---
title: 'How a 5-Person Team Made an Oscar-Winning Movie''s Effects | WIRED'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=hFFopPPrGiE'
video_id: 'hFFopPPrGiE'
date: 2026-06-28
duration_sec: 0
---

# How a 5-Person Team Made an Oscar-Winning Movie's Effects | WIRED

> Source: [How a 5-Person Team Made an Oscar-Winning Movie's Effects | WIRED](https://youtube.com/watch?v=hFFopPPrGiE)

## Summary

The directors of 'Everything Everywhere All at Once' explain how they achieved the film's ambitious visual effects with a small, resourceful team. They combined practical effects, like puppets and in-camera tricks, with digital visual effects, drawing on their experience making low-budget music videos.

### Key Points

- **Small Team, Big Effects** [0:21] — The film had nearly 500 visual effects shots, but these were completed by a core team of just five people, which is unusual for a modern movie.
- **Low-Budget Filmmaking** [0:39] — The film is an independent, low-budget production. The directors used a combination of special (practical) and visual (digital) effects to achieve the desired look.
- **Multiverse Travel Sequence** [1:17] — For a sequence where the character Evelyn zooms through many universes, the director shot his own stock footage with a pocket 4K camera. They used a low-tech LED panel setup to project this footage, allowing the actress to react in real-time.
- **100% Practical Effect** [3:04] — A scene where Michelle Yeoh's character flies backward in an office chair was achieved entirely in-camera. They used a slow shutter speed, pushed her on a wheelbarrow, and used a hidden leaf blower, then sped up the footage.
- **Practical Puppets** [3:53] — The film used practical puppets, like a raccoon and 'hot dog hands,' built by the Hamer Effects team. These allowed actors to react to real objects, making the performances more authentic.
- **Story-Driven Effects** [4:48] — The core philosophy was that visual effects must serve the story. They avoided generic sci-fi effects like 'waves of blue energy,' instead celebrating simple, charming techniques like jump cuts and smoke, inspired by early cinema.

### Conclusion

The film's unique visual style was born from a combination of creative problem-solving, a small dedicated team, and a focus on storytelling over photorealism, proving that ambitious effects are achievable on an independent budget.

## Transcript

hi i'm daniel kwan i'm daniel scheinert
i'm zach stoltz we directed and i'm
visually affected everything everywhere
all at once
oh first take
daniel's new movie is about a chinese
immigrant who finds herself in a sci-fi
action film
we ended up having almost 500 visual
effects shots but we did that with
mostly just five people which is kind of
unheard of you look at any modern movie
and you look at the visual effects
credits and it's it just goes forever we
ended up doing a lot of music videos
together where you know music videos
have no budget and very tight
turnarounds you know our film is an
independent film it's fairly low budget
for the ambition of the script and this
was the only way that we could pull it
off it was so creatively fulfilling for
us because we love to be in there in the
weeds as well because that's just how
we've always done things daniel's used a
combination of special effects and
visual effects to achieve the look and
feel of their new film special effects
their their team is all about the
practical effects the onset puppets
visual effects is all in the computer
the movie had a lot of wire removal
and a lot of like simple secret hidden
visual effects and then a couple
sequences that are full blown official
effects craziness across the multiverse
i've seen thousands of evolutions
so evelyn has to zoom through a lot of
universes to get to the desired one
which is a kung fu universe in which you
can fight we knew for a while that this
sequence was going to be in the movie so
i actually got just like a little camera
like a little pocket camera that shoots
4k and i just like everywhere i went i
would just kind of walk around and just
film streets like this this shot of new
york was just me going through new york
the camera had like shutter angle and
shutter speed setting so i just made it
super blurry the order of events is dan
shot a bunch of stock footage himself we
cut it together then we cut that
together
acted it out ourselves to demonstrate it
to michelle and she had to act i think
in slow motion we tried different tempos
then they placed michelle in front of
led panels you know how on the star wars
shows they have this massive led screen
that is like basically a good background
we had like the 99 cent store version of
that three panels this way three panels
this way and they're vaguely leds like
really they're really big pixels but
enough that we could then send um the
video footage through these led screens
they're very very
minimal um and michelle could sit in the
middle and pretend to be flying through
it so we had these these plates all
linked together and then what we did in
visual effects was take it and say okay
well let's add evelyn to this now and
what does it look like when we're
actually going by that fast what are
some of the additional elements that
we're going to add so we ended up toying
around with a bunch of different streaks
that we were doing like anime style
motion lines that were just barely
perceptible adding like some glass that
would shatter when we went through and
just adding as many things to it that
made it feel like there was this extra
energy to it without distracting too
much from what she was actually doing
and being able to see her actually going
through this stuff
now let's look at how the daniels did a
practical effect the first time michelle
yo does a verse jump where she connects
to another version of herself in a
different universe is in an office place
an office cubicle she shoots back in her
office chair and flies through a closet
door what's happening and the fun thing
about that shot is it's 100 practical in
camera we didn't change anything we
basically cranked open the shutter so
you get these really nice streaks and
then we pushed her slowly through the
office she had to act like she was
freaking out in slow motion we had
hidden a leaf blower behind her yeah and
so it's just her in slow-mo getting
pushed on a wheelbarrow and then we just
sped it up and she's actually in the
space flying backwards which was fun to
introduce verse jumping with something
so practical and with the practical
effects came a lot of puppets
some more interesting than others so
jason hamer and the hamer effects team
built our raccoon and our hot dog hands
they functioned like this but they were
um
made with
super realistic uh skin and i think
maybe had some hairs threaded in it was
basically just a a glove that the
actresses could um wear
yeah basically he molded our actress's
hands and then he just
stuck hot dogs where the fingers were
and that's it there's something about
things like that being 100 practical
that just makes shooting it
so
fun and and makes it so much easier
because you the actors know exactly what
they're reacting to and they can play we
didn't have to have someone act opposite
a tennis ball for the raccoon or act
like they had weird fingers they just
had them you know it's such a gift to
ourselves and the whole crew
the core thing that we all realize as
we're doing visual effects on daniel's
film is that it really does need to stay
grounded in what is going on in the
story the visual effects should never
overtake that like there are moments
when we have big visual effects stuff
going on like there's something so
charming about michelle gandri's work
which we love and we were like we don't
want this to be a movie where there's
waves of blue energy like coming off of
everybody as they punch each other like
this is decidedly not
that genre um
we wanted to celebrate the magic of just
like
editing of a jump cut of something
popping and being something different it
goes back to like you know one of the
first sci-fi movies a trip to the moon
that's what they did just mash cuts and
then smoke
so simple we're just doing that with
like cheating because we have after
effects that's the only difference it
really is all about the story 500 visual
effects shots done with five guys in
their bedrooms uh during the pandemic
and you watch the movie and they're not
perfect and they're not going for
realism but they work and they're
beautiful and very proud of them because
they have their own unique style we need
to be encouraging other independent
filmmakers to understand this language
because this is how all movies are going
to be made now is like there's always
going to be some
elements of visual effects even when you
can't tell because the technology has
become so easy and effortless to use
[Music]