"NO CGI" is really just INVISIBLE CGI (4/4)

This series (and channel) is a blessing. Thank you for the amazing videos!

I was waiting for you to say "I've been CGI this whole time"

Denis Villeneuve flew in an actual sandworm from his hometown Montreal to star in Dune 2. the worm asked to be uncredited, that's why you don't see his name in the closing credits. what a bunch of legends.

I feel so bad for anyone working in vfx. Imagine putting hours and hours into making a shot just perfect, only for the director and actors to pretend your work doesn't exist and it was all someone else's work that made it look great. Such an underappreciated job..

I cant believe these Videos took NO CGI

There's no going back for you dude, you are currently the best VFX related Youtuber and you gotta keep making the best videos on the internet about VFX.

VFX compositor here... THANK YOU.

25 years in VFX on my side. People have NO IDEA how much CGI are in movies and TV series. I do. This series was amazing! Thank you so much! I hope studios will not boycott you because of it. :-)

I was a set dresser on The Last of Us Season 1. I personally dressed the exterior sets that Pedro Pascal is talking about when referring to a “dressed downtown Calgary”. His comments are correct but leave out how much work came after because like you said, he couldn’t see any of that work during filming. We dressed every street from the ground to about 30ft up. Everything after that achieved with visual effects and “cgi”. I am incredibly proud of the physical work we did on that show, I’m also proud of the artists that took our work over the top.

hearing all practical effects in movie promos gives me same vibes as when companies talk about how they are carbon neutral lol.

VFX artist here with 9 years in the business. I have been credited directly only 4 times out of more than 100 projects. So when you see the credited VFX folks, that is probably just 10% of the total number of people that have worked on the project. Also the amount of things that get tweaked, removed, replaced or enhanced in a shot is mind boggling, normal movie watchers have no clue that what they are seeing is CGI. The problem is directors not planning for VFX and/or crappy VFX supervisors on set, changing entire storylines, removing entire characters from the movie(A list actor in one instance), and the whole we'll fix it in post mentality. But the biggest problem of all, the deadlines. As a good friend of mine and a beast of a compositor once said: "There is nothing we cant do if they give us enough time".

That shot from Jurassic Park was the perfect way to end this series! Thank you for the great work, Jonas!

I laughed having seen Gran Turismo and their "no CGI" having seen it and then going back and reading their claims afterwards

My favorite part is not knowing I was watching CGI. Like the examples here of adding snow to a scene, or other examples like making a city skyline, or the grass greener of the shot was filed in Autumn. Hats off to all the wizards that make the magic happen. CGI artist should be both represented more and paid more.

The amount of CGI coming in Beetlejuice 2 will never be entirely disclosed, with artists working once again in the shadows. Thanks a lot for this amazing series of videos, I look forward to see what you have in stock for the future of this great channel!

You touch on a great point here that I think is often missed in these conversations. As a director, a bad VFX shot being in a final cut of a film is as much your responsibility as a bad costume, bad performance or poor lighting. People rag on VFX artists who are often overworked and underpaid without ever stopping to think why the person in charge of the production would make choices that lead to bad outcomes. Whether it's a lack of understanding of how VFX work is done, or just poor general direction, more blame has to be on directors (or producers in cases where a studio has more control than a director which frequently happens) for these decisions. Plenty of movies have thousands of VFX shots that look fantastic, and plenty have very few that look bad. If I were directing a movie in the 60's and decide to cut to a bad looking matte painting, that decision is on me. I think so much of the negative backlash against CG comes from directors who are overly reliant on it and think of it as a short cut to get wherever they want with no restraints.

This biggest thing I take from this is that the studio and fan efforts to claim that any given movie doesn't, and shouldn't, have CGI are deeply disrespectful to the CG artists.

"Top gun maverick having more vfx shots than Black panther" was epic 😆

As a 20+ year experience vfx artist, thank you for helping people understand our work, and how important it is to the modern movies and tv series. Its still a bit it sad that all this extremely hard work is not acknowledged by anyone, and despite the quality that is constantly improving, still gets negative comments from just about anyone involved with movies. But like many superheroes that we helped make come to life, we don’t mind keeping our identity kept “secret”. We can still get some satisfaction from people thinking its not CGI. This means its job well done. So you could also have named your series “NO CGI”. Is really just very good CGI.

This video essay series is like hitting the jackpot in a desert of shallow movie talks. You know what's the best part? When I stumble upon those comment sections full of clueless folks blabbering about "practical filmmaking" (like, seriously, I genuinely have not gotten a single person to give me a cohesive definition of that the hell they even mean when the say that), I just drop them the link to this series. Saves me from banging my head against the wall trying to explain stuff to people who've never even set foot behind the scenes. So yeah, goodbye to those exhausting arguments with the clueless. This series should be mandatory viewing for anyone who utters the term "CGI" I cannot express how thankful I am for this series. You have saved me thousands of headaches. Your work is seriously a lifesaver.