1. STAR WARS (1977)
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Motion-control
photography, in which a computer is used to control a long, complex
series of camera movements, made possible the spaceship battles in
Star Wars. It would have taken too long to film the scenes manually,
says Anne Thompson, deputy film editor at The Hollywood Reporter. |
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2. TRON (1982)
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It wasn't the
first film to use computer-generated (CG) graphics (and many effects
were hand-drawn) but the sci-fi video-game fantasy flick Tron was the
first to use computer imagery to create a 3D world, making it one of
the pioneering CGI films. "Effects people said, 'Let's see what
the computer can do,'" says Harry Knowles, movie critic at Ain't
It Cool News. |
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3. TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (1991)
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"Morphing"
was first used in Willow (1988), but in T2 the effect was
"jaw-dropping," Knowles says. The liquid-metal robot's
humanoid texture, which was layered onto a CG model, looked
frighteningly real. |
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4. CLIFFHANGER (1993)
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Faux alpinist
Sly Stallone was held up by wires that were later digitally removed.
The ability to erase wires changed how stunts are done: Now stars and
stuntmen can be put in real-world environments as well as in front of
green screens. |
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5. JURASSIC PARK (1993)
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Although they
enjoyed only about 6 minutes of screen time, Jurassic Park's digital
dinos were a revelation: They introduced CGI live animals with
realistic movements, and believably textured muscles and skin. The
photorealisitic digital elements were intercut with animatronic
dinosaurs. |
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6. FORREST GUMP (1994)
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While most
filmmakers in the early '90s used digital effects to create fantasy,
the creators of Forrest Gump altered history. Using Kodak's Cineon
system, they digitized archival footage, and composited Tom Hanks's
character into historical clips. |
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7. THE PERFECT STORM (2000)
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Although much
previous work had been done to make CGI water look real, The Perfect
Storm's monster wave scene set a new benchmark. "Water is an
organic thing that's hard to create in software," says Andy Maltz
of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences. "To make it
look believable was a big thing." |
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8. LORD OF THE RINGS (2001)
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For the huge
battle scenes in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the filmmakers created
Massive, a computer program that generates crowds of artificially
intelligent individuals "who make their own decisions based on
behavior patterns," Knowles says. This makes for more realistic
battles. |
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9. THE POLAR EXPRESS (2004)
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Director Robert
Zemeckis used a large motion-capture stage and up to 200 cameras to
gather data from the performance of Tom Hanks and other actors. This
data was used to help animators create digital versions of the actors
while maintaining their performances. |
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10. THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW (2004)
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The creators of
the film about worldwide climatic disaster took more than 50,000
photos of New York City and scanned them into a computer, providing
"a 3D, photorealistic model of the city," Thompson says.
After that, destroying the metropolis with a giant digital wave was a
piece of cake. |
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