---
title: 'Top 10 Practical Movie Effects of All Time'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=NEAihk8QaVc'
video_id: 'NEAihk8QaVc'
date: 2026-07-01
duration_sec: 641
---

# Top 10 Practical Movie Effects of All Time

> Source: [Top 10 Practical Movie Effects of All Time](https://youtube.com/watch?v=NEAihk8QaVc)

## Summary

This video counts down the top 10 practical effects in movie history, showcasing how filmmakers achieved stunning visuals without CGI. From forced perspective in 'The Lord of the Rings' to the iconic hallway fight in 'Inception', it highlights the creativity and craftsmanship behind these memorable moments.

### Key Points

- **The Lord of the Rings: Forced Perspective** [00:26] — Peter Jackson used forced perspective with oversized/undersized props and motion control to make actors of different heights appear to be the same size.
- **An American Werewolf in London: Makeup Transformation** [01:28] — Rick Baker created a groundbreaking werewolf transformation using makeup and practical appliances, taking 30 technicians, six months of prep, and a week of shooting.
- **The Thing: Hand-Modeled Creatures** [02:39] — Rob Bottin worked 57 weeks straight, surviving on candy bars and cola, to create all the creatures for 'The Thing' using clay, foam, rubber, and paint.
- **The Ten Commandments: Parting the Red Sea** [03:35] — Cecil B. DeMille achieved the parting of the Red Sea by filming water being dumped into a trough from both sides and reversing the footage.
- **Star Wars: Opening Shot** [04:14] — The opening shot of 'A New Hope' featured a 4-foot model of a Star Destroyer, created by Industrial Light & Magic, which set the tone for the entire trilogy.
- **Jason and the Argonauts: Skeleton Fight** [05:09] — Ray Harryhausen spent 4.5 months animating the skeleton fight, producing just 13 frames (half a second) of footage per day, working entirely alone.
- **2001: A Space Odyssey: Stargate Sequence** [06:12] — Doug Trumbull used a slit-scan technique, exposing each frame millimeter by millimeter from the center outward, to create the 10-minute stargate sequence.
- **Royal Wedding: Dancing on the Ceiling** [07:19] — The rotating set for Fred Astaire's dance was built into a geared barrel with anchored furniture, allowing the camera to rotate with the room.
- **The Dark Knight Rises: Plane Hijack** [08:15] — The opening plane hijack involved stuntmen jumping from one plane to another, with the second plane suspended from the first, and the fuselage dropped from thousands of feet.
- **Terminator 2: Mirror Room Trick** [09:06] — The mirror scene was achieved by using a hole into an identical mirrored room, with a hollow prosthetic of Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton's twin sister.

### Conclusion

The best practical effects convince audiences that the impossible is real, often using simple, clever solutions rather than complex digital wizardry.

## Transcript

CGI is all the rage in Hollywood movies, from big sci-fi epic down to little ordinary dramas. But sometimes, the more practical approach is best. These are the top 10 practical effects of all time. A wizard is never linked, Frodo Baggins, nor is he earlier.
He arrives precisely when he means to him. Starting us off at number 10, The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Peter Jackson pushed the envelope in countless ways for his token-adapted triptych, securing a best VFX Oscar for each entry in the series.
But some of his best effects were more clever slide-of-hand than digital wizardry. Face with the problem of putting two average-sized actors in the same room to play characters of wildly different scales, Jackson often used force-perspective by exaggerating the distance
between an actor and the camera. He would use oversized props for Elijah Wood and undersized props for Ian McKellen and put one far behind the other while positioning the camera in such a way that they looked much closer. And if he wanted to move the camera, wouldn't that break the illusion?
Jackson used something called motion control to move the actors' counter to the camera's movement in order to maintain the illusion. And when you couldn't see the actors' face, Jackson just used the good old-fashioned wig on a child technique, classic.
Next up at number 9, an American Werewolf in London. When John Landis first set out to transform and man into a wolf in 1981, he approached a computer specialist to ask if it were possible to aid the transition with computer graphics.
His answer? Yes, absolutely, but not in that decade. So he called up Rick Baker to do it with makeup instead. They created a transformation unlike anything anybody had seen before. It took 30 technicians, six months of preparation, and a whole week of shooting to pull it off.
At 10 hours, each morning for makeup application and three at night for removal. Every shot in the transformation involved a specifically planned appliance that physically underwent just a small section of the transformation, like the rubber hand that stretched pneumatically,
or the rubber body that David Norton piloted with his head sticking out of a hole in the floor, or the incredible shot of hair growing that was actually a reverse shot of hair being pulled through holes in rubber. In the end, the effect was so successful that the Academy created a whole new award category
to honor them. At number eight, John Carpenter's The Thing.
When John Land is called Rick Baker to do the makeup for an American werewolf in London, he actually pulled him off an incredibly similar project called The Howling, a werewolf story with its own transformation scene to boot. On it, Baker was replaced by his assistant, Rob Button.
The Howling didn't end up nearly as successful as an American werewolf in London, but it did give Button his first break, which eventually catapulted him towards his unbelievable work on The Thing. Check it out. There's no computers here. Every effect was hand-modeled by Button and his team with clay, foam, and rubber, and paint.
In fact, Button had so much to do for The Thing that he worked seven days a week for 57 weeks straight, surviving on a diet of candy bars and cola until the film finally wrapped. At which point, he checked into a hospital for exhaustion, all to create some of the
most nightmare-inducing creatures ever seen on screen. Let my people go! Number seven, the Ten Commandments.
We are, of course, talking about the parting of the Red Sea. All the way back in 1956, this absolutely monumental movie moment was brought to life with a little bit of optical compositing and a whole lot of water.
In order to achieve the massive parting of the sea, Cecilby DeMille actually filmed tons and tons of water being dumped into a trough from both sides and then reversed it. When combined with the walls of water-filmed sideways, it created a truly miraculous spectacle.
And it's actually a remake of DeMille's previous Ten Commandments, shot in the 1920s, which had a similar but smaller effect. Back then, DeMille used the same method to shoot the sea, just with less color, less sound, and a couple fewer tons of water.
Next up at number six, Star Wars. We mentioned Star Wars for its CGI, but where would we be if we didn't mention the original trilogy's practical effects? When Luke is set out to make the film and found no effects company capable of what he'd
planned, he decided to create one, thus became industrial light and magic. What makes Star Wars so special is that it was the first film of its kind to feature such a saturation of effects in nearly every frame, from stop motion to blue screen to monster costume,
Star Wars had it all. But if we had to pick one shot, we'd probably pick the very opening of a new hope, upon which the success of the entire trilogy hinged. It was make or break, as audiences saw Luke as his version of space combat for the first time,
and in the end, expectations were shattered. What's even better is that they had intended to model that first star destroyer at 50 feet long, but when they ran out of money, they could only manage four. And yet it is still one of the most epic images ever committed to celluloid,
all without the help of a computer. At number five, the skeleton fight from Jason and the Argonauts. If you've never heard of Ray Harryhausen, let this be your introduction. Ray was one of Hollywood's most esteemed stop motion animators.
Originally inspired by King Kong, who is subway destruction sequence and narrowly missed this list, Ray took a playmation at a very young age. And by the time he reached Jason and the Argonauts, he was pioneering techniques that seamlessly
blended live action with stop motion footage. It is astonishing how very real, alive, and life-size his monsters look. Even though they are clay managers shot completely separately from the actors shown here. In fact, it took Ray nearly four and a half months to create this sequence,
during which he managed just 13 frames or just over half a second of footage each day. And the kicker is that he worked completely alone. No assistants, no 30% team at his side, just Ray Harryhausen in his studio bringing monsters to life.
Next up at number 4, 2001, Space Odyssey. Kubrick's unforgettable space opera boasts hundreds of effects shots, all before the era of computer-generated effects,
even before anyone had seen a full image of Earth. And while the celestial sequences are breathtaking, there's nothing quite as cool as the 10-minute hallucinogenic stargate. And while nowadays in his soccer mom with iMovie could probably create a home video stargate montage
of their own, remember that this is the 1960s, and computers still use magnetic tape storage. The task fell to special effects supervisor Doug Trumble, who spent a full two-and-a-half years on 2001, where he famously repurposed the panoramic photograph technique called Slitscan
to shoot the sequence in camera. Basically, he exposed the entire sequence frame by frame, and each frame millimeter by millimeter from the center outward. He's also the same guy who, almost 50 years later,
created the stunning supernova sequences from Tree of Life, again without any help from a computer, which, at that point, just seemed like showing off. Closing in at number three, the rotating set.
Now, we could keep talking about 2001 here, because the $750,000 centrifuge set was probably second only to the stargate sequence, but we're actually going to look elsewhere. If you're thinking inception, that's a good guess,
because the fight choreography in the hallway sequence is absolutely astounding. However, we're actually going to go in the opposite direction, back to 1951 with Royal Wedding, which premiered anti-gravity in a grand fashion,
with Fred Astaire dancing up the walls onto the ceiling and all the way around the room. The entire set was built into a geared barrel, with all the furniture anchored in place, and the camera is fixed to the room so that they rotate together, making it appear as though it is a stair who moves around the room,
not the other way around. Royal Wedding's director Stanley Dunn and actually reused the effect 35 years later for Lionel Richie's dancing on the ceiling, which clocked in as the most expensive music video ever made at that time.
Now, if your bum we skipped over Chris Nolan for his take on the rotating room, may we direct your attention to number two, Dark Knight Rises. Nolan's known for pulling off ridiculous on-screen stunts that any sane director would do digitally.
In addition to rotating a hallway, he exploded a city street, flipped a semi-truck, and were seriously hoping he finds a way to open an actual wormhole for interstellar. But his most impressive stunt yet was the plane highs from the opening of the Dark Knight Rises.
Those stuntmen are actually jumping out of a plane onto another plane, and that second plane is actually being suspended from the plane above it, and that plane's fuselage is actually being dropped from thousands of feet in the air.
And just because we haven't gotten our fill of rotating sets, you should know that the interiors of the scene were shot on a sound stage with rotating fuselage just like the one from inception. Come with me if you want to live.
And finally, at number one, Terminator 2. Yes, Terminator 2's got some wicked special effects from prosthetics and articulated puppets to blowing up LA in this awesome, sliced-and-half costume. But the number one slot goes to something which was just incredibly clever,
and surprisingly, left on the cutting-room floor. In this scene where John and Sarah Conner reset the T-800's learning chip, you can clearly see Sarah and Terminator both from behind and through the mirror. But since Arnie obviously doesn't have a wheel hole in his head,
and CGI wasn't an option, how did they pull this off? I know you're probably thinking they just replaced the mirror with a green screw, but they didn't even do that because there wasn't a mirror at all. That's actually a hole into another identical but mirrored room.
Sitting in front of it is a hollow-styled prosthetic, and behind it is the real Schwarzenegger. But how did they get two Sarah Conners? Even simply, they used Linda Hamilton's twin sister, because when it comes down to it, the simplest special effects solution is usually the best,
because ultimately, it's not about man-hours or model size or number of polygons used. It's about convincing the audience that something totally impossible is actually real, and that's exactly what they did here, which is why we think that this is the best use
of practical effects without going to CGI. So what do you think? What are your favorite special effects shots that we left out? Did you find any of the shots on this list underwhelming? Let us know in the comments below and subscribe to CineFix for more NDWire movie lists.