you seen how much modern movies cost to make lately? They're not saving any money by doing it digitally unless we're talking about HUGE sets that would be prohibitively expensive as real sets. For average effects though, practical effects have one big advantage: They're actually real and us humans can tell.

[@JJKoester]

TIL the elevator tiger shot was a composite shot.

[@quoran0327]

Welcome back! 🎉

[@1BrknHrtdRomeo]

Thank you for uploading these in HD

[@rootieboy]

Anyone else recognize the toy car as the same as the Taxi in Back to the Future 2 and the front of the train on the wall from part 3

[@Bassquake76]

Man optical compositing was a nightmare! Thank god for computers that replaced it! 😄

[@alexandreolivier1923]

yeah maybe, but it was so magic !!

[@Bassquake76]

@@alexandreolivier1923 Yup, hats off to them!

[@skivvy3565]

Idk, part of me thinks next is ‘art is a nightmares thank god all these people are winning fine art competitions with projects made by AI in a few seconds’ I see pros and cons for evolution being good and sadness for something being lost

[@skivvy3565]

Where most everything is done by an AI technician and software engineer, and nobody bothers mastering art or Vfx or writing or even spelling and grammar and all those other things AI is already quite good at and we see the commercials for things like Grammarly offering to do so you don’t have to.

[@Dr.W.Krueger]

Only untalented and rushed operators couldn't get it quite right. In the end everything comes down to time and money. We built out own computer-controlled optical printer in-house in 1983 but also experimented with digital compositing on single frames. Took us another year to build a custom dual framebuffer that was large and fast enough to hold frames at full film resolution...and from there sky was the limit.

[@glbm555]

Genial!!!

[@guystudios]

Why does it randomly switch between English and Japanese? So weird!

[@justayoutuber1906]

I think its turning Japanese, I think its turning Japanese (I really think so)

[@gameroldie61]

I think the video was originally made in Japan. It was probably neglected or overlooked to translate this part. You can also see that when English is spoken, Japanese subtitles appear on the right-hand side. But only the poster of the video can know that for sure.

[@RetroJack]

@@justayoutuber1906 Nice callback - I'd almost forgotten that one! 🤣🤣

[@EleyReiHer]

If you see the BTS of Who Framed Roger Rabbits, Bob Hoskins almost gone mad as he must've been completing the work by himself. It must been frustrating to film with 'imaginary friends' all day. Meryl said the same thing as well upon Death Becomes Her. She said she was alays missing the spot of where she wanna hit or sharp objects whille shooting. Both of them are nice actors; but both find the process highly tedious. Meryl said that she'd never want to do it again. Now, they improve the whole thing by putting some sort of mark of people eyes, so at least younger actor do not feel abused while shooting the movie

[@HouseOwl]

R.I.P. BABY

[@HouseOwl]

thanks for sharing... work for me!!! ;)

[@ebinrock]

Sometimes the audio switched to Japanese. Could you please re-upload just the all-English versions of these shows, preferably without Japanese subtitles either?

[@JeffreyStrader]

Why is there a GODZILLA suit at ILM????

[@raygunsforronnie847]

Equal employment opportunity! Even monsters need day jobs!

[@JeffreyStrader]

@@raygunsforronnie847hahahaha!

[@alexlandherr]

Is there any version of this that doesn’t have the Japanese narration?

[@peko1967]

RIP

[@Uhfgood]

I think we lost a lot with the wholesale move to CG. I think these guys had to be more creative because they didn't have something doing it for them. They had to come up with original solutions to put these images on screen. Now it's all computer, and even though people that make cgi are clearly artists, even that is going to be taken away with AI. Soon you won't even need digital artists.

[@pockypurse]

@@thedogwooddandy Why did you feel the need to mention their race? (Also you're wrong btw, look up Bob Kinoshita, lol)

[@henrymockingbird9645]

2:46

[@mcren6781]

It’s really sad there’s no more movie magic! Digital film looks like shit, the stories are generic and unoriginal, and the CGI is shit!

[@kenedwards5626]

They rush the CGI effects now, instead of taking time to add details, etc.