---
title: 'Amazing Effects in Classic Films - How Did They Pull It Off? | Part 9'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=wDOvh2XaP5M'
video_id: 'wDOvh2XaP5M'
date: 2026-06-30
duration_sec: 946
---

# Amazing Effects in Classic Films - How Did They Pull It Off? | Part 9

> Source: [Amazing Effects in Classic Films - How Did They Pull It Off? | Part 9](https://youtube.com/watch?v=wDOvh2XaP5M)

## Summary

This video breaks down the visual effects behind iconic scenes from classic films like Citizen Kane, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and Speed. It reveals the practical techniques, happy accidents, and creative problem-solving that made these moments memorable. The hosts also discuss the evolution of effects from miniatures to early digital morphing.

### Key Points

- **Citizen Kane Crane Shot** [01:20] — The crane shot was extended using a traveling split screen technique with a miniature and a seam (edge of curtain) to blend live action and miniature footage.
- **20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Squid Redesign** [03:04] — The first squid sequence was a failure; Walt Disney hated it. The reshoot cost $250,000 and used a massive hydraulic squid with 40-foot tentacles operated by 28 technicians.
- **Tora! Tora! Tora! Accidental Plane Crash** [04:46] — A radio-controlled plane went out of control and crashed into paper-mâché planes, creating an unplanned but realistic scene. No stuntmen were harmed.
- **Willow's Digital Morph** [07:31] — The first digital morphing effect was used in Willow (1988), developed by ILM. It was a 2D transformation system that morphed live-action footage of a goat, ostrich, tiger, and woman.
- **Speed Bus Jump** [08:42] — The bus jump was a real stunt with a real bus and driver. They had two attempts; the first failed (bus flew 100 feet too far), but the second succeeded. The driver used a special harness to protect his spine.
- **The Taking of Pelham One Two Three Train Crash** [10:11] — The train crash used miniatures for underground shots and a full-size train car driven down Hollywood Boulevard for the surface breakout. The car was flipped using a pipe ramp and cables.
- **The Dark Knight Explosion** [11:47] — The explosion was a mix of a real explosion on the first floor, stunt performers driving off, and a 22-foot miniature model built for the aftermath. The miniature was comped into a location shot.
- **The Raid Backbreak Stunt** [14:06] — The backbreak stunt was achieved by stitching three shots: a fall with wires, then two landing shots with the body bending different ways, all blended in post.

## Transcript

giant squids stunts gone wrong and a bus that defies gravity all on today's amazing effects, but can you guess how it was done before we tell you?
So you're going to click play, watch the clip, and try to figure out how they accomplish the effect at the time that they make it. And then this kiss kiss kiss, spacebar. All right ready and clicking play.
I've seen this once in a film class in college. Whoa. Whoa. That lighting change is amazing. Well we're still going up.
On a Tuesday. I would say it's a variation of like two to four stitch shots just cutting maybe on this beam. They did a crane shot up. And then the rest of the shot once it goes past that first
thing, that is everything moving downward. Is that stupid? Is that a stupid guess? That's probably a stupid guess. Citizen Kane is one of the films that changed filmmaking forever released in 1941
and directed by a 25 year old Orson Wells who utilized non-linear storytelling and groundbreaking visual techniques with the help of cinematographer Greg Tolin and effects artist Lin would done. And this shot here is a great example of that. Originally this move up was much shorter
rising up past the curtain and arriving at the two men right after that. But Wells wanted the move to feel more grand in scale. So Lin would done use a traveling split screen technique and a miniature that would match the live action move. Once the miniature was shot, he'd pan off the live action footage
using a seam like the edge of the curtain so he could seamlessly move into the miniature shot. Then off again back to the live action to finish it off. It's such a simple technique and one that is still used effectively today. Look at those legs. Dude, that octopus is as
needy as my ex. That actually looks way better than it should. Dude, this is wicked. This is from the 50s. I'm like a little bit turned on. They did it practically and a lot of that stuff,
it has to be on like strings or something and someone's controlling it. So they're and some sort of tank and get real water and then they just have some animatronic squidward going to town. Released in 1954, 20,000 leads under to see was a massive hit for Disney largely thanks to
the epic giant squid battle which was almost a massive embarrassment. What you see here is the second attempt at this sequence. The first attempt took place at sunset with a completely unrealistic squid controlled by wires that are often visible in the scene making for an unintentionally
comical sequence even for those days. And Walt Disney shows up and he said, I just saw your dailies and he started watching what you're doing here. He said, you're making a keystone comedy
cops movie. This is terrible. So having seen and hated the sequence, especially the squid, Walt Disney went off with his team of Imagineers to come up with a squid design that would work much better for the film. In the meantime, director Richard Fleischer and writer Earl Felton came up with a whole
new approach to the scene. Placing it at night in a bad storm to both up the intensity and help conceal a lot of the issues that come with the squid. Even giving the camera more motion as they did in the end went miles to help sell this whole thing. But the biggest upgrade was the new squid. Instead
of the B movie style string controlled monster, they had this massive hydraulically powered mechanically operated creature with tentacles stretching up to 40 feet that took 28 technicians behind the camera
to puppeteer and weighed two tons. This ingenious redesign also allowed for more realistic movements in the tentacles by using vacuum hoses in the arms which caused the tentacles to curl when inflated and go straight when deflated. Finally, they brought in the second unit director, Jim Havens,
who was well known for directing large stunt scenes and ended up directing most of the sequence. But in the end, they ended up spending an extra $250,000 to reshoot the sequence which is almost $3 million today. But it paid off on the release when it became the third highest-grossing film of
the year and won an Oscar for special effects. Another movie I haven't seen Tora Tora Tora. Oh hell yeah. Oh my god. That man's dead. Wow. This is real and I just watched a man die.
Oh it's obviously on dummy. Look at me being a dummy. Oh my god. Oh my god. That's done dude. Really ate it. That looks so real. Did you guys get the shot? We almost lost Darryl.
Practical. And it's just a dummy. That's the only thing that makes sense. This whole scene is like your penchant for sarcasm. It is real. One of the most impressive and legitimately terrifying moments of 1970s Tora Tora Tora comes from the attack on Wheeler Field where a fighter plane
explodes and crashes into a row of parked planes with several soldiers running for their lives. The thing is that wasn't supposed to happen. The plane, which was radio controlled and packed with gasoline and explosives, was supposed to taxi down the runway and explode at the end as it
destroyed by an enemy plane. But after the plane sheared its propeller, it went out of control and took an unplanned turn left into a row of paper mache planes and barrelled toward the stuntman who had to run for their lives, including this guy who had one hell of a close call.
But since no one was harmed, the accident was used in the final film adding a whole lot of intensity and realism since these performers weren't acting. Next up we're taking a look at the first digital morphing effect. But before we do, let's take a look at an amazing new tool for filmmakers
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for it's Ice Film Riot and use the code Film Riot 10 to save 10% on your first purchase. It's called Willow. Another movie I haven't seen. I often have this problem as well. I don't know what's going on here. I don't really don't know, it's just a lot of things happen. I've
just more struck that ostrich was the first animal conjured. What is happening? And now it's a turtle. There's just so much down back here. You tell me I don't really... I'm not. I really don't have
the bandwidth for this. It's a person? What is going on? All right, how to get a girl? Get a goat. How did they do this? Cocaine at crafty? I don't know. F*** a final. That just looks like someone did
a bunch of drugs and then it just happened. Back in the late 80s when most visual effects were still done with puppets, miniatures or optical tricks, Willow came along and quietly changed everything. In one of Willow's most iconic scenes, a sorceress is transformed through a series of animals before
finally turning into a human. And this was done through the first-ever digital morphing, which morph spelled M-O-R-F was coined on this film and was a 2D transformation system developed at industrial
light and magic. It allowed artists to digitally morph real footage from one object to another in a smooth, continuous transition. And at the time, that had never been done with live action footage. To assist the morphing, puppets were created that could be adjusted to help the process like this
goat with its extendable neck to match the form of the ostrich it was morphing into. And of course a plate of a real tiger and woman which they match movement for as well. This was the first time practical footage had ever been digitally altered like this for a feature film. It earned ILM a
technical achievement award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and became the foundation for morphing effects seen later in projects like Terminator 2 and Michael Jackson's Black or White music video. The on-the-bought sounds like a flavor of donut. I believe I can see how
God the 90s were wild. I'm gonna say they just did this. I'll make sure of practical and miniature. Released in 1994, speed is littered with clever effects and techniques that all still
hold up over 30 years later. And it's due to the amount of practical that was used among the digital like in this shot here. This isn't a miniature, this is a real bus driven off a ramp by a real stunt driver. And they only had two attempts to get it right since they only had two buses to destroy.
And the first take didn't go as planned. The angle was off in the bus launch over 100 feet farther than it was supposed to completely destroying the bus and one of the unmanned cameras. But thankfully on take two everything went perfectly and most importantly the stunt driver was unharmed thanks to
a specially designed harness invented by the stunt coordinator of Jurassic Park. The harness kept the driver suspended in the bus during the crash to protect his spine from the brutal impact. But of course they didn't actually jump the bus over a gap in the highway so after some clever editing to
elongate the moment, digital matte paintings and compositing was used to remove the road. Add in the buses shadow some additional stock elements of smoke and so on and they had one of the most iconic moments of the film. Another speed, okay. This dude does not slow down. Wow, that was a
miniature. That was for sure a miniature. Every 80s to 90s director watches the edit and then goes can you make the scene longer? Oh shit. So it's mostly miniatures as my guess up until the bus comes out
of this birthing canal in Hollywood and jumps that it's a real bus. They got some cameras hidden there. The underground I would say is just miniatures but then it coming out of the thing I think they
actually just did that. This one is a mix bag of techniques including miniatures which is kind of obvious and a full-size train car that they actually shot down Hollywood Boulevard. The miniatures were all used for the underground shots. For this one eighth scale train cars were made about 15 feet long
and filmed in slow motion to simulate full-size momentum. But the real meal here is when the train breaks through to the actual street. Like the bus shot they actually did this. A full-size replica of the metro car was built on top of the vehicle driven by a stunt driver who had to navigate through
a small port hole so he wasn't seen by camera. When it came time for the stunt they shut down four blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and match that thing off of a ramp and through the Hollywood station sign. For this shot digital matte paintings and some compositing was used to extend the background
but overall they just did it for real. To get the car on its side they drove it up a pipe ramp to flip it then slid it down the road using cables and some spark mechanisms which you can clearly see here. It's a great ending shot that serves as a callback to that earlier bus jump.
That's Files Hell yeah. Oh my god. Damn! I don't know I was 12 I used to work for the FBI female body inspector. All right visual effects were not that good back then. That had to have been like
there was a demolition happening of a building and they just capitalized on that. It feels like they demoed a real building like a building was gonna be demoed and they were like hey quick shoot it. This 27 year old shot looks incredible so much so that both Justin and Josh thought they
actually demolished a building but in reality we have a mix of techniques here similar to speed. To start a real explosion was set off on the first floor of a building. We're creating an explosion as if our bad guy has put in several hundred pounds or thousand pounds of a high explosive
in this building. What will happen is when we initiated these will all be covered in debris desks or whatever you can see some desks here that will be coming out the windows etc.
There'll be a gas fall coming out fireball coming out approximately 40 or 50 feet and then there'll be a dust cloud that comes out and follows it out. In front of that explosion stunt performers drove off in the police car which was rigged with a ram that would launch the back of the car up as if
hit by the shockwave and all captured with a total of 14 cameras. For close-ups of the actual actors inside the car another hydraulic rig was made with the car on top of it that would bounce that police car with the actors inside and a fireball exploding behind them giving us this great
connective tissue to the sequence. Then the most impressive element here was this remarkable 22 foot model built in front of a blue screen. It was constructed as the aftermath of the explosion with insane detail down to calendars and paperwork. Then was reconstructed with breakable sections for
the explosion to reveal the destruction underneath. All topped off with this pan reveal of the final destruction which was the model comped into a very simple location shot with one green card. If anyone of the multiple elements didn't hold up the whole thing wouldn't have landed but every department
brought incredible work and in my opinion it's all held together by the effectiveness of the miniature. I'm personally most blown away by the close-up shots of the destruction in the end. The papers flying around the flickering lights in the building it's all impressively convincing.
First stunt's awesome he just sends them. Ow! That's what I want to do to my back all the time. Just fold me like a lawn chair. It just feels like the stunt real and they just have him
comped into the final landing pad move. Yeah I would say they threw a stunt man and then the landing we probably like landed on pads and then they just messed him up digitally. The raid is a brutal action
film directed by Gareth Evans and with a budget of just over a million dollars they relied heavily on very clever techniques to get some of the more intense moments like this backbreak. To pull this off safely the filmmakers captured three separate shots that they would stitch together in post.
For the first shot the stunt performer was put on wires and launched from one floor down to the next where he landed on pads with the railing removed. For the next two shots they rebuilt that section of wall and had the performer wired up just above it so they could drop him down twice. First with his
body bending one way and then again with the body bending the other way on impact. Then in post those two landing shots could be stitched together for the final impact then blend with the first shot of the main fall to give us this final violent moment which even frame by frame sells perfectly.
It's a simple and inventive solution to what usually would be a way more expensive problem to solve. So we had traveling mats all in camera practical effects digital compositing and happy accidents
all the product of human problem solving through creativity and collaboration and I think that's why they stand the test of time and why I'll never get bored of watching them but how many effects did you get right let us know below and if you have a shot you'd like to see us break down let us know
in the comments as well and until next time don't forget to write shoot and it repeat. Still here my day interested in this video where we look at how they made Superman fly in the late 70s or this one where we take a look at how skyfall did that train crash scene. Both are nice
thanks made one I'll see you later talk to you later