10 Movie Innovations That Happened Earlier Than You Think

9. Digital Face Replace - Jurassic Park (1993)

It's now basic practise for action films to use CGI to replace a stunt-person's face with that of the actor they're doubling for, to give a more convincing impression that the movie star is actually in far more danger than they really were on-set.

This gives filmmakers far more options for how to shoot action coverage, rather than having to film strategically to hide stunt doubles' faces.

In addition to modern movies employing the tactic, perfectionist filmmakers have even gone back and re-touched their classic movies.

For the 2017 3D re-release of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, for example, James Cameron replaced the incredibly obvious motorcycle-riding T-800 body double with a CGI mask of Arnold Schwarzenegger's face, and it looks pretty much perfect.

But digital face-replace as a technique actually precedes the CGI revolution of the mid-90s, and was first used in one of Hollywood's early visual effects blockbusters - 1993's Jurassic Park.

In a third-act scene where Lex (Ariana Richards) falls down a vent and dangles for a moment, we see Lex momentarily stare up at the audience, in what was actually an on-set mistake by the stuntwoman performing the scene.

Without time to re-shoot the shot, Spielberg instead employed cutting-edge VFX to paste Richards' face onto the body of the stuntwoman, and only with more recent, higher-resolution releases of the film have audiences actually been able to notice the CGI at all.

Sure, the stuntwoman's muscle tone and body type are clearly not that of a teenage girl, but even so, it's remarkably impressive for a near-30-year-old effect to pass muster so easily.