10 Ways TV Shows Blew Your Mind (Without You Even Realising)

HBO's recent Watchmen series is a masterpiece from top to bottom, from its magnetic performances to its cinematography, score, and yes, its plentiful visual effects.

But the most impressive of all the VFX elements is one that might've even passed you by - the reflective mask worn by Looking Glass (Tim Blake Nelson).

Though the mask's reflective nature invites the audience to wonder how the camera's presence was concealed, most surely assumed some post-production tweaking was simply done to paint the camera out.

But of course, there's far more than just a camera to deal with in reality - there's lights, sound equipment, and various crew members who would most certainly get caught in the reflection.

And so, the decision was made to instead have Looking Glass' mask be entirely CGI-rendered, with actor Tim Blake Nelson wearing a green mask on set onto which an extremely lifelike reflective texture could be projected.

Every single environment that the character appeared in was also digitally mapped so that it could then be appropriately reflected in the mask's material, and to achieve the correct depth, distance, and detail of said reflections, Nelson also had to wear a GoPro camera on his head.

It's an unfathomable amount of work for an effect most people watching won't ever fully appreciate, and yet, that's perhaps the point.