10 Genius Movie Tricks You Totally Take For Granted

To modern eyes, a fusion of live-action and animated elements might seem incredibly simple, given that green screen tech makes it a relatively trivial effect in the grand scheme of things.

Yet back in 1964, Mary Poppins' elegant combination of live-action actors with 2D animated characters was truly groundbreaking, especially when you consider the amount of tactile interaction which Mary (Julie Andrews) and Bert (Dick Van Dyke) have with the animated penguins and surrounding environment.

While basic blue screen tech existed at the time to place actors in front of artificial environments, the process by which the duo could convincingly interact with the penguins was something else entirely, requiring an insane amount of time, money, and sheer effort.

The scene was realised with the sodium vapor process, where the actors were shot against a white screen lit with sodium vapor lights, which give off a yellow hue.

A camera was then fitted with a prism which filtered the light to another reel of film, generating an extremely crisp matte to isolate the actors from the background.

Crucially, this technique was accurate enough that the animated background could even penetrate through Mary Poppins' veil, as wouldn't work with blue screen compositing of the period.

Needless to say, the film's Best Visual Effects Oscar win was most certainly well-earned.