10 CGI Moments In Recent Movies You DEFINITELY Missed
Almost nothing about Black Bolt's role in the Doctor Strange sequel was real.
In this day and age, it's fair to say that basically every single new movie released contains some measure of CGI, whether to fix basic technical issues during filming or to achieve the most mesmerising otherworldly sights imaginable.
And while film fans routinely complain about Hollywood blockbusters and their garishly overblown parade of tacky VFX, every so often the industry will pull off an effect so impressively seamless you didn't even realise it was one at all
There's an argument to be made that the most jaw-dropping CGI is often that which you don't even know is there, and while most of these effects don't draw much attention to themselves as grandstanding pinnacles of tech wizardry, they are nevertheless laudably tough-to-spot.
From basic CGI objects you'd never guess to quirky post-production fixes to major issues, and frankly mind-boggling feats of photorealistic digital fakery, these VFX moments from the past year of cinema tricked all but the most eagle-eyed of viewers.
In an era where even general audiences are incredibly savvy to the technical side of filmmaking, that's a frankly phenomenal achievement...
10. The Baseball - The Black Phone
Despite being produced for less than $20 million, this past summer's horror hit The Black Phone has a ton of near-invisible CGI, and it's perhaps never tougher to spot than during the opening scene where protagonist Finn (Mason Thames) is playing baseball.
As Finn throws a ball, if you look closely you might notice that something seems ever-so-slightly "off" about the motion of the ball - it looks a little too blurry to be real, and that's because it is indeed a digital baseball.
When a Twitter user recently pointed this out, the film's co-writer C. Robert Cargill chimed in and revealed that production constraints on the day forced them to use VFX:
"It was a tight shooting day: limited hours working with kids, the weather wasn't cooperating, we couldn't get the shot with a real ball and we needed to move on. So we had to VFX it."
Ultimately this is a great example of using VFX in a smart way on a low(ish) budget production: in a small part of a scene after they tried to capture the shot practically first. It's tough to argue with that reasoning, especially as 99% of people wouldn't ever notice it.