10 Movie Moments That Look Like CGI But Aren't
6. Making Will Ferrel Giant - Elf
Forced perspective is one of the most unique and creative ways of selling a shot or sequence and messing with an audience's mind. The likes of the Lord of the Rings are the most famous franchises to have used this technique successfully, mainly in the sequences set in the Shire where the Hobbits are shown as small dwarves in comparison to Gandalf the Grey.
Will Ferrell's 2003 beloved Christmas classic, Elf, also makes use of this technique throughout its runtime, though any audience member would have been forgiven for just assuming the whole film was reliant on some post-production CG editing.
One of the best examples of this in effect is during the scene where Buddy Hobbs attends school and is made to look absolutely huge in comparison to his fellow classmates.
Instead of this being the work of a computer generated image to make Ferrell's character look hilariously huge, the effects team for the film built a large wooden stand for the world's best elf to take a pew on and then shot from the best angle that brought out the forced perspective they wanted.