About

Movie Scenes Without CGI refers to behind-the-scene images from various production sets that reveal the shooting of memorable scenes before they are enhanced with special effects in the editing process, often juxtaposed with their post-production counterparts for humorous effect.

Origin

The earliest known instance of pre-production footage from behind-the-scenes of a major Hollywood film was uploaded to YouTube by Øyvind Nilsen on March 26th, 2007, which featured the original green-screen rendition of the opening scene of the 2005 American neo-noir crime thriller film Sin City (shown below, left), before the application of special effects and grading during post-production (shown below, right). As of September 2015, the video clip has garnered over 524,000 views.

Spread

On December 3rd, 2009, a behind-the-scene photograph from an outdoor location shoot for the then-upcoming 2009 American epic science fiction film Avatar was unveiled during MTV's promotional livestream interview with the filmmaker James Cameron (shown below). The photograph, which shows the film's two lead actors Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana acting out a scene in plain aboriginal clothes without their CGI-enhanced blue skin and alien-like facial features, was subsequently picked up by several Hollywood industry news sites like ScreenRant and CinemaBlend.

On March 24th, 2010, Revision3 uploaded a sweded parody of Marvel Comics' live-action superhero film Iron Man 2 in a comedy sketch video titled "Iron Man 2 Trailer Without CGI" (shown below).

On February 25th, 2013, a single topic blog dedicated to curating pre-production images from behind-the-scenes of Hollywood films was launched on Tumblr under the name Before VFX.

On February 26th, Imgur user VFX00 uploaded an image compilation of special effects scenes from various Hollywood in a gallery titled "Would Any of You Still Watch Movies Without Visual Effects" in honor of the VFX artist community, which drew more than 406,000 views in the following two and a half years. On March 6th, Imgur user LetterNumber uploaded another compilation of CGI-enhanced scenes from nearly a dozen additional Hollywood films in their pre-production stage in a gallery titled "a few more CGI-free shots from movies before postproduction," garnering almost one million views in less than three years.

On July 31st, Imgur user 1DAK1 uploaded an animated GIF juxtaposing the pre-production image of Bella Swan (portrayed by Kristen Stewart) petting the head of a green screen actor on the set of Twilight and the CGI-enhanced scene (shown below).

On May 5th, 2014, Twitter account Behind The Scenes uploaded an image of a green screen actor manually simulating the "hair swing motion" effect in a shoot for a shampoo and hair dye commercial, which generated more than 3,100 retweets and 2,230 favorites over the course of four months (shown below).

On May 29th, 2015, Gizmodo uploaded a YouTube video clip comparing the B-roll footage of a scene from the then-upcoming American 3D disaster film San Andreas to its CGI-enhanced counterpart (shown below). In the following three months, Gizmodo's video racked up over 1.26 million views.

On June 5th, Gizmodo uploaded another YouTube clip comparing the pre-production and post-production footage of an action-filled scene from the 2015 remake of the 1979 post-apocalyptic action film Mad Max (shown below). In the following three months, the video garnered over 467,000 views.

Examples

Search Interest

External References