10 Movie Scenes You Didn’t Know Used CGI Trickery

6. The Entire Movie - Brokeback Mountain

Brokeback Mountain isn't the first movie that comes to mind when you think about mind-blowing special effects, but with no exaggeration at all, the entire movie is littered with some exquisite CGI, green screen and compositing work.

A behind-the-scenes look at some of the movie's effects work speaks for itself: flocks of sheep, mountains, clouds and clumps of trees are all examples of things that were either added or enhanced in post-production, and the seamless integration of this work is so good that you'd never notice without first being told.

Here's a specific example. In the below shot - which is a composition of several different images - the sheep in the background have been duplicated and colour-corrected, because an insufficient number of the animals were available for the director to shoot with on the day.

Brokeback Mountain CGI sheep
Focus Features

Brokeback Mountain isn't a complex movie in terms of its scale - there are no explosions, car chases, shootouts, or anything of that sort - so it's surprising to learn that a simple romantic drama requires the use of so much special effects work.

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.