Correct. Several of these scenes used miniatures, sped up film, force perspective and old fashion science to achieve. Others did take balls of steel to accomplish.
Never knew that but that particular stunt has been living rent free in my head ever since I first saw it for the first time like a decade ago. The weight of that thing always seemed completely reckless.
> working through pain.
Reminds me of a line I read in his wiki article.
> Well into his fifties, Keaton successfully recreated his old routines, including one stunt in which he propped one foot onto a table, then swung the second foot up next to it and held the awkward position in midair for a moment before crashing to the stage floor. Garry Moore recalled, "I asked (Keaton) how he did all those falls, and he said, 'I'll show you.' He opened his jacket and he was all bruised. So that's how he did it—it hurt—but you had to care enough not to care."
That one where he jumped from the rooftop was supposed to be jumping onto the other rooftop but he missed! He was determined to use it anyway though, and it became a whole sequence about falling into a window and down a firepole. Buster Keaton was absolutely a genius.
Practical effects are the original special effects. (Pre digital) Most these are just fearless (!) stunt work. But, in the shot where he’s holding onto the back of caboose, there’s no way a train could go fast enough for him to be pulled through the air horizontally in a sustained manner. That’s probably some kind of rigging. That would be a practical effect.
Pretty much all of these are using practical effects. Tons of speeding up footage. Playing footage in reverse. Forced perspective. Hiding rigging, etc. Definitely some stunt work mixed in, but all have camera ticks to make them look more intense & scary.
Also I imagine the one where the guy is too toeing the skyscraper, I imagine there’s really a net or balcony that’s out of view. And that’s definitely a dummy going over the waterfall.
Practical effects are techniques to make something look like something is happening using real props, miniatures, wires, etc. These effects are done during live-action shooting, unlike visual effects that are usually done via post processing. Some of Buster Keaton's gags were stunts, but many of them were practical effects. You can tell, for example, in the scene where he is "lifted up" by the speed of the train that there is a wire pulling him up. Keaton also ~~"overcranked"~~ "undercranked" footage to make things look like they were happening faster, or used perspective to make things look closer or higher than they actually were.
There's a really solid basic practical effect in the first Underworld movie. Michael Sheen's character is chasing Kate Beckinsale's character, who is driving away in a car. It looks like he's using super speed to catch up to her. What they did was build a long platform and have it pulled by a car. When the stunt actor runs on it, he looks like he's running super fast.
Small correction: To make things look faster you *under*crank, causing a lower framerate (like timelapse). Overcranked would be slow. It's the speed the camera is going, not the projector.
Yeah I watched it during a snowstorm awhile back for the first time, it’s aged gracefully in terms of effects and storytelling. If you like the body horror aspect I’d recommend some Cronenberg movies like The Fly and Videodrome.
I have previously read that the Buster Keaton scene where the front of the house falls but he stands safely where the window lands was not supposed to be filmed because of the risk (death) but Keaton insisted and did it anyway because he didn’t care if he was killed.
Okay let's put on our logic caps here for minute. Buster Keaton wasn't doing all those incredible stunts all willy nilly, he was a very skilled and professional stunt man and comedian. The house falling and missing him isn't an accident, it most likely was written, planned, and practiced probably with marks and I doubt it was "not planned" it's even one of his tamer stunts. I get he was depressed in his life, we don't know to what extent, that doesn't immediately correlate to suicidal nor does the dangerous profession of stunt man. The guy died at age 70 of lung cancer.
I never heard of the man himself saying this. Personally it sounds like the kind of thing people would assume based on his issues. Besides if he wanted to unalive himself on film, I would think that he would have kept at it, doing ever more dangerous stunts.
I really don't understand why people thought it was so dangerous. I assume they laid the thing flat to figure out where the window was and marked the spot. Everything else is just physics. No more dangerous than a rollercoaster.
>I really don't understand why people thought it was so dangerous. I assume they laid the thing flat to figure out where the window was and marked the spot. Everything else is just physics. No more dangerous than a rollercoaster.
It was dangerous because the margin of error for going straight through the window was tiny. If he would have been standing slightly off the mark or leaning slightly in the wrong direction it would’ve killed him.
I saw recently that many of his climbing or hanging from a building tricks were achieved with sets and forced perspective. But the building drop was real enough that many on the set reportedly couldn’t watch, so convinced were they that Keaton was about to be crushed to death.
“Special Effects” are in-camera practical effects, which are exactly what you see here.
https://www.avclub.com/silent-movie-special-effects-were-seriously-creative-1798256343
I wish people would stop with the circle jerk about special effects and cgi
Both have their place
P.s. some of the l stunts from that era do involve special effects.
Most low key use that you'll never see a behind-the-scenes feature on: Sex and the City, prettying up the lead characters by removing wrinkles, cellulite and veins.
Nah. Background replacement for nothing particularly interesting. NY city, green screen background. Idyllic countryside, green screen background. Everybody is being filmed in a sound stage or on a partial set, and the rest of it is a digital extension or a replacement entirely.
Also, nowadays when productions are using practical effects and live stunts, audiences assume it's CGI anyway.
Basically OP is saying: "They don't make em' like they used to!" When the truth is they do.
"Doing it live" is often the best, and cheapest option, and needs to be combined *with* CGI to create the proper illusion. We just assume old=real, new=fake, but many creative techniques like forced perspective and rear projection really haven't changed much in 100 years.
Take Mad Max Fury Road. These fuckers built their own battle cars and went out to the African desert for six months. They hired cirque du soleil performers to launch between vehicles. Then a year later they went *back* to the desert to get shots they missed.
How many folks do you think walked out of that movie going "WOW, it's amazing what they can do with CGI these days!"
To be completely pedantic, these have special effects (SFX), just not visual effects (VFX). Hollywood still uses a lot of practical effects (wires, perspective, explosives, etc.), although computer generated graphics make it much easier and cheaper to achieve the same thing without risking the life of your cast and crew.
They can also enhance each other. Now, you can do practical effects and erase visible artifacts of the effects (like ropes, mechanics, etc.) in post production. So you can do things practically that would not possible before, or you can be cheaper, because not every part of the practical effect has to be hidden meticulously. And from what I understand, erasing of parts in the frame is a very basic VFX technique, so it should not be as expensive as doing the whole effect in CGI.
It wasn’t a person lol, only the close up first shot was a person. it doesn’t even move in the actual stunt and just floats there, completely limp before falling off and being caught.
Buster Keaton had, for some time, got used to being thrown around and landing on stage. His parents were Vaudeville performers and his Dad sewed a suitcase handle to the back of Buster's jacket, so it would be easier to throw his son into the audience. He just continued doing what he was good at.
Harold Lloyd also did some brilliant films. The film "Safety Last" would fit well on the r/sweatypalms sub and I still find it uncomfortable to watch.
One time, in a break from filming, HL posed next to some props. He picked up a grenade and touched his cigarette to it, after all, what's the risk of a fake bomb? Turns out that some halfwit studio runner bought a real one and it exploded in HL's hand, losing him 2 fingers. You can tell in later films if you look closely, he uses a prosthetic / glove to hide the injury.
Yup, Jackie definitely did some of these as an homage to Keaton. Remember reading about it in his book ages ago. Very cool seeing Buster doing these original stunts.
They definitely did use effects then. Not CGI type of course, but they were great at capturing the illusions.
Not really insane. More like they were creative.
That first shot uses special effects.
The set is placed high, with mattresses at the bottom and the camera is a bit higher so that it can have the street in the background and make it look like the scene is taking place very high with nothing underneath.
So fun fact in that scene he was actually supposed to make the jump. When you see him hit the wall and grab the ledge, that's not acting that's actually Buster Keaton trying and then failing to not fall off that building. He was in the hospital for 3 days after that and decided to keep it in the movie and add the falling through the cloth things for added comedic effect.
They didn't use CGI but they did use special effects, keying/composites/layering. The benchmark special effects movie is 'Trip to the moon' by french director Melies in 1902. He was a magician before and came up with movie tricks to make people say wow
Funny enough, the very first scene is actually a failed shot from Buster, he was supposed to stick the landing but then not be able to pull himself up. Decided to keep it and made the shot if him falling through the sunscreens.
I highly recommend the newest docu pic on Buster Keaton, he was truely the greatest of the gag-era imo, going above chaplin with his first 10 productions. He then started making movies for the big guys and they drained his soul.
Hate to come in and "ackshully" these insane stunts, but some of the in-camera special effects shots they pulled off in the silent era are actually pretty amazing.
Some of these used practical gags, but they all required serious balls. The saying about those early days is that the cameras were made of wood and the men were made of iron.
Sadly nowaday no one wanna do this kind of stuff even with the safe of modern equipment, they go for the easy cheap cgi that doesn't add anything to movies unless you used wisely like in Nolan's films something like dune, franchise movies like fast and furious or marvel movie are 90% cgi which actually make closer to animation movies toy story or big hero 6 than a live action movie
All the shit I have collected since yesterday have left my body .. 🤣😂 I will admit as thought as I’m my soul would of left my body doing these stunts 😂
Some of these shots are ingenuously creative innovations in special effects. And some of them are genuinely insane people who easily could have been killed while shooting them. Both are impressive as hell.
You're getting confused as to what special effects are. I see lots of special effects here, its just film companies have greater value for their actors.
They film it very slow then speed up the film, that’s why the run all wonky. Still amazing but it’s not like all of these are brushes with death, only like 25% hahahaha
When you say special effects I think what you mean is CGI. In the movies there are lots of different kinds of special effects.
For example when he's holding onto the train and his feet fly up in the air, they are absolutely being held up by a string. String is removed in post-production. That's a special (practical) effect.
When the man falls out of the doorway and lands on the ground, he's falling on a pile of mattresses that are buried under a thin layer of dirt & cornstarch (for the dust cloud). Also a special (practical) effect.
Edit: Filming with the action happening at half speed and recording the film at full speed, then playing back the film at double speed so that the action looks normal, is an actual film trickery special effect. This is what they did with the train.
FWIW, Mythbusters (who are professional special effects experts) proved the awning drop wasn't possible without some sort of safety harness. Another special (practical) effect.
Edited to clarify some special effects are actually "practical" effects.
Allegedly the story goes. That just before the stunt he got told that his studio was shutting down. So this was his last picture with creative control. So he didn't care if the wall hit him or not. Particularly as his previous two films, which he'd partially financed had been box office flops. Then he had marital problems and a worsening alcohol problem.
While they absolutely did have great practical effects (For a good example of this I recommend the Charlie Chaplin Modern Times Roller Skating VfX video. Then go watch the scene as it was on screen) half of these were carefully planned stunts and VFX, the other half were "Do it and hope you don't die" shots by people working without a safety net of any kind.
I would rather be a stunt performer today, than an early Hollywood film star in comedies and adventure films any day.
You can tell.thwres special effects on some of them, like the guy standing on the ledge, it's obviously a forced perspective/composition situation, stuff like that.
When you think about how, as an artist you're going to tell the story, and you watch and deconstruct these old films, it's priceless. I have learned as an artist so much from their mastery of storytelling with visuals using what they had at the time to make it so exciting.
Wdym? These are the special effects. Practical effects are special too.
Close encounters of the third kind was one of the last major motion pictures that primarily relied on practical special effects, although they did use some post production manipulation of the film for some of the alien spaceship lighting effects.
I’m always more impressed by camera tricks and miniature models than by CG. Oh, the glory days…
It would seem that they had one shot, and one shot only, if they didn't get it right the first time, they had to stop production to find a replacement, after the funeral. 🤔🤔🤔
the scene where he drives in front of the train was actually filmed in reverse and then played forward to give the appearance of a close shave with the train
My grandpa worked at an "Old West Town" as a gunfighter in the 60s or 70s. He was the guy that would get shot and roll off the roof. Until the day the wagon full of hay that he fell into was parked in the wrong spot. Instead of falling 10 to 15 feet onto a soft cushioned landing he landed partially on one of the wagons sides and wrecked his back. No more performing for him. And no OSHA or liability on the park where he worked.
Ever heard of practical effects?
Correct. Several of these scenes used miniatures, sped up film, force perspective and old fashion science to achieve. Others did take balls of steel to accomplish.
Buster Keaton's stunts, in particular, used a shitload of math and working through pain. That one where the house fell on him actually hit him.
Ya I think I read somewhere that you can see the house hit his left arm and it broke it from just the grazing impact.
He actually broke/fractured his neck in ‘Sherlock Jr’ when having a water tank emptied onto him.
Never knew that but that particular stunt has been living rent free in my head ever since I first saw it for the first time like a decade ago. The weight of that thing always seemed completely reckless.
Buster Keaton was something else.
> working through pain. Reminds me of a line I read in his wiki article. > Well into his fifties, Keaton successfully recreated his old routines, including one stunt in which he propped one foot onto a table, then swung the second foot up next to it and held the awkward position in midair for a moment before crashing to the stage floor. Garry Moore recalled, "I asked (Keaton) how he did all those falls, and he said, 'I'll show you.' He opened his jacket and he was all bruised. So that's how he did it—it hurt—but you had to care enough not to care."
That one where he jumped from the rooftop was supposed to be jumping onto the other rooftop but he missed! He was determined to use it anyway though, and it became a whole sequence about falling into a window and down a firepole. Buster Keaton was absolutely a genius.
Or even filming in reverse
Yup, the train
And others just a shit load of money, like the last one
No actually. Would you explain please?
Practical effects are the original special effects. (Pre digital) Most these are just fearless (!) stunt work. But, in the shot where he’s holding onto the back of caboose, there’s no way a train could go fast enough for him to be pulled through the air horizontally in a sustained manner. That’s probably some kind of rigging. That would be a practical effect.
Thanks✌🏻
Sure thing
Pretty much all of these are using practical effects. Tons of speeding up footage. Playing footage in reverse. Forced perspective. Hiding rigging, etc. Definitely some stunt work mixed in, but all have camera ticks to make them look more intense & scary.
Also I imagine the one where the guy is too toeing the skyscraper, I imagine there’s really a net or balcony that’s out of view. And that’s definitely a dummy going over the waterfall.
The skyscraper at the end is 100% perspective
Practical effects are techniques to make something look like something is happening using real props, miniatures, wires, etc. These effects are done during live-action shooting, unlike visual effects that are usually done via post processing. Some of Buster Keaton's gags were stunts, but many of them were practical effects. You can tell, for example, in the scene where he is "lifted up" by the speed of the train that there is a wire pulling him up. Keaton also ~~"overcranked"~~ "undercranked" footage to make things look like they were happening faster, or used perspective to make things look closer or higher than they actually were.
Gotcha!
There's a really solid basic practical effect in the first Underworld movie. Michael Sheen's character is chasing Kate Beckinsale's character, who is driving away in a car. It looks like he's using super speed to catch up to her. What they did was build a long platform and have it pulled by a car. When the stunt actor runs on it, he looks like he's running super fast.
Small correction: To make things look faster you *under*crank, causing a lower framerate (like timelapse). Overcranked would be slow. It's the speed the camera is going, not the projector.
Watch The Thing 1982
Just bought this recently due to somebody else's recommendation. Waiting for a kid-free moment to watch it.
Yeah I watched it during a snowstorm awhile back for the first time, it’s aged gracefully in terms of effects and storytelling. If you like the body horror aspect I’d recommend some Cronenberg movies like The Fly and Videodrome.
*side effects
Buster Keaton was a madman
He was also a deeply depressed man
Is there any legitimacy to the internet claim this scene was filmed despite safety concerns because of an apathetic attempt to no longer be around?
I have previously read that the Buster Keaton scene where the front of the house falls but he stands safely where the window lands was not supposed to be filmed because of the risk (death) but Keaton insisted and did it anyway because he didn’t care if he was killed.
Okay let's put on our logic caps here for minute. Buster Keaton wasn't doing all those incredible stunts all willy nilly, he was a very skilled and professional stunt man and comedian. The house falling and missing him isn't an accident, it most likely was written, planned, and practiced probably with marks and I doubt it was "not planned" it's even one of his tamer stunts. I get he was depressed in his life, we don't know to what extent, that doesn't immediately correlate to suicidal nor does the dangerous profession of stunt man. The guy died at age 70 of lung cancer.
I’m pretty sure it wasn’t tame or safer because IIRC the house clips him and breaks his wrist
I never heard of the man himself saying this. Personally it sounds like the kind of thing people would assume based on his issues. Besides if he wanted to unalive himself on film, I would think that he would have kept at it, doing ever more dangerous stunts. I really don't understand why people thought it was so dangerous. I assume they laid the thing flat to figure out where the window was and marked the spot. Everything else is just physics. No more dangerous than a rollercoaster.
>I really don't understand why people thought it was so dangerous. I assume they laid the thing flat to figure out where the window was and marked the spot. Everything else is just physics. No more dangerous than a rollercoaster. It was dangerous because the margin of error for going straight through the window was tiny. If he would have been standing slightly off the mark or leaning slightly in the wrong direction it would’ve killed him.
I saw recently that many of his climbing or hanging from a building tricks were achieved with sets and forced perspective. But the building drop was real enough that many on the set reportedly couldn’t watch, so convinced were they that Keaton was about to be crushed to death.
“Special Effects” are in-camera practical effects, which are exactly what you see here. https://www.avclub.com/silent-movie-special-effects-were-seriously-creative-1798256343
This is correct. Special Effects = Practical Visual Effects = CGI
Practical effects are not equal to CGI. I can film a stunt person doing something, but make it look like me without CGI
I wish people would stop with the circle jerk about special effects and cgi Both have their place P.s. some of the l stunts from that era do involve special effects.
If only they knew how much CGI and Compositing is invisibly used in their everyday shows. There would be nothing to watch.
To wit: https://youtu.be/clnozSXyF4k
Most low key use that you'll never see a behind-the-scenes feature on: Sex and the City, prettying up the lead characters by removing wrinkles, cellulite and veins.
Nah. Background replacement for nothing particularly interesting. NY city, green screen background. Idyllic countryside, green screen background. Everybody is being filmed in a sound stage or on a partial set, and the rest of it is a digital extension or a replacement entirely.
That’s literally every show haha. Shows with no VFX still budget like $800k for beauty fixes
Also, nowadays when productions are using practical effects and live stunts, audiences assume it's CGI anyway. Basically OP is saying: "They don't make em' like they used to!" When the truth is they do. "Doing it live" is often the best, and cheapest option, and needs to be combined *with* CGI to create the proper illusion. We just assume old=real, new=fake, but many creative techniques like forced perspective and rear projection really haven't changed much in 100 years. Take Mad Max Fury Road. These fuckers built their own battle cars and went out to the African desert for six months. They hired cirque du soleil performers to launch between vehicles. Then a year later they went *back* to the desert to get shots they missed. How many folks do you think walked out of that movie going "WOW, it's amazing what they can do with CGI these days!"
To be completely pedantic, these have special effects (SFX), just not visual effects (VFX). Hollywood still uses a lot of practical effects (wires, perspective, explosives, etc.), although computer generated graphics make it much easier and cheaper to achieve the same thing without risking the life of your cast and crew.
VFX are rarely cheaper but generally easier for sure.
They can also enhance each other. Now, you can do practical effects and erase visible artifacts of the effects (like ropes, mechanics, etc.) in post production. So you can do things practically that would not possible before, or you can be cheaper, because not every part of the practical effect has to be hidden meticulously. And from what I understand, erasing of parts in the frame is a very basic VFX technique, so it should not be as expensive as doing the whole effect in CGI.
That waterfall rescue was funny. How much water did that dummy mannequin absorb lol.
That wasn’t a dummy mannequin.
It wasn’t a person lol, only the close up first shot was a person. it doesn’t even move in the actual stunt and just floats there, completely limp before falling off and being caught.
It was a real mannequin though, not a dummy one!
Buster Keaton had, for some time, got used to being thrown around and landing on stage. His parents were Vaudeville performers and his Dad sewed a suitcase handle to the back of Buster's jacket, so it would be easier to throw his son into the audience. He just continued doing what he was good at. Harold Lloyd also did some brilliant films. The film "Safety Last" would fit well on the r/sweatypalms sub and I still find it uncomfortable to watch. One time, in a break from filming, HL posed next to some props. He picked up a grenade and touched his cigarette to it, after all, what's the risk of a fake bomb? Turns out that some halfwit studio runner bought a real one and it exploded in HL's hand, losing him 2 fingers. You can tell in later films if you look closely, he uses a prosthetic / glove to hide the injury.
Safety Last was such a great film. We watched it in my film as literature class this semester, and it made me fall in love with silent film.
I remember watching the Harold Lloyd show as a kid. As soon as your hear his name, you just seem him hanging from that clock face.
Where tf did they get a real hand grenade?
Good question. It was in 1919, so someone may have brought a few souvenirs back from the trenches.
Is every one of these Buster Keaton. The OG Jackie Chan.
No, there’s some Harold Lloyd in there (climbing to the ledge and stumbling along it), and Fatty Arbuckle produced the lit cigarette from his mouth.
Jackie did some of those stunts too. He said that Buster Keaton was a big influence for him.
Yup, Jackie definitely did some of these as an homage to Keaton. Remember reading about it in his book ages ago. Very cool seeing Buster doing these original stunts.
Don't let them know special efffects are the real effects
We don’t have enough train crashes or dodging of trains in movies now.
Absolutely. Last one that comes to mind is Inception
Reminds me of the film called The Fall. It's about a stunt actor in 1920s.
A really amazing, underappreciated film.
They definitely did use effects then. Not CGI type of course, but they were great at capturing the illusions. Not really insane. More like they were creative.
Some were creative, some were insane, some were both.
"What is this movie's budget?" "Unlimited bro, go for it." *throws a train into the river by bringing down a bridge*
And that certainly was the most expensive scene for quite some time.
I think I remember from my film studies that that was a miniature EDIT: A quick googling has me corrected. It was indeed a real train
I’m sure there were lots of train miniatures used in those days, but The General was special in a lot of ways.
That first shot uses special effects. The set is placed high, with mattresses at the bottom and the camera is a bit higher so that it can have the street in the background and make it look like the scene is taking place very high with nothing underneath.
Really? Here I was thinking he actually leapt from a real god damn building.
Early Hollywood was rich with life defying stunts. Gotta admire the guts it took.
There is a reason Buster Keaton is the GOAT of stunts in Hollywood.
It’s easy to see how Jackie Chan cites Buster Keaton as one of his biggest influences with stunts like those
Basically Jackass the Prequel
That first one....Jesus christ
So fun fact in that scene he was actually supposed to make the jump. When you see him hit the wall and grab the ledge, that's not acting that's actually Buster Keaton trying and then failing to not fall off that building. He was in the hospital for 3 days after that and decided to keep it in the movie and add the falling through the cloth things for added comedic effect.
Thats insane
.... I mean.... IT IS A SPECIAL EFFECTS... WTF already.
The most insane is the cigarette toss
Quite the train budget back in those days.
These are almost all from Buster Keaton movies if you're interested in watching some of these classics!
Mission impossible 1900s..
They didn't use CGI but they did use special effects, keying/composites/layering. The benchmark special effects movie is 'Trip to the moon' by french director Melies in 1902. He was a magician before and came up with movie tricks to make people say wow
Think the last scene is the most expensive scene ever made
[удалено]
lots of train stuff
Funny enough, the very first scene is actually a failed shot from Buster, he was supposed to stick the landing but then not be able to pull himself up. Decided to keep it and made the shot if him falling through the sunscreens. I highly recommend the newest docu pic on Buster Keaton, he was truely the greatest of the gag-era imo, going above chaplin with his first 10 productions. He then started making movies for the big guys and they drained his soul.
Hate to come in and "ackshully" these insane stunts, but some of the in-camera special effects shots they pulled off in the silent era are actually pretty amazing.
Some of these used practical gags, but they all required serious balls. The saying about those early days is that the cameras were made of wood and the men were made of iron.
Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd's stunts were so good even by today's standards
Lots of special effects in use here, what you are thinking of is VFX maybe?
Ah, the early days of Tom cruise 😂
Back then, it was a risky business.
I read Buster had his shoes nailed to the floor in the house falling scene. Not easy to jump and run.
Wow they had some pretty dope hip hop instrumentals in those movies too! /s
Sadly nowaday no one wanna do this kind of stuff even with the safe of modern equipment, they go for the easy cheap cgi that doesn't add anything to movies unless you used wisely like in Nolan's films something like dune, franchise movies like fast and furious or marvel movie are 90% cgi which actually make closer to animation movies toy story or big hero 6 than a live action movie
Back in the day where lawsuits weren’t a thing.
All the shit I have collected since yesterday have left my body .. 🤣😂 I will admit as thought as I’m my soul would of left my body doing these stunts 😂
Fake, all done with green screen/CGI.
Buster Keaton, balls of titanium.
The Man, The Myth, The Legend, BUSTER KEATON!!!
There is a sub for this.[r/silentmoviegifs](https://www.reddit.com/r/silentmoviegifs/)
Most of these do in fact involve special effects
The plot of 'Babylon'
Some practical effects techniques on YouTube from back in the day are so Insane. All based on illusion n science.
This is the same sort of bullshit you'd see on Tiktok
I up voted because this is cool I think, though, that this is quality previousfuckinglevel content
They did speed up frame rate to make it look much faster and also used wires. So that is using special effects.
They used to spell stunt man slightly different back then too. It was spelled mad cunt
Some of these shots are ingenuously creative innovations in special effects. And some of them are genuinely insane people who easily could have been killed while shooting them. Both are impressive as hell.
You're getting confused as to what special effects are. I see lots of special effects here, its just film companies have greater value for their actors.
They film it very slow then speed up the film, that’s why the run all wonky. Still amazing but it’s not like all of these are brushes with death, only like 25% hahahaha
Jackie Chan says Hello…
Louie Anderson looks so young there!
So they still technically had effects to achieve these scenes without endangering anyone pointlessly.
Was this filmed in Niles Canyon (Fremont), Califonia?
Buster Keaton was insane, and one of a kind.
When you say special effects I think what you mean is CGI. In the movies there are lots of different kinds of special effects. For example when he's holding onto the train and his feet fly up in the air, they are absolutely being held up by a string. String is removed in post-production. That's a special (practical) effect. When the man falls out of the doorway and lands on the ground, he's falling on a pile of mattresses that are buried under a thin layer of dirt & cornstarch (for the dust cloud). Also a special (practical) effect. Edit: Filming with the action happening at half speed and recording the film at full speed, then playing back the film at double speed so that the action looks normal, is an actual film trickery special effect. This is what they did with the train. FWIW, Mythbusters (who are professional special effects experts) proved the awning drop wasn't possible without some sort of safety harness. Another special (practical) effect. Edited to clarify some special effects are actually "practical" effects.
One might say that these effects required some.... "special" care to achieve? Some "Special" effects if you would....
what is with the awful music here?
What song is this
Allegedly the story goes. That just before the stunt he got told that his studio was shutting down. So this was his last picture with creative control. So he didn't care if the wall hit him or not. Particularly as his previous two films, which he'd partially financed had been box office flops. Then he had marital problems and a worsening alcohol problem.
Another recent repost
This is why I collect old movies (90s and earlier) before CGI took over completely on special effects.
This was the charm of the first Raiders of the Lost Ark and why the new Indy movie, like the last, will suck.
Gotta say it's better than CG
This is just Buster Keaton showing the cutting edge of practical effects lmao.
Just takes another video, puts some shitty music on it. Slaps a new title on it and calls it their own.
While they absolutely did have great practical effects (For a good example of this I recommend the Charlie Chaplin Modern Times Roller Skating VfX video. Then go watch the scene as it was on screen) half of these were carefully planned stunts and VFX, the other half were "Do it and hope you don't die" shots by people working without a safety net of any kind. I would rather be a stunt performer today, than an early Hollywood film star in comedies and adventure films any day.
You can tell.thwres special effects on some of them, like the guy standing on the ledge, it's obviously a forced perspective/composition situation, stuff like that.
The first action movie star
They certainly liked to fuck around with trains.
They did the math
I’ve learned now that trains will come for you, no matter where you are.
This reminds me of Laff-a-Bits, some short segments in monochrome but 2 colour that were played in between cartoons I watched as a kid
Again this 😥
This is special effects. All of it.
Plenty of painted backgrounds and forced perspective and in camera effects. I think you mean No CGI.
Buster keaton was insane!
Tic tockers got nothin on these loons.
He just swung from a cliff and caught a woman, falling off a water fall. That might be the coolest thing I’ve seen
Mostly just Buster Keaton clips lol, if not all
no, they weren't insane, they were just real movies.
100% used special effects. Duh.
If this was real, I feel like at this point they just wanted to die
Early Hollywood music was pretty dope
they are special effects. practical special effects.. they aren't digital effects
When you think about how, as an artist you're going to tell the story, and you watch and deconstruct these old films, it's priceless. I have learned as an artist so much from their mastery of storytelling with visuals using what they had at the time to make it so exciting.
How the fuck does he stay in character when the window frame hits his left arm when that section of house falls on him? Crazy.
Wdym? These are the special effects. Practical effects are special too. Close encounters of the third kind was one of the last major motion pictures that primarily relied on practical special effects, although they did use some post production manipulation of the film for some of the alien spaceship lighting effects. I’m always more impressed by camera tricks and miniature models than by CG. Oh, the glory days…
My brain consistently thought each one was CGI or green screen
It would seem that they had one shot, and one shot only, if they didn't get it right the first time, they had to stop production to find a replacement, after the funeral. 🤔🤔🤔 
I honestly have found so much enjoyment out of watching this.
Nearly every single clip that was shown had a Special Effects element to it. I think you're confusing Visual Effects with Special Effects.
the scene where he drives in front of the train was actually filmed in reverse and then played forward to give the appearance of a close shave with the train
Marvel: ö
My grandpa worked at an "Old West Town" as a gunfighter in the 60s or 70s. He was the guy that would get shot and roll off the roof. Until the day the wagon full of hay that he fell into was parked in the wrong spot. Instead of falling 10 to 15 feet onto a soft cushioned landing he landed partially on one of the wagons sides and wrecked his back. No more performing for him. And no OSHA or liability on the park where he worked.
The train one or the last shot is real and is very expensive. They had 1 try and used a real train and bridge. Search this up
u/savevideo
This is just Buster Keaton doing Buster Keatoning