10 Epic Movie Moments You Won't Believe Used No CGI
2. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind - Joel's Memory
This forced perspective technique was also used by Michel Gondry in 2004s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a critical and commercial success for the Frenchman, almost quadrupling its $20 million budget and being deemed Certified Fresh by Rotten Tomatoes with a 93% rating. In the scene in which a baby version of Joel is hiding in the kitchen, thats a fully grown Jim Carrey in a baby onesie cowering under a table.
From start to finish, the film is dreamlike in every sense of the word, and some of the visuals are so stunning that its easy to assume that they were achieved with the aid of digital imagery. However, one of Joels longest and most engrossing trips into his eroding memory shows characters enter doors to certain rooms and emerge from others, needing to disappear and impossibly reappear in a different costume seconds later.
Well, nothing is impossible, not according to Gondry. Leaning on his theatre background, the director had sets built that allowed his actors to exit, run at full tilt down a hidden tunnel whilst changing, then appear from the other side of the shot without a single cut. The technique supposedly caused online tension between Gondry and Carrey, who thought that the pace was too fast even for him!