VFX Artists React to Bad & Great CGi 148

[@marcofioretti6908]

Never thought a disaster movie from 98 years ago would look that good

[@tessiepinkman]

In my eyes those effects were more aesthetically pleasing than a lot of the CGI "slop" that's been released in the last decade. If only the studios would give modern effects artists - both VFX and practical - enough time and respect to do what we know they can! It's such a shame that these amazing artists are given impossible deadlines and aren't getting paid nearly enough.

[@martinqizeaq]

It's even better than any cheap budget movie nowadays like Sharknado. Wild.

[@InsidetheBoothTV]

they said 1920, we are now 2024, it was 104 years ago

[@FeldBum]

​@@InsidetheBoothTV 1926, so 98 years ago

[@xuxon24]

@@tessiepinkman this is a bit of an overaction. For the time it's extremely impressive, specially for people that live in an era that all of this is brand new for all they could think they are seeing something real. But for our eyes we can spot the miniature and the transparent people but people back then aren't going to spot that. But compared to modern movie this doesn't match what can be done. Yeah there are some cheap movies that if they would've gone for something like this it would've been so much better but they go for something that looks too fake. One thing is for real you shown someone from the 90s down to the early 1900 the things that are achieved now with CG they would be over the moon.

[@idknils2920]

We need an emergency episode for the Minecraft Trailer. You guys saved Sonic, you can do it again!

[@raphaelefranco1123]

Just commenting to make this comment more visible, totally agree

[@LIQU1D_COOLJR]

yeesh, agreed.

[@J.Artan6]

That thing is DOA.

[@KAYOZAMVS]

Just replying to make this the top comment

[@Marshall-stopmotion.]

I think they are going to, they reacted to the Minecraft trailer in their corridor cast episode that came out today.

[@ninjaduck3k]

1926 - "Many actors and animals were definitely harmed in the making of this production"

[@ScooterBond1970]

Kinda like that one old film about a flood (might have been about THE Flood(tm), can't remember) where the filmmakers hired a bunch of extras off the street and they genuinely flooded the set, and a bunch of extras drowned because they weren't stunt people.

[@macklinillustration]

​@@ScooterBond1970 Holy shit

[@indexarray]

​@@ScooterBond1970 You might be referring to Noah's Ark (1928).

[@lucbloom]

@@indexarraywow for real? Wiiiild! Movie still got released?

[@tigerman1978]

Yeah, those carriages running over people definetly looked like they did for real :o

[@Michael-eb8nf]

11:31 "Not even the babies." Spoken without hesitation or inflection, Wren just being a straight-up psychopath for a few seconds. Love it.

[@marinomusico5768]

😂

[@c64cosmin]

3:10 questioning Niko's magical powers to conjure opaque objects

[@naikouproductions]

You guys HAVE to check out Virus (1999). They're able to transition seamless between almost photorealistic CGi and giant, fully functioning 10-foot tall animatronics! The whole movie has great effects, but the final sequence with the Goliath cyborg is arguably the best part.

[@grantpowell4135]

Virus is a underrated gem

[@naikouproductions]

@@grantpowell4135 Easily one of my favorite movies. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if that movie gets critically reappraised, especially considering how many people online seem to love it now.

[@grantpowell4135]

@naikouproductions Jamie lee in a awesome role sign me up

[@Valkonnen]

Which scenes had CGI? All of those things were built by Steve Johnson's EFX.

[@samik83]

Forgot all about this movie.

[@MaxBaraliuc]

Those 100 years old VFX shots are wild.

[@Valkonnen]

"VFX " didn't exist 100 years ago.

[@glassen75]

@@Valkonnen It absolutely did. CGI didn't though, which is what you're probably talking about.

[@rome8180]

@@Valkonnen VFX just stands for visual effects. Visual effects have existed for as long as movies have existed.

[@devm3116]

That flood scene has stood the test of time.

[@MaxBaraliuc]

@@Valkonnen VFX - literary means "visual effects". Definition from wiki: Visual effects (sometimes abbreviated VFX) is the process by which imagery is created or manipulated outside the context of a live-action shot in filmmaking and video production. VFX definitely existed 100 years ago.

[@vezokpiraka]

That hundred year old movie is absolutely insane. Actual visionaries. To come up with the framing of the shots and show the disaster in as big a scale as possible is visionary. You reacted to many CGI shots of disaster movies and conceptually, they look identical to what we are seeing here. And the effects themselves aren't even bad, barring the lighting limitation of that era. They managed to combine the people with the miniatures almost flawlessly.

[@PvtPartzz]

I’m curious what the makers of that film went on to create

[@AndreInfanteInc]

It's a great example of 'we have two tricks and we are going to use the *hell* out of them'.

[@HenryLoenwind]

And now imagine showing this to an audience that isn't used to visual effects. We instantly notice that the buggy is too transparent for a couple of frames because we've seen so many effects. The original audience wouldn't notice that at all because it's not something they've seen before.

[@damienkakoschke3099]

That would have totally messed with peoples minds back then. I'm thinking women fainting and all that stuff that you hear about happening back then when films were a bit too intense.

[@Isnogood12]

@@AndreInfanteInc It's the opposite of Corridor. They had two tricks that they knew how to use perfectly while Corridor is trying a thousand different techniques "well enough" and leaving everything in Uncanny Valley.

[@bzqp2]

As for the 10:50 claim that there were no disaster scenes filmed before - I'm pretty sure Georges Melies filmed such stuff way before. To give examples - "Les Dernires Cartouches from 1897 " has a partially collapsing house, "The Impossible Voyage" from 1904 has a bus and a train crash scene, " The Inventor Crazybrains and His Wonderful Airship" from 1905 has a passenger blimp explosion. He probably made a lot more, but only a fraction of his works survived.

[@bzqp2]

Someone else mentioned "Verdens Undergang" by August Blom from 1916 which has the whole town being obliterated by meteor shower (!) firestorms (!!) and then a flood (!!!).

[@ChristopherAndersonPirate]

I saw Lost In Space in theaters in 1998 when it came out with my dad, may he RIP. All the dad stuff in the film always reminds me of my dad sticking around to raise me when his dad did not. I miss him.

[@GenJuhru]

RIP to your dad.

[@stellviahohenheim]

Stop bragging

[@grandmasterj5]

One thing you guys didnt mention that impressed me massively, was the scale matching of the people/horse and cart used in the miniatures. There's no wobble or misalignment of the overlayed objects from frame to frame either. Really impressive stuff for that long ago

[@pvolt7]

I'm originally from Johnstown, so this was wild to see. There were multiple floods there, every 40 some years, last one being in 1977. I think the 1889 one is one of the USA's worst natural disasters in terms of life lost. Check out the photographs of the aftermath, and you'll see this film is pretty on point and not really an exaggeration. Never knew the film existed though--thanks for doing it!

[@planetoforts]

(not fun) Fact: The 1889 Johnstown flood had the highest death count of any non natural disaster in the United States until 2001 when 9/11 happened.

[@dinklebob1]

Is it a natural disaster if it's a dam breaking?

[@sonipitts]

@@dinklebob1 Generally not, because the disaster itself is manmade, i.e. it wouldn't have happened without the dam being there to collect a huge reservoir of water to release. A natural disaster version of this would be a river overflowing natural banks or a flash flood in a canyon.

[@kylespevak6781]

My sister lives there and hearing that a flood made fire made me laugh

[@JasonKucherawy]

@@sonipittsso Katrina would not be considered a natural disaster because the levees failed? Or would it be considered a hybrid of natural and non-natural?

[@DoctorNerderer]

I never realized the lightsabers are reflecting on the floor in The Phantom Menace until now

[@LANGIMATION]

It was something I noticed after watching it for the 6938692999592nd time

[@azpont7275]

@@LANGIMATION My man spending a casual 1.84 B years watching Phantom Menace to notice reflections.

[@okagron]

@@LANGIMATION You have more resilience than most people, i could barely get through it once because it was so boring and souless.

[@LANGIMATION]

@@okagron boring? Soulless? By chance were you born in the 2010s?

[@okagron]

@@LANGIMATION Doesn't matter when you are born, the movie is trash regardless of which age you are when you see it. The only exception is where you are a literal child and have developed no standards and think the lightsaber fights make up for all the boring, drab, poorly written dialogue sequences.

[@SquirrelDesecrator]

That 1926 VFX work is insanely impressive!! Maaaan, you guys should do a vfx video with ONLY those super old films. That's killer.

[@TimChuma]

The stunt actor who play Darth Maul was a beast.

[@KlyeKlyeKlye]

To be there in 1926 and see that kind of film must have been mind blowing! They were constantly pushing the possibilities.

[@deanthemachine8879]

Every time you guys check out pre-computer visual effects I am SO impressed because, while VFX now still take hard work, those olden day VFX had to be *invented* at the time for *that* movie while now there is a commonality of VFX technique and language. Great work

[@bryanwoods3373]

And using science that doesn't always translate to modern techniques. Like there might be some transition that's because they knew drops of a chemical interacted a certain way with chemicals on the film. Or weird solutions that were just easier. I always get a kick that a mirror effect in DOOM was simply them mirroring the entire game so that an open door is the only thing connecting them. And the only reason you can't get through the "mirror" is because your mirrored character is in the way. Running two instances of the level with shared input was easier than trying to work out a reflection.

[@EmberQuill]

​@@bryanwoods3373 A lot of games did that for reflections. I vaguely recall the original Deus Ex did the same thing, rendered a room and a mirrored copy of the player character behind the mirror controlled by the same input. In later games it was done by having a second "camera" in the scene that rendered its perspective on the mirror. Actual simulation of light bouncing off reflective surfaces only became possible recently and it still consumes an astounding amount of VRAM to do it.

[@Kythyria]

​@@EmberQuill Unreal Engine 1 had real planar reflections--the "second camera"--approach, and that's what Deus Ex used, though it's not as obvious as in Unreal 1 itself that that's definitely what happening. Planar reflections aren't quite the same thing as you use for, eg, HL2's live CCTV, since you need, effectively, the reflection camera's near clip plane to be at a funny angle, I'm not sure how UE1 did that (some GPUs let you move the clip plane that way as a builtin thing, not sure if that existed back then). I'm not sure what the vram cost of raytracing is compared to rasterisation if you're only doing one of them, but screen space raytracing is pretty cheap in that regard (pretty much 12 extra bytes per display pixel in many cases, which is fairly tractable). The pain is that yes, raytracing needs a bigger acceleration structure to make shooting a ray at all fast, and you need a *lot* of rays to get a good reflection.

[@TheAtkinsoj]

It's a blink-and-you-miss-it moment, but the cart explosion from Django Unchained is really amazing, next to multiple live horses at close proximity, I'd really love to know how that was achieved.

[@aldunlop4622]

I just finished watching LotR: The Fellowship of the Ring for about the 50th time, and once again, after 20 YEARS I'm still gobsmacked! I'm so filled with emotions after watching it, it's absolute perfection. Even the visual effects from 20 years ago are almost flawless. There are a few dodgy bits where maybe the lighting from the foreground doesn't quite match the background, but 99% is just beautiful, and once you mix in the quality of the props, costumes, sound design and music, you forget all that. Damn it's good!

[@EmberQuill]

The choice to mostly use practical effects, and only use CGI when absolutely necessary (such as for Gollum) really helps those movies stand the test of time. The effects still hold up 20 years later, while The Hobbit, even though it was filmed a decade after, is starting to look dated due to all the CGI they used.

[@aldunlop4622]

@@EmberQuill Yeah, Gollum looked so real. The only issues I had with some CGI scenes was the compositing. The lighting was off between the elements, so it looked a bit fake, but it was only a few times.

[@paddyshaw7146]

I'm an older production manager and artist. When referencing screen fights, I believe the best is 1974 Three Musketeers. It's unmatched in it's authenticity and pace. Taking a breath is great.

[@xcho20]

3:28 I was 100% sure Niko would add '... is tight!' at the end of that sentence. It seems I’ve overdosed on Pitch Meetings lately.

[@e_out]

...Whoops!

[@Alastor-x]

Wow Wow Wow... Wow

[@Eysc]

super easy barely an inconvenience

"So you have a new "VFX Artists React" for me?

[@RedThorn]

I think, simply put, "Rule of Cool" overrides realism when it comes to the look of lightsabers. When it's swung around and you don't see that bright white core, it suddenly starts to look like LED saber props and not "Lightsabers". The other thing that the LED props have an issue with is that, when the actors bang the sticks together, they have a horrific "bounce" to them - in that they constantly bounce off of each other with each impact, which sometimes makes it look like they didn't hit at all. The carbon fiber sticks used for the prequels and the original trilogy (Empire and Jedi, not A New Hope) were so thin that, yes, they bent, but they had less of a clang to it when they clashed together, which meant that lightsaber locks looked more like the laser blades got stuck together and you saw far less of a bounce to it, which made each hit connect. I'd way prefer they went back to the carbon fiber sticks over the realism of the LED lights cast on the actors' faces.

[@TrekBeatTK]

I HATED the saber fights in Obi-Wan, where the blades were treated like personal spotlights and this pool of red light fought this pool of blue light. Stop that! The blade should glow and NOTHING ELSE.

[@dystopiawanderer]

Another thing is the weight of them. The saber part wouldn't weigh anything so they should be able to move them incredibly quickly. Perhaps even turning them off and on to not be blocked by the opponent, I don't think I've seen that done.

[@Mintteacup_]

@@dystopiawanderer There is an in lore reason Jedi's don't turn them off and on again. Though there is also a fighting style where they do that

[@dystopiawanderer]

@@Mintteacup_ That's cool to know, thanks. I've only seen the films.

[@orlock20]

@@dystopiawanderer Weight of the light saber is an instruction by Lucas. The Jedi do have super speed in the prequel which i thought was dumb.

[@suegeorge8694]

The Johnstown Flood movie is crazy! The whole disaster was even worse than what was shown. Yes, there was trees, mud, rocks and other natural debris items. But, there was also full sized steam locomotives, homes, roofs floating on top of the water with people clinging to them, and also floating debris that was on fire.

[@jessica_in_japan]

I had family who lived in Johnstown and have visited the site of the Johnstown floods (there was more than one, with 1889 being one of the worst disasters in US history) and the museum. It was such a devastating disaster. I'm sad more people don't know about it, so thanks for sharing this.

[@greedyboy0]

You guys need a VFX hall of fame. Some of these clips are insane

[@doingmypart666]

10:20 you can see him growing a beard while the helmet closes ..

[@grilnam9945]

Brilliant catch

[@marshalltucker9690]

Omg that was funny😂

[@nilanjande1600]

Ohh right... mission impossible like moment. 😂

[@TheTimB]

You missed that when the horse crosses the bridge, it's shadow extends past the edge of the bridge

[@GonkThePowerDroid]

Johnstown Flood was impressive. Not only for how they achieved the shots, but also the look of the flood. Real floods are gunky, murky and debries-ridden. Hollywood CGI floods are almost always clean clear water without any debries. The 2011 tsunami in Japan was one of my epiphanies of just how wrong Hollywood did it.

[@ExtremeMadnessX]

Any examples of bad Hollywood floods?

[@GonkThePowerDroid]

2012, Day After Tomorrow, The 5th Wave, 10.5 Apocalypse. Those are end-of-days floods which might in some cases earn them a pass. Don't remember smaler ones other than Dante's Peak (1997). However that one is excellent, but then again it is also miniatures and not CGI.

[@kevindexterpattee]

Wren saying "you can tell because of the way that it is" is my favourite internet seeing the internet moment. That's pretty neat.

[@AlbaVeri]

Death becomes her. From transformation to broken neck . We are closing in on halloween season and this movie is just great

[@d3j4v00]

Of course they nailed the miniatures in 1926. There was a thriving industry of IRL 3d-modeling. Y'all could do a fantastic episode/series on Miniatures if you haven't already. I recommend things like the The Bay Model where they made a miniature of SF Bay in the 1950's to experiment on before changing the flow of water in the actual bay. There's quite a legacy of miniature and modeling beyond just VFX but i bet the techniques have a lot of crossover with the digital process. Maybe this is more of an Adam Savage pitch...

[@corey2232]

Thank you for pointing out how fast they're swinging the lightsabers vs in the past! I never really thought about why that was, but it makes total sense now! The choreography always felt so much slower & lacked the impact of the prequels, which makes sense since they're swinging around LED tubes instead of actual metal rods.

[@Stray_by_Nite]

10:45 Also, imagine it's original presentation format. A 1926 theater. This probably looked even better.

[@blofeld39]

Seeing "The Wizard of Oz" on an IMAX screen just made me realise EVERY Academy-ratio film should be presented in that size/format.

[@luwucian4497]

9:07 Not only are the effects good but the helmet looks sick, i love so much that shot

[@brianzhamilton]

The fact the physical lightsaber props of the newer movies affected the choreography of the fight scenes is one of the biggest weaknesses of the sequel trilogy’s fight scenes.

[@Hanneth]

No, the choreography is the biggest weakness of the new lightsabre scenes. The props used affect what can be done, but look up the analysis of the fights. You constantly have people waiting in the background for their time to come in. The actors are doing their best to fill the time, but you can tell something is wrong. The main fight sequence nas so many problems not related to the props. Then you also have the piss poor writing. The whole battle between Kylo and Rey was so boring, I turned off the movie. There were no stakes. There was no doubt they were both going to live. The whole scene was pointless. Crushing the holocron made the first half of the film completely pointsless. I can't believe any sane person could have green lit that script.

[@brianzhamilton]

@@Hanneth granted, I forgot about the terrible choreography to begin with. My comment was more hyperbolic, to emphasis how big a problem I found the physical props (Rey constantly looks like she’s wielding something half her weight-lightsabers shouldn’t look like they take effort to swing), not that it was technically speaking the worst thing.

[@barndoor8628]

​@@brianzhamiltonLuke often made it look like a big effort to swing a lightsaber, but most people don't claim that ruins Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi. The outrage is selective

[@williamzebub3252]

@@barndoor8628 In the originally trilogy behind the scenes, they flat out say they were treating lightsabers like they had weight. This changed over time that the blades had no weight, which was even more evident in the prequels when they were swinging lightweight prop sticks and going a lot faster and harder in the choreography. But apparently the prequels method of adding ALL the lightsaber effects in post was considered too costly and time consuming by Disney. So now they're using props which shed some light in the scene. So it's significantly cheaper, but the drawbacks are the prop sabers are much heavier so they can't be swung as fast, and due to whatever the new props are made of, they have a significant bounce back when they make contact with each other.

[@jkcrawl]

@@Hanneth I agree with all of your criticisms, however, I'll add that SW choreography has always been bad and unrealistic. The closest thing to believable sword fighting is the original trilogy, because actual sword fights are slower and more tactical. The prequel lightsaber fights are great because they're flashy, but when you put any thought into them they're stupid and they've been analyzed as well as being kind of terrible: Aiming at the opponent's lightsaber for no reason, turning their back to their enemies, spinning and flipping which is the worse thing you can do in combat. SW fights has always been choreographed for style over realism and I think they were aiming to have the sequel fights feel a bit slower and more weightier in the same way the OT fights were. But if you want to say the sequels are overall terrible you'll get no argument from me. I just think criticism of the choreography is one of those things that people are selective about because they were so overall disappointed with the films.

[@sergiocmarreiro]

Oh, man, Jordan needs a raise. She made me watch the sponsored bit.

[@rome8180]

That Johnstown Flood movie must have blown people's minds when it came out. We see advances in visual effects all the time now. But that's all they are: advances. I can't remember ever seeing something that felt "impossible." But when that movie came out, viewers would have had absolutely no frame of reference for what they were seeing.

[@KingPleaseMusic]

I think Avatar (2009) is probably the last time we as an audience watched a movie and said "I didn't know a movie could look like that" as in an entire movie of photo-real CGI characters whose facial expressions were 100% authentic feeling.

[@xuxon24]

@@rome8180 I very recently watched the wizard of Oz and was impressed by how good that film looks specially how long ago it was made.

[@treschlet]

11:46 "You can tell! Because of the way it is" got a good laugh out of me :)

[@brendan4859]

How neat is that?!

[@BeastBoyX_X]

​@@brendan4859 That's pretty neat!

[@H0USE99]

I was going to say, did Wren just quote this iconic YT video?

[@elijahfox1929]

The cone got me 😂 “Was that just on the ground”….”yes’”

[@jabbadac]

That Johnstown Flood clip was awesome! Love to see how sophisticated they were even at such an early time in cinema.

[@LIQU1D_COOLJR]

I cant be the only one anticipating the crew react to "A Minecraft Movie" VFX

[@fisk0]

There's actually an even older disaster movie than what you looked at - the Danish movie Verdens Undergang, "The End of the World" from 1916, which contains both a flood scene and a meteor strike. It also contains all the modern disaster movie tropes - the astronomer who understands what'll happen but isn't believed, and just like the example you looked at it has a wedding scene during the disaster.

[@tomaszdzieduszynski]

Melies did disaster scenes back in 1897.

[@PalimpsestProd]

4:37 apparently Vessi's are light saber proof.

[@kishorekumar-rr2ie]

Came here to say that😅😂

[@Akuratyde]

I love Wren. He's got such a great personality and I love his energy. He's also crazy talented. But my favorite videos are the ones where Wren is like, "It's alright! This looks okay!" and then Nico schools him on some aspect of how light works that literally only 1% of people would know. Nico's knowledge of light is astounding.

[@HappyHyperHuggieNini]

Fun fact: Johnstown is notable for being wrecked by floods. 10 years after that film was put out, the 2nd major flood occurred. Then another 50 years after that. With roughly a flood every half a century or so, we are currently overdue for the next one. If anyone here played Night in the Woods, that game's town is based on Johnstown and the in-game history mentioning the big flood is in reference to this flood.

[@QuincyKane]

The visual effects from that 1926 film gets a more "thrilling reaction" out of me than most modern effects. Very impressive!

[@thestalepopcornpodcast]

Holy crap!!! I suggested taking about the acolyte lightsabers!!! Love these videos!

[@Drumming_Monkey]

I agree at 3:90 about the light sabers. I don't even mind the reflection in people's faces and whatnot but it has to be limited to really special moments to look cool and convincing. Rey's face, Vader in the hallway, even "Obi vs Vader 2 - rematch Boogaloo". It's great that we can now do this but please keep it limited to when it actually can support the scene.

[@sanninmusic212]

"You can tell, because of the way it is" just made me think of Neature Walk teaching me what an Aspen tree is. You can tell it's an Aspen because of the way it is.

[@Jazztar2000]

Lightsabers 1980s: Neon Lightsabers 2020s: LED

[@doodoo66]

You guys don't understand tho, Disney isn't making the lightsabers to look like old lightsabers, these are lightsabers for a modern audience that look like the LED ones you can buy at their parks.

[@estranhokonsta]

That seem far stretched or just a joke. But on the other hand, who knows? We never know what to expect with these marqueting guys. That is, unless it is lack of common sense.

[@morgomirwd]

"No one is alive now that worked on that film, not even the babies." My great great grandma of 106 would disagree.

[@kkay000]

I'm so happy you brought up the look of the lightsabers, I thought I was just insane not liking how they looked.

[@TroubleChute]

Hundred year old film actually mindblowing. I never expected that nor would I never have known about it if it wasn't for Corridor. Thanks :)

[@OperatorD95]

About the lightsabers and them being seen to real, it's honestly a very good point and nothing negative because we know Disney CAN infact do it right. Best example is "JEDI: Fallen Order" the first newer StarWars game they made in collaboration with EA, where the lightsabers literally can illuminate small rooms and there are many areas and scenes where you are actively encouraged to use your lightsaber as more of a glorified flashlight to orientate and explore your surroundings in the dark. So in my opinion it's always a case of, they could have made the effects better but just didn't care and at the end of the day we are talking about a TV show with a budget of over a 100million USD here, not some small indy fan project.

[@Art1stical]

I love how they use the hook of The Acolyte to show us the beautiful and magic ingenuity of a 1926 film. Very well played, Corridor.

[@_joabel]

when are you guys reacting to the Minecraft movie trailer

[@Slomoshun4u]

They kinda did in their live stream. Basically their agreed thought was, "pick a lane, why mix live action and this style of CGI".

[@munk.]

Probably gonna do a video on it next week or something. This video was already in the works by the time the trailer came out

[@TigburtJones]

They did

[@williamferry6573]

Thanks for your kind comments on THE JOHNSTOWN FLOOD. It's easy to poke fun at silent movies, so I'm glad you were respectful towards what the filmmakers tried to do given the limitations of 1926. You were very respectful and genuinely excited at the thrill sequences. For those who wondered how it was done, you did a great job of explaining the process. The restoration was a labor of love for those involved. Great work, everyone!

[@ironbob7346]

Obi Wan show comes out: "The lightsabers are too bright!" Acolyte comes out: "The lightasbers are too dim!"

[@charlesrosenfield9374]

Wren's side eye at Niko at 11:41..."At least we don't have to worry about insulting anyone that worked on this movie."

[@hapakidyo]

8:15 the wookie’s saber didn’t even connect with the other guy’s, but he still fell over. I’m guessing this is the quality of the whole show. Which is why no one cared…

[@jasonhall9547]

Looks like a glancing blow to me. I mean most of that fight is Kelnacca being so much stronger than the other jedi that they spend most of the fight dodging or trying to run away. Plus, the Jedi who falls down is the youngest one and a padawan. He was pretty terrified fighting Kelnacca. A lot of people did care about the show and did enjoy it. I'd give the series like a 6 out of 10. I would have liked to see where they could have gone with a season two.

[@DG-oc2uw]

Yes, the lightsabers were the first thing I noticed in The Acolyte. They're clearly plastic light-up tubes and they look like toys both in the illumination and the hits, not lightsabers.

[@Jix-kd8iv]

The guy headbutting the lightsabers was crazy, that effect of the sparks was amazing. I deffo need a breakdown on how that was done

[@Smooth__JB]

At first I thought you guys were being too over critical of the Acolyte lightsaber scenes until….you showed the history of the lightsabers via the different Star Wars movies and series. Once I really saw the differences between each lightsaber scene I was able to understand your concerns. Job well done !

[@DigitalJediMaster]

One of the things Leslie wanted was for the lightsaber battles to have the same energy as the Prequels. But one of the reasons the Sequel fights seemed so much slower was the practical lighting effect on the sabers made them heavy to work with. So she tasked her prop team to make lighter props that could still produce practical lighting. So what you're probably noticing in places is the subtle compromises you did mention at one point. But these are still much more energetic fights than what we got in the Sequels simply because we could do it now.

[@aaron-hsu86]

Fun fact about the Phantom Menace fight scene between Maul and Ahsoka. They actually got Ray Park back to do the mocap for the action! All the other fight sequences up until that point (I believe) was either just animators or other mocap actors for their action sequences, but this was (one of) the final showdowns of the season, so they got Ray Park back for it. Just another reason why that fight scene is such a joy to watch. OG Maul movements in the choreography.

[@cube2fox]

It does make sense that a lightsaber that appears quite bright in a dimly lit room looks much dimmer outdoors. It's like the difference between using a flashlight in a dim room versus the same flashlight outdoors during the day.

[@ericclark2330]

I want to see you guys pull off a shot like that last one. In the way you would have had to do it in 1920.

[@matthewbecker7389]

What gets me about vfx from nearly ONE HUNDRED years ago (🤯) is the sheer bravado it would have taken to simply approve the concept. The guts it takes to be a pioneer is no small thing, but then having the technical knowledge and patience required to execute the shots so effectively, its truly inspiring. Thanks for sharing this footage ...it makes up for subjecting us to the Acolyte. (I thought I'd forgotten about this show...two months of hypnosis and therapy down the drain...thanks guys!)

[@blofeld39]

They would give the sequences to specialists -- they had a guy on the 1925 "Ben-Hur" who was renowned for being stupidly-good at doing "paint-on-glass", and being stupidly-bad at every other thing in his life, which is why his professional career collapsed when he left his wife and child and he barely subsisted on getting work in pictures after making an Omar Khayyam adaptation using his techniques independently that lost him so much money. His name was Ferdinand Pinney-Earle.

[@MRboomchongo]

Growing up in Johnstown, I remember visiting the flood museum as a kid and watching this film projected on the screen. Let it be known to all: this devastating flood was the direct result of reckless greed by elite industrialists who cared little for the environment and even less for the very people whose labor built their luxurious wealth.

[@scheisseaufpasswort]

" was that just on the ground?" .... " it was" i laughed so hard.

[@felixyoutube9543]

same vibe when rice gum pointed out the guy who randomly had a slice of pizza 😂 look it up

[@dearcastiel4667]

4:23 yes, people noticed, very much, lightsabers in Acolyte look like toys with LED inside, it looks terrible.

[@Recrussio]

Somehow in the span of one lifetime... lightsaber hilts shrank dramatically by the time of TPM... Ridiculous.

[@dearcastiel4667]

@@Recrussio Disney SW has basicaly no understanding of the concept of time on a galaxy-spanning civilisation it's pretty ridiculous. Saying "we're going to look at the past of the jedi and the time of the Hight of the Republic" and then going back 100 years is child-level conception of such univers. Half the races of the galaxy live longer than that, and for such a technological civilisation, stagnation would be super big, barely anything would change in 100 years at this point.

[@Recrussio]

@@dearcastiel4667 exactly… but then on top of that they’ve just inserted their own cheap, current-day-politically charged “high republic” era bullshit into that huge span of previously documented history. … I wonder why no one f$&%ing cares 😂

[@conwarlock3537]

So you have looked at Acolyte lightsabers, which are lackluster. But I feel the clone shots of the two sisters fighting are pretty well done.

[@themisterchristie]

Always love your analysis of visual effects, especially when you look at old movies and shows, from before CGI.

[@jackbaxter-williams8059]

Came for the star wars... stayed for the old skool vfx. Niko is the boss

[@RedCaio]

the lightsabers in Acolyte look just fine except for the scene where osha holds the saber to Qimir's neck, that was the only time it seemed too dim to me.

[@cube2fox]

It was an outdoor scene. Even a super bright flashlight will not look very bright outdoors during the day. It's overpowered by the brightness of the sun.

[@JScotty4Reel]

This was your father’s filet mignon, not as clumsy or random as a sirloin

[@grotgrusson5124]

I think they mad a mistake with Fin's light sabre at 0:46, and it has puzzled me ever since I first saw it in theaters that no one seems to have lift this topic, so probably I am wrong here... But shouldn't the lightsaber be ignite with the switch on the middle of it, and not by the button at the top of it?

[@thork6974]

Boyega is consistently shown using the saber with his thumb in that position so I'm OK with it. A 'special modification' perhaps?

[@andrewalochner]

Wren: was that on the ground? Niko: it was! Big boi cone in the background: Am I nothing to you?

[@chriswilson3126]

I know SW is maybe considered science fiction rather than fantasy, but the traditional lightsabres worked well because they were depicted in a fantasy/sci fi world. The more they try to make them realistic the less they'll work.

[@bassitos]

I would appreciate a stuntmen/women react to the fight scenes from acolyte, because it is definitely one of the best things of that series

[@GuerraProd]

😂

[@diegopansini3152]

@@GuerraProd What’s so funny? The action scenes are the one of the few good things about the show. They were the best lightsaber scenes we had since the Prequels

[@alienmorality]

That's not saying much

[@bassitos]

@@GuerraProd 🤡🤡

[@marksutter182]

I LOVED the Acolyte. It absolutely doesn’t deserve the hate, but the dimness is a fair criticism. The action is still amazing in the show.

[@jasonhall9547]

I enjoyed the Acolyte too!

[@Marshall-stopmotion.]

Yall should look at the movie Malignant, the main bad guy looks really mind-boggling. I think it would make a good react.

[@SgtHamster]

Buster Keaton's "The General" - there's one shot of guys throwing logs off a train from high bridge down to track in a valley below - I can never truly work how it was done, and I've been in vfx for nearly 30 years. The man was a genius.

[@samtenthije6692]

A Japanese movie called 'house' (ハウス) from 1977 is a cult classic, and it has a lot of really charming, kind of arts-and-crafts looking VFX. The backstory of how the movie got made is also really crazy: the director, Obayashi, normally made commercials and was comissioned to make a movie similar to Jaws. He wrote the script with his daughter, Chigumi, but rather than waiting for a director, he just made the movie himself. It's one of those special movies that just reflects the director's passion. surprisingly it also has some deeper themes about femininity, and the influence of the atomic bombs on Japanese society and culture

[@Withing_]

1:50 "Look how dim that lightsaber is, it's not even blowing out" To be fair, is it actually canon that lightsabers are blindingly bright to begin with? Is there anything to say they're not literally the brightness of an LED lamp?

[@lollingrock]

I mean it is described as a plasma blade so it should technically be as bright as the sun but none of the original movies bothered with it anyway

[@argoniastation]

I will be honest. I didn't watch Acolyte. No plans to, in fact I canceled my Disney+ account. Your comments about the sabers really proves they wasted the 180 million dollar budget. The CGI isn't great for most of the clips I've seen. My gripes with the show are more or less along those lines. Everything I've seen looks mediocre at best...and feels like a bad fan film. I don't blame the cast. My complaints, every single one of them, are directed at the people who were in charge of it. Writers, director, producers...They dropped the ball on a LOT of things.

[@jasonhall9547]

lol how are you directing complaints at the writers of a show you didn't watch?

[@james.b.mcgill]

4:59 LOL, nice deodorant balls. She's still pretty though.

[@graxo3752]

😂 I came to the comments for that

[@kitzthekat7977]

Hahahahahaha

[@lucbloom]

I wonder how many 1920s people went “well will you look at those factual visuals. How on earth did they survive filming that?”

[@huntercressall9728]

Remember that the Great Flood was very likely filmed and intended to be projected at 16fps and not 24. 24 came later generally because of the addition of sync sound. The Great Flood MAY have been filmed at a frame rate as low as 12fps. Take a look at the footage at those framerates and the film is even more compelling. IN FACT For those watching at home, set your KZbin playback to .75 and you'll see all the horse and human running appear much more natural and the entire spectacle is that much more believable.

[@anthonypc-248]

13:48 When you said no one who worked on this film is still alive, I didn't guess this would be one reason why!

[@batcat4136]

In 2 years I’m gonna watch at movie from 1926. To watch a 100 year old movie, restored but unaltered, is gonna be something else.

[@seanmsw5977]

11:48 "Isn't that neat?" "Heh, yeah it is." "Cause we want everyone to know how neat olde timey FX were, instead of just me, Sam, and Nico knowing it."

[@PvtPartzz]

“You can tell because of the way it is”- I’m gonna use that more often

[@ottovonbearsmark8876]

One thing that I noticed thanks to this video between the new and old light sabers: In the Originals and Prequels when lightsabers hit, there’s a big flash of like a greenish yellow. I remember that sticking out to me as a kid, and I’m not going to be able to unsee the new ones not having that now.

[@BlackOpMercyGaming]

Sid Jordan is my great grand father… he played Mullins in The Johnstown Flood… it is so WILD seeing you guys cover this film…. Forgive me if I never thought the VFX guys would go over it lol

[@Maikonix]

Here’s a crazy ride for you guys @CorridorCrew, it’s the 1978 movie starring a person I thought was Jordan Allen but really the late Kim Milford in: LaserBlast!

[@eijgb]

That Johnstown flood VFX gives me goosebumps, in that how inventive and daring they were to tell a story that's probably considered impossible at the time. I wonder what the audience reaction must've been in 1926!

[@80q25]

Time between The Johnstown Flood to Star Wars: 51 years Time between Star Wars & the Acolyte: 47 years Kinda wild to think about.

[@ScreenSpidah]

I LOVE the prequel lightsabers. Solid White + Outer Glow = Call it a Damn Good Day