10 More Movie Special Effects Nobody Believed

10. Zero-Gravity - Apollo 13

Ron Howard's Apollo 13 is a fantastic dramatisation of the aborted 1970 Apollo 13 space mission, and ever since it released in 1995, audiences have wracked their brains trying to figure out how Howard so persuasively depicted his cast in zero-gravity conditions.

This was a major pre-production challenge for the director, and while the most obvious assumption would be that Howard deferred to complex wire work, possibly with some VFX assistance, that wasn't the case at all.

In actual fact, all wide shots depicting weightlessness in space were filmed inside an aircraft used by NASA to train their astronauts - a Boeing KC-135, better known as the "Vomit Comet."

By flying into the air and then sharply descending, the plane's occupants would experience around 25 seconds of weightlessness per attempt. 

Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, and Gary Sinise repeated this 80 times per shooting day to capture the required footage - a gruelling process which reportedly resulted in a cameraman vomiting on Bacon.

These shots were then spliced together with close-ups filmed back on the ground with a sea-saw like device which gave the impression of the actors floating. It's a seamless effect overall, and played a huge part in the movie's massive success.