9. Big Balls - Fight Club (1999)
For this one, I'm relying upon your having seen the movie, which I assume the vast majority of you have, and know what it is I'm talking about. The reason I'm doing this is an inability to find so much as one picture or video of the scene in question, surprising considering its immense cult following. In addition, it's a slight cheat, as the final scene was touched up a tad with CGI. However, when I read about the lengths they went to in order to make this scene work, doing most of the grunt-work themselves without CGI, I knew I couldn't not put it on the list. The scene I'm talking about is the one that ends with the destruction of a coffee shop by a large, rolling ball. Initially, it was meant to be all CGI, but Fincher was convinced to try it for real instead by his visual effects supervisor. Except if he were able to see in to the future, there's no way he makes that decision knowing the hell he was in store for. First, the floor's weight-bearing capabilities demanded they use a much lighter ball than originally intended. The problem with that, though, was it acted like a lighter ball. When it went down the stairs, it bounced. In the water, it floated, rather than sank. Even worse, it couldn't build up the necessary speed required for the scene. The proposed solution was to have two men run with it on either side using wires to steer it along and doing their best to keep it from floating by literally holding it down. Yet that wasn't the last of their problems, not by a long shot. Next the scene asked for the ball to make a climactic crash into a coffee shop window, sailing through and smashing the counter inside. With little run up, though, and the building's low ceiling not allowing them to build a ramp any higher than two feet, the ball didn't do as they had hoped, only breaking the glass before rolling back away from the window. At this point, they'd had enough and turned it over to the effects department who went through and cleaned up all that they'd filmed, doing things ranging from removing the bouncing to adding in the destruction of the counter to other minor effects, such as extra-added splashes when the ball lands in the water. Still, for the most part, the finished product is a perfect example of the filmmakers not wanting to take the easy way out by going CGI from the get-go, and for that it has earned its place on this list.