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Twister was filmed in 1995 and released in May 1996. So considering it was that long ago, these special effects are pretty spectacular. I remember seeing this in the theater when I was a teenager and being absolutely mind-blown over the CGI. Oddly enough, at the time it didn't make me want to be a special effects artist. It just made me want to be a storm chaser lol. The day I went to see this in the theater, we were actually under a tornado watch that eventually turned into a warning ...and ultimately a tornado did touch down. So it was as though the movie never ended after the credits rolled haha.
@@AllanMcKay Exactly! Lol. My friends and I left the theater, noticed the sky looked like it could produce either a very bad thunderstorm or a tornado (or both). So we went from watching a movie about storm chasing, to actually storm chasing 😬. Probably not the safest thing in the world to do haha.
OMG YES. Twister is one of my favorite films. I remember watching this film over and over again. I used to watch it and rewind it and watch it again. I'm from Kansas so this film felt somewhat relatable and I used to pretend that I had special "storm-sensing" abilities like Bill haha. I was ten when the massive tornado outbreak of 1999 hit south Wichita where I lived. I kind of lost interest in storms after that as it scared the crap out of me to experience a real tornado.
It blows my mind that tornadoes in movies these days are obviously fake and look fake but somehow they were able to make the tornadoes look real and feel real in 1996. Almost like they took a step backwards after twister in my opinion. Overall one of my favorite movies of all time and visually amazing. Not to mention a killer soundtrack.
22:53 to achieve the edge; the whole shot could be blue sky and graded. The background looks like a matte painting there was extensive roto on this though. My colleague did the cornfield, said he would go to sleep and just see corn for months. Good video.
Those visual effects used for the tornados still hold up today. So much passion went into these movies. I know we have better tech today, but it all looks so fake. Nowadays, I feel as though CGI is just used as a lazy way for movie studios to cut costs rather than elevate the film.
About deleted scene from trailer containing tractor. "Fangmeier had previously worked on T2, Hook, Jurassic Park, The Mask and Casper before getting the call-up on Twister from one of ILM’s most experienced visual effects supervisors, Dennis Muren. The senior VFX supe has earlier collaborated with producer Steven Spielberg on the stunning 400 frame POV test shot. “I wasn’t along for that test,” recalls Fangmeier, “but Dennis had the camera operator sit next to the driver in this truck out in Novato, California where he found a dusty road that approximated the film’s Oklahoma locale and then they would be driving along and swerving about. Ultimately all the debris was CG and it had this very hand-held feel which was important to Jan and Steven to represent how people might shoot a real tornado in that situation.”"
I really appreciated the technical discussion for how they rendered the particles. I had always wondered if this was done with sprites. Thanks for taking the time to explain all that Allan.
Actually I'm still hell impressed with the camera tracking in this film. No pressing TRACK bitten back then, and the director shooting all swervy docu style handhelds.
Yeah I remember the VFX sup asking not to add this 'vibration' rig to the cameras to make it even more shaky, so there was a lot of post camera shake. But that doesn't take away from it - they did a fantastic job. Especially the way it was shot, really mind blowing!
@@AllanMcKay Yea, films back then, the live action was often shot VistaVision. You could shoot overscan, so the composition is just the center 3/4 the of the image. VistaVision is huge, you can blow it up into an overscan. That way, maybe they shot with a mostly steady handheld with low frequency shakes, than if the image is overscanned, the can add lots of shakes and shimmy to the already tracked footage. VistaVision was square almost like tv, so they could bounce up and down on the image a lot if they crop it to cinema scope.
@@AllanMcKay The Battle sequence from Return of the King with the ginormous stitched matte paintings and Gandalf riding around like...seems like a lot was going on. :)
please edge of tomorrow this time!!! I've been requesting it for a while.. and i believe alot of us will enjoy as well! Congratulations on getting sponsers by the way...
Thanks Aquib, Edge of Tomorrow would be great I will definitely add it to the list! And thanks I am just testing it out but it would definitely help with the costs involved so I'll see how it goes. Thanks again!
The ray march tornado was fuzzy but the trees and debris wasn't. I wonder if there was a way to output the tornado with a depth buffer. So say it's really impractical to raytrace a tornado at film resolution. You could do a video res 0.5 k ray march twister, and also save a depth map. The trees splinters, trucks, ect can get 1.5k quality or more, but rendered separately. The volume depth buffer is a 3d holdout matte that rubs out the debris when it's hidden by dust.
seeing this was done in 1990's actually puts me to shame... But its also motivating! Now i am dying in realisation that ive not even achieved a single percent of what's actually being done in the industry!
Keep in mind also it's 30 brilliant minds all working on achieving one goal for months on end. So you by yourself, whatever you accomplish is an amazing feat. So keep going!
I am at 20. min... It's great that you decide to do the one of the oldy-goldy. :) I also enjoy studding the effects back then, and still veeery impressed how they did Jurassic Park, back then. It still looks amazing to me. When someone tells me these days, that he can't do some effect because of the slow computer, I usually reply with: "Cut the crap. Your mobile phone have much more power, then all the ILM farms back then", so it's just a bad excuse. I hope you did more of these videos, because it's awesome seeing old software, and how they had to think smart back then. Also, I love, from time to time, to start my Amiga 500 and real 3D, and playing with some modeling and rendering tools they had back then (I think it's mostly nurbs based). I was actually very surprised that Real 3D had a raytrace shadows. Cheers! :)
haha that's so cool and yeah my phone has 6gb of RAM I remember my first PC had 1MB of RAM! If anything having a slower PC actually forces you to be more efficient and crafty which I think is a really great learning experience I plan to do terminator next, and Spiderman far from home - after that Jpark and some of the more recent films so lots in the works. I'd love to make this a weekly thing if time permits That's so awesome Boban thanks for sharing!
@@AllanMcKay Hah... 1MB of Ram, that was probably some 286... EGA graphics... My first comp was C64 (64kb of RAM :) ), got it when I was 7 years (I am 1981 born). Anyway, great to hear you're (when the time permits), continue to work on these videos.... I love T2, and for me, it's still a terrific movie. That morphing effects of T1000 pretty badly aged imho, but some of the practical effects in that movie are mind blowing (minigun scene, for example). Now, back to the Jurassic Park, I remember, several month a go watching some clip (in pretty hi res), of a very first sequence with brontosaurus ( giraffe looking dino))... ua-cam.com/video/PJlmYh27MHg/v-deo.html This scene exactly at 1:00 minute. ...and looking at the shaders, and it looks to me like it is displacement, but they didn't had it back then! How can this be a bump map (I guess, they also didn't had normal maps back then)? What sort of magic is here? Anyway, the point is: Everyone who complains that have a bad computer, is free to re-create this scene, and I can assure him/her, that will be a pretty impressive piece in demoreel, even by today standards. Here's few more ideas for future videos: Starship Troopers, Indenpendence Day, Day After Tomorrow, well even a Forest Gump had that CG feather at beginning. :)
I am Russian, therefore errors in my comment are possible. Allan, i very want to understand VFX, but i don't know were i can study this, and you are the only one, who can help me! I don't understand your videos well, but i hope, what get basic knowledge about VFX with your courses, videos and tutorials. Thank you for this!
Dude love the visual effects you shared. I didn't notice the tractor scene hitting the windshield was early test used for the promo teaser, then later used for the Twister ride at Universal Studios Orlando. Remarkable.
(@ 7:07) Wasn't there a short film made surrounding this footage? Over a decade ago I remember watching a video surrounding teenagers storm chasing in some van, in particular I remember where was a scene on a road where the tornado was chasing them picking up power lines, the film started off in a wheatfield with "Dorothy IV" playing in the background briefly then the rest of the film had "Mobile Home/House VIsit" playing until the very end where it showed the scene of the tractor being thrown and the wheel hitting the windshield. Anyone know exactly where I can find this short film again? Haven't seen it since I was little.
Hey Mr. McKAy., Thank you so much for doing this. I am just starting with VFX. I would like to see something with snakes and snake animations. Or if possible provide sites for studying. Supa Work.
@@TechGamesAU I did one with the corridor digital guys (VFX artists react) that was fun. Right before covid. However I've actually wanted to do a series on this for years, but actually defending bad cgi. It's pretty funny but I get so defensive when I watch UA-cam videos about bad cgi because they don't know the context as to why those shots were bad. So I keep wanting to do an explainer on a lot of these haha
"The movie is terrible, it's more just a showcase for the fx" you're breaking my heart dude hahaha or perhaps it's just nostalgia but my love for this one know no bounds. I love the characters in this.
Awesome man! Yeah definitely brings back memories of me trying to recreate all this stuff in 3D studio dos, including the cow. Although my version of it would probably break the internet with how embarrassingly bad it was haha Thanks for sharing and give your dog a treat or two for being awesome!
Do you mean for note taking specifically? I use my phone notes which sync to Dropbox for random drug throughout the day. But I use one note religiously for most of my stuff I actually have a video coming up on exactly this in a few weeks We also use Google docs for docs shared with me team that we're all working in. Mostly they use it, anything personal of mine I'm mostly living out of one note which is synced across all my devices I think I use the free version if I recall I own office but there was something about the free version that I preferred over commercial
Hai if you're doing the twister movie again what will be your approach. Could you make a tutorial on twister like an f1 or f2 Could you please post the link to the latest f5 twister that you did thanks
I don't understand how this movie STILL looks lightyears more realistic than any other movie with weather effects. Same with the first two Jurassic Parks, they look better than the new ones.
oh nice! I guess it has Helen Hunt, and Wesley from Princess Bride, plus giant killing Tornados, it's a win win right?! Great to hear thanks for sharing!
@@AllanMcKay Yeah, she introduced me to it when I was younger and I always pointed out to her "the VFX are amazing for it's time." Even back then, I was interested in VFX I just didn't know it.
I think from a shooting and composition aspect there's definitely great stuff - but what made Jaws so special was that the shark kept breaking down so they had to minimize it's availability in the movie. Which worked great by showing less of it rather than what was originally planned. Less = more. When CGI comes along typically now you can show things off a lot more freely, which is why suddenly we start seeing too much of various creatures in movies
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This film stills blows my mind. I’ve always been impressed by the tracking. Absolutely awesome for 1995.
Twister was filmed in 1995 and released in May 1996. So considering it was that long ago, these special effects are pretty spectacular. I remember seeing this in the theater when I was a teenager and being absolutely mind-blown over the CGI. Oddly enough, at the time it didn't make me want to be a special effects artist. It just made me want to be a storm chaser lol. The day I went to see this in the theater, we were actually under a tornado watch that eventually turned into a warning ...and ultimately a tornado did touch down. So it was as though the movie never ended after the credits rolled haha.
Wow what a story! Thanks for sharing Breanna! It’s a bit meta with there being a drive in theater in the movie that gets hit by a tornado!
@@AllanMcKay Exactly! Lol. My friends and I left the theater, noticed the sky looked like it could produce either a very bad thunderstorm or a tornado (or both). So we went from watching a movie about storm chasing, to actually storm chasing 😬. Probably not the safest thing in the world to do haha.
OMG YES. Twister is one of my favorite films. I remember watching this film over and over again. I used to watch it and rewind it and watch it again. I'm from Kansas so this film felt somewhat relatable and I used to pretend that I had special "storm-sensing" abilities like Bill haha. I was ten when the massive tornado outbreak of 1999 hit south Wichita where I lived. I kind of lost interest in storms after that as it scared the crap out of me to experience a real tornado.
That movie is more real than the modern weather movies.
It blows my mind that tornadoes in movies these days are obviously fake and look fake but somehow they were able to make the tornadoes look real and feel real in 1996. Almost like they took a step backwards after twister in my opinion. Overall one of my favorite movies of all time and visually amazing. Not to mention a killer soundtrack.
To be fair, rewatching it i see that the effects have aged a little, but the twisters still look great compared to modern movies
the secret CGI cow is hilarious!! great secret movie history there 😂😂🤣👌👍✨✨
I know! So cool haha
I mentioned it to one of the artists on this movie and on Speed 2 and he didn't even know about it
As I'm doing a Twister for a project, your notification comes up with that Breakdown...
Lucky coincidence!
That's great man! You'll have to show me how it turns out!
22:53 to achieve the edge; the whole shot could be blue sky and graded. The background looks like a matte painting there was extensive roto on this though. My colleague did the cornfield, said he would go to sleep and just see corn for months. Good video.
Those visual effects used for the tornados still hold up today. So much passion went into these movies. I know we have better tech today, but it all looks so fake. Nowadays, I feel as though CGI is just used as a lazy way for movie studios to cut costs rather than elevate the film.
About deleted scene from trailer containing tractor. "Fangmeier had previously worked on T2, Hook, Jurassic Park, The Mask and Casper before getting the call-up on Twister from one of ILM’s most experienced visual effects supervisors, Dennis Muren. The senior VFX supe has earlier collaborated with producer Steven Spielberg on the stunning 400 frame POV test shot. “I wasn’t along for that test,” recalls Fangmeier, “but Dennis had the camera operator sit next to the driver in this truck out in Novato, California where he found a dusty road that approximated the film’s Oklahoma locale and then they would be driving along and swerving about. Ultimately all the debris was CG and it had this very hand-held feel which was important to Jan and Steven to represent how people might shoot a real tornado in that situation.”"
I really appreciated the technical discussion for how they rendered the particles. I had always wondered if this was done with sprites. Thanks for taking the time to explain all that Allan.
So if you did The Mummy and Twister breakdowns, now 1995's Jumanji sounds like obvious choice for the next one! :) cheers!
Great idea thanks Marek!
Thank you Allan! Great breakdown on this classic movie.
Thanks buddy great to hear from you
Arnold Gillespie's Twister from Wizard of Oz is STILL amazingly terrifying and that was 1939
Actually I'm still hell impressed with the camera tracking in this film. No pressing TRACK bitten back then, and the director shooting all swervy docu style handhelds.
Yeah I remember the VFX sup asking not to add this 'vibration' rig to the cameras to make it even more shaky, so there was a lot of post camera shake. But that doesn't take away from it - they did a fantastic job. Especially the way it was shot, really mind blowing!
@@AllanMcKay Yea, films back then, the live action was often shot VistaVision. You could shoot overscan, so the composition is just the center 3/4 the of the image. VistaVision is huge, you can blow it up into an overscan.
That way, maybe they shot with a mostly steady handheld with low frequency shakes, than if the image is overscanned, the can add lots of shakes and shimmy to the already tracked footage. VistaVision was square almost like tv, so they could bounce up and down on the image a lot if they crop it to cinema scope.
These case studies are brilliant!! I love listening to your breakdowns! I agree, since you’ve done the Mummy and Twister now, Jumanji should be next!!
You're not the first to mention jumanji!
Twister was amazing. So glad you did this! :) Thank you!
Thanks Luke! Yeah this was a lot of fun - please let me know if there's any other projects you want to see covered!
@@AllanMcKay The Battle sequence from Return of the King with the ginormous stitched matte paintings and Gandalf riding around like...seems like a lot was going on. :)
This is awesome Allan! Thanks for makin' great vids!
Thanks Runsin!!
@@AllanMcKay What do you think about a Matrix (one, two or three) VFX Breakdown? I think they are my favorite movies.
from Tanzania i love learning vfx and i i appreciate you Allan i feel I'm gonna make it br blessed
Really great work Allan. Many thanks Sir :)
Thank you BetaZoid!
please edge of tomorrow this time!!! I've been requesting it for a while.. and i believe alot of us will enjoy as well! Congratulations on getting sponsers by the way...
Thanks Aquib, Edge of Tomorrow would be great I will definitely add it to the list!
And thanks I am just testing it out but it would definitely help with the costs involved so I'll see how it goes. Thanks again!
The ray march tornado was fuzzy but the trees and debris wasn't. I wonder if there was a way to output the tornado with a depth buffer.
So say it's really impractical to raytrace a tornado at film resolution. You could do a video res 0.5 k ray march twister, and also save a depth map. The trees splinters, trucks, ect can get 1.5k quality or more, but rendered separately. The volume depth buffer is a 3d holdout matte that rubs out the debris when it's hidden by dust.
I would love to see a case study on Ex Machina please.
Great idea!
seeing this was done in 1990's actually puts me to shame... But its also motivating! Now i am dying in realisation that ive not even achieved a single percent of what's actually being done in the industry!
Keep in mind also it's 30 brilliant minds all working on achieving one goal for months on end. So you by yourself, whatever you accomplish is an amazing feat. So keep going!
I am at 20. min... It's great that you decide to do the one of the oldy-goldy. :) I also enjoy studding the effects back then, and still veeery impressed how they did Jurassic Park, back then. It still looks amazing to me.
When someone tells me these days, that he can't do some effect because of the slow computer, I usually reply with: "Cut the crap. Your mobile phone have much more power, then all the ILM farms back then", so it's just a bad excuse.
I hope you did more of these videos, because it's awesome seeing old software, and how they had to think smart back then. Also, I love, from time to time, to start my Amiga 500 and real 3D, and playing with some modeling and rendering tools they had back then (I think it's mostly nurbs based). I was actually very surprised that Real 3D had a raytrace shadows.
Cheers! :)
haha that's so cool
and yeah my phone has 6gb of RAM
I remember my first PC had 1MB of RAM!
If anything having a slower PC actually forces you to be more efficient and crafty which I think is a really great learning experience
I plan to do terminator next, and Spiderman far from home - after that Jpark and some of the more recent films so lots in the works. I'd love to make this a weekly thing if time permits
That's so awesome Boban thanks for sharing!
@@AllanMcKay
Hah... 1MB of Ram, that was probably some 286... EGA graphics... My first comp was C64 (64kb of RAM :) ), got it when I was 7 years (I am 1981 born).
Anyway, great to hear you're (when the time permits), continue to work on these videos.... I love T2, and for me, it's still a terrific movie. That morphing effects of T1000 pretty badly aged imho, but some of the practical effects in that movie are mind blowing (minigun scene, for example).
Now, back to the Jurassic Park, I remember, several month a go watching some clip (in pretty hi res), of a very first sequence with brontosaurus ( giraffe looking dino))...
ua-cam.com/video/PJlmYh27MHg/v-deo.html
This scene exactly at 1:00 minute.
...and looking at the shaders, and it looks to me like it is displacement, but they didn't had it back then! How can this be a bump map (I guess, they also didn't had normal maps back then)? What sort of magic is here?
Anyway, the point is: Everyone who complains that have a bad computer, is free to re-create this scene, and I can assure him/her, that will be a pretty impressive piece in demoreel, even by today standards.
Here's few more ideas for future videos:
Starship Troopers, Indenpendence Day, Day After Tomorrow,
well even a Forest Gump had that CG feather at beginning. :)
I am Russian, therefore errors in my comment are possible. Allan, i very want to understand VFX, but i don't know were i can study this, and you are the only one, who can help me! I don't understand your videos well, but i hope, what get basic knowledge about VFX with your courses, videos and tutorials. Thank you for this!
Dude love the visual effects you shared. I didn't notice the tractor scene hitting the windshield was early test used for the promo teaser, then later used for the Twister ride at Universal Studios Orlando. Remarkable.
Awesome loved it
Great Akshay!
(@ 7:07) Wasn't there a short film made surrounding this footage? Over a decade ago I remember watching a video surrounding teenagers storm chasing in some van, in particular I remember where was a scene on a road where the tornado was chasing them picking up power lines, the film started off in a wheatfield with "Dorothy IV" playing in the background briefly then the rest of the film had "Mobile Home/House VIsit" playing until the very end where it showed the scene of the tractor being thrown and the wheel hitting the windshield.
Anyone know exactly where I can find this short film again? Haven't seen it since I was little.
Man, you are great and your deepk knowledge is awesome. Love these breakdowns. My 5 cents are to The Lawnmower Man - this is iconical movie :)
You’re awesome 👏
Thank you Shiv! I appreciate you and the motivating words! Stay awesome! 🙏👊
Hey Mr. McKAy., Thank you so much for doing this. I am just starting with VFX. I would like to see something with snakes and snake animations. Or if possible provide sites for studying. Supa Work.
Thanks night shade so you're looking for a tutorial on how to animate snakes is that correct?
Bro how about the opening scene of the movie where the satellite is going around the earth looking like a N64 render
Haha - yeah not everything holds up too well. Entirely CG renders aren't all that great back in 96
@@AllanMcKay you should do some videos specifically on bad cgi/vfx shots in movies.
@@TechGamesAU I did one with the corridor digital guys (VFX artists react) that was fun. Right before covid.
However I've actually wanted to do a series on this for years, but actually defending bad cgi. It's pretty funny but I get so defensive when I watch UA-cam videos about bad cgi because they don't know the context as to why those shots were bad. So I keep wanting to do an explainer on a lot of these haha
"The movie is terrible, it's more just a showcase for the fx" you're breaking my heart dude hahaha or perhaps it's just nostalgia but my love for this one know no bounds. I love the characters in this.
Are you struggling with your recording software? Many times the video just stops, but the audio continues (i.e. at 50:26-ish)
I love the movie 🍿 That dog looked like my dog 🐶
Awesome man! Yeah definitely brings back memories of me trying to recreate all this stuff in 3D studio dos, including the cow. Although my version of it would probably break the internet with how embarrassingly bad it was haha
Thanks for sharing and give your dog a treat or two for being awesome!
after watching the movie in 4k, theres a few vfx scenes that still held up.
I always wanted to ask what annotation software are you using?
Do you mean for note taking specifically?
I use my phone notes which sync to Dropbox for random drug throughout the day.
But I use one note religiously for most of my stuff
I actually have a video coming up on exactly this in a few weeks
We also use Google docs for docs shared with me team that we're all working in. Mostly they use it, anything personal of mine I'm mostly living out of one note which is synced across all my devices
I think I use the free version if I recall
I own office but there was something about the free version that I preferred over commercial
Hey Allen I love what you do keep up the good work! Can you a vfx study for Avatar?
Where can I find these Vfx assets allan
1 letterman drive, San Francisco :)
Dude I'm tapped when I come to funds can hitch a ride
@@RodneyHamiltonKonscious I'll send you an Uber!
@@AllanMcKay dude I'm in new orleans
Last I'm was in sf was for an atreyu concert and ideas with my ex that was 8 years ago
Is the ef6a real life tornado or not a real life twister
Hai if you're doing the twister movie again what will be your approach. Could you make a tutorial on twister like an f1 or f2
Could you please post the link to the latest f5 twister that you did thanks
Ef4 tornado: Here's Johnny!!!
Very cool 😎
Can you do a VFX study for the Planet of the Apes reboot films?
I don't understand how this movie STILL looks lightyears more realistic than any other movie with weather effects. Same with the first two Jurassic Parks, they look better than the new ones.
Allan Mackay
Sir I like your channels but sir why you don't let us know which software you used .if so please let me know
My mom's favorite movie.
oh nice! I guess it has Helen Hunt, and Wesley from Princess Bride, plus giant killing Tornados, it's a win win right?!
Great to hear thanks for sharing!
@@AllanMcKay Yeah, she introduced me to it when I was younger and I always pointed out to her "the VFX are amazing for it's time." Even back then, I was interested in VFX I just didn't know it.
can you do a breeakdown about the movie FURY ?
That's a great idea Daniel!
Allan McKay a tutorial will be awesome as well , recreating something in this first battle scene : ua-cam.com/video/q21AazXT9xo/v-deo.html
It’s name is Rudy
One day i will become like you 😎😎 as vfx supervisor 😎😎
That's so great Shey, I hope we work together one day!
@@AllanMcKay 😱😱😱😱
It would be interesting to study the latest Harry Potter movies
Do some indiana jones scorpion mode
That would be fun!
Was most of the cgi trasked masked
The CGI trucks or which do you mean
Can you do one for Godzilla King of the Monsters ?
Next do AVERAGES ENDGAME
Way did all take it off youth
Well was rudy
Does JAWS have anything worth covering and breaking down?
I think from a shooting and composition aspect there's definitely great stuff - but what made Jaws so special was that the shark kept breaking down so they had to minimize it's availability in the movie. Which worked great by showing less of it rather than what was originally planned. Less = more.
When CGI comes along typically now you can show things off a lot more freely, which is why suddenly we start seeing too much of various creatures in movies
Not going to see this film, the original beats everything.
@@drsjamesserra this is the original :)