10 Movie Scenes You Won't Believe Didn't Use CGI

This’s a bizarre case, since pre-Tron CGI was so basic that virtually nothing could be called computer generated imagery, much less relied on to touch up a movie’s special effects. Practical effects still reigned supreme circa the early eighties, with the legendary likes of Rob Bottin and Rick Baker battling it out to offer the most impressive werewolf transformation the screen had ever seen using only the application of makeup and latex.

In this context, it only fell on computers to supply basic imagery like, say, the aerial view of New York which appears on the screen of Snake Plissken’s onboard computer. There was just one problem with that, though.

As simplistic as a CGI-model of New York may seem now, in 1980 it would have cut a chunk out of Carpenter’s budget to magic one up. So what did the filmmakers do?

Simple! Paint an existing scale model of the city black and frame each building with neon green tape, then film it from above, thus building an actual miniature view of New York to stand in for the computer generated one the plot required.