20 Before-And-After Movie Effect Shots That Will Blow You Away

The suspension of disbelief has always been the most important thing for an audience at the movies, but it has never been so integral to a movie as it is in the 21st century, where movies are made or broken by CGI. Computer special effects have become such an important element of the film making industry, such a big part of the normal movie going experience, that most people don’t even notice them any more. This means that most will never know or even care about the amount of work that goes into making fantasy and science fiction universes look real. Here’s just a taste of how things look before they become the incredible finished product.

Alice in Wonderland

Tim Burton has always had a knack for creating strange and wondrous worlds, but he can’t create them all just by pure will alone. His adaptation of the beloved Lewis Carroll novel for instance, required shooting on a lot of green screens that were replaced by a lot of CGI.

Life of Pi

It would be totally impractical and a complete headache to film a movie about a teenager stranded on a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean with a live tiger. In the Oscar-winning film, lead actor Suraj Sharma spent his shooting days instead on a boat in the middle of a large pool surrounded by a blue screen

Maleficent

Angelina Jolie is a stunning beauty even with horns, but that doesn’t mean a movie can get away with focusing only on her. While Jolie may be the center piece of the movie, the fantasy backdrops required a little bit of help from the CGI wizards.

Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes

How do you get an ape to act and emote like a human does? You don’t – you get an incredibly skilled actor to give a motion-capture performance and then use that footage to turn him into a human-like ape. This certainly isn’t the first time the incomparable Andy Serkis has taken up the mantle of a CGI character, nor will it be the last.