This series (and channel) is a blessing. Thank you for the amazing videos!

I was waiting for you to say "I've been CGI this whole time"

VFX compositor here... THANK YOU.

Denis Villeneuve flew in an actual sandworm from his hometown Montreal to star in Dune 2. the worm asked to be uncredited, that's why you don't see his name in the closing credits. what a bunch of legends.

I cant believe these Videos took NO CGI

There's no going back for you dude, you are currently the best VFX related KZfaqr and you gotta keep making the best videos on the internet about VFX.

I feel so bad for anyone working in vfx. Imagine putting hours and hours into making a shot just perfect, only for the director and actors to pretend your work doesn't exist and it was all someone else's work that made it look great. Such an underappreciated job..

25 years in VFX on my side. People have NO IDEA how much CGI are in movies and TV series. I do. This series was amazing! Thank you so much! I hope studios will not boycott you because of it. :-)

I was a set dresser on The Last of Us Season 1. I personally dressed the exterior sets that Pedro Pascal is talking about when referring to a “dressed downtown Calgary”. His comments are correct but leave out how much work came after because like you said, he couldn’t see any of that work during filming. We dressed every street from the ground to about 30ft up. Everything after that achieved with visual effects and “cgi”. I am incredibly proud of the physical work we did on that show, I’m also proud of the artists that took our work over the top.

I laughed having seen Gran Turismo and their "no CGI" having seen it and then going back and reading their claims afterwards

VFX artist here with 9 years in the business. I have been credited directly only 4 times out of more than 100 projects. So when you see the credited VFX folks, that is probably just 10% of the total number of people that have worked on the project. Also the amount of things that get tweaked, removed, replaced or enhanced in a shot is mind boggling, normal movie watchers have no clue that what they are seeing is CGI. The problem is directors not planning for VFX and/or crappy VFX supervisors on set, changing entire storylines, removing entire characters from the movie(A list actor in one instance), and the whole we'll fix it in post mentality. But the biggest problem of all, the deadlines. As a good friend of mine and a beast of a compositor once said: "There is nothing we cant do if they give us enough time".

You touch on a great point here that I think is often missed in these conversations. As a director, a bad VFX shot being in a final cut of a film is as much your responsibility as a bad costume, bad performance or poor lighting. People rag on VFX artists who are often overworked and underpaid without ever stopping to think why the person in charge of the production would make choices that lead to bad outcomes. Whether it's a lack of understanding of how VFX work is done, or just poor general direction, more blame has to be on directors (or producers in cases where a studio has more control than a director which frequently happens) for these decisions. Plenty of movies have thousands of VFX shots that look fantastic, and plenty have very few that look bad. If I were directing a movie in the 60's and decide to cut to a bad looking matte painting, that decision is on me. I think so much of the negative backlash against CG comes from directors who are overly reliant on it and think of it as a short cut to get wherever they want with no restraints.

hearing all practical effects in movie promos gives me same vibes as when companies talk about how they are carbon neutral lol.

My favorite part is not knowing I was watching CGI. Like the examples here of adding snow to a scene, or other examples like making a city skyline, or the grass greener of the shot was filed in Autumn. Hats off to all the wizards that make the magic happen. CGI artist should be both represented more and paid more.

That shot from Jurassic Park was the perfect way to end this series! Thank you for the great work, Jonas!

As a 20+ year experience vfx artist, thank you for helping people understand our work, and how important it is to the modern movies and tv series. Its still a bit it sad that all this extremely hard work is not acknowledged by anyone, and despite the quality that is constantly improving, still gets negative comments from just about anyone involved with movies. But like many superheroes that we helped make come to life, we don’t mind keeping our identity kept “secret”. We can still get some satisfaction from people thinking its not CGI. This means its job well done. So you could also have named your series “NO CGI”. Is really just very good CGI.

Thank you for this wonderful series, Jonas! We all thank you for bringing this to the public's attention. 🙏🏻🙇🏻‍♀️

The Return of the King

The amount of CGI coming in Beetlejuice 2 will never be entirely disclosed, with artists working once again in the shadows. Thanks a lot for this amazing series of videos, I look forward to see what you have in stock for the future of this great channel!

As a VFX artist since the 1990s, THANK YOU. I live and work in Finland, where due to small country's budget constrains, the use of CGI (or VFX in general) in movies is generally much less prevalent than in the blockbuster world. That does not mean no CGI though. Vast majority of VFX here are of the invisible variety - set extensions, clean-ups, fixes, etc. In these cases, there usually is just no discussion about CGI at all. Which is fine in a way, it means the work was done well enough. What that means though, is that we VFX artists are also sort of invisible, and there's little public knowledge about what if anything was done digitally in films and TV shows. In the Finnish equivalent of Oscars, "Jussi awards", there still is no category for best effects - be that stunt work, SFX or VFX. Nada. It's a travesty really. There's now a petition to get us finally recognized, and as there is not much info in the public apart from the line in end credits, the petitioners had to call effects houses and freelancers to poll the extent of CGI work in Finnish films, and to ask us which films we had worked on, and what we did on them. There are cases where the CGI is used in more flashy ways, yet it still gets little or no mention - just like Hollywood. I personally have made CGI trains, planes and tanks (no automobiles though, somewhat surprisingly), created buildings that explode or are in fire, digital doubles of boats, birds and crowds of people... and i do not think many people outside the production know. In a few of these cases, there *have* been examples of the no CGI phenomenon even in my little corner of the world. As the first example i remember, in 2006 I worked on a war movie where the press mantra was that they used real tanks and airplanes. Which was true - there were two real tanks on the set, and one airplane which was only used on the ground... but all the rest of the tanks were either comped duplicates or full CGI. And every flying airplane was 100% computer generated. There were about 150 VFX shots I did for the film, plus perhaps roughly the same amount by another vendor. No, we did not make it into the press or BTS materials. Now i need to get back to work, making CGI butterflies for a music video today.

I'm a VFX lead animator and I thank you for these videos. Great job.

This video essay series is like hitting the jackpot in a desert of shallow movie talks. You know what's the best part? When I stumble upon those comment sections full of clueless folks blabbering about "practical filmmaking" (like, seriously, I genuinely have not gotten a single person to give me a cohesive definition of that the hell they even mean when the say that), I just drop them the link to this series. Saves me from banging my head against the wall trying to explain stuff to people who've never even set foot behind the scenes. So yeah, goodbye to those exhausting arguments with the clueless. This series should be mandatory viewing for anyone who utters the term "CGI" I cannot express how thankful I am for this series. You have saved me thousands of headaches. Your work is seriously a lifesaver.

"Top gun maverick having more vfx shots than Black panther" was epic 😆

FUN FACT: "The Phantom Menace" had more practical models built for it than the entire OT. "The Force Awakens" on the other hand actually had more VFX shots than "The Phantom Menace".

This biggest thing I take from this is that the studio and fan efforts to claim that any given movie doesn't, and shouldn't, have CGI are deeply disrespectful to the CG artists.

This channel feels like Cinefx magazine but on the web. I needs more. The world is missing such seriously great content.

I've always thought this was the end goal: Where "No CGI" meant "you can't see we used CGI." So this explains my confusion at people saying they loved such and such because it didn't have CGI, while that thing is horrible because it obviously does. This is something I learned back with The Polar Express. We got a copy on DVD while we were still using a CRT purchased when Star Wars 2 came to VHS. So we genuinely had arguments with people over whether or not it was live action. Imagine our collective embarassment when we watch it on a plasma screen and the MoCap CGI was all the more obvious. Even more hilarious when some of the siblings never got around to watching the behind the scenes to break down how the MoCap worked.

You are a gem for making this, and I salute you -- one filmmaker to another. James Cameron said something I adored in Side by Side (which was about a different issue: Film vs. Digital; but still applies) "When was it EVER real?"

The tiger in Life of Pi is so well made, that people cannot see the difference between the scenes where a real tiger were used, and when they used a digital tiger.

Gonna need a 5/4 or another vfx series! These videos are fantastic!

VFX Lighting Artist here! 10+ years in the industry, THANK YOU for these videos!

Sir, my most sincere congratulations. I've learned more about cinematography throughout these series than reading/watching anything else in my entire life. They should be compulsory for anyone interested in the art of crafting cinema

You mentioned it in a previous video, but the biggest problem with the "no CGI" lie is that it's erasing the hard work of thousands of artists that deserve to be recognized for their work. And, more importantly, they deserve to get PAID for their work. But if the general population doesn't know how much VFX work goes into these films then it's a lot easier to underpay the people that make them so great.

Gotta respect Neill Blomkamp's dedication to practical. Couldn't believe he made an actual sentient robot for Chappie

The fill-in VFX on Ghostbusters : Frozen Empire was astounding. They filmed most of the exterior shots 10 minutes down the road from me on interior soundstages at Shinfield and Winnersh studios, UK - but made it look like it was New York in the middle of the day. And you'd never have a clue unless you knew exactly what to look for.

Season Finale of the most exciting TV show of 2024. LET'S GO!!!!

You gotto get on the VFX artist reacts-coach! Would love to see you and the corridor guys discuss this topic!

Man, so many of these "no CGI" claims in promotional materials are so blatant I'm amazed it's not false advertising! How does that get past consumer protection laws? That said, I think when most people say they "hate CGI" what they actually mean is they hate when an effect is so noticeable that it takes them out if the experience. They aren't thinking of the invisible set extensions in Wolf of Wall Street, they're thinking of the scorpion king from The Mummy Returns (although I remember getting distracted quite often in all The Mummy movies honestly as they used the CG in ways that it wasn't really ready for at the time).

I believe one of the underlying goals of this "NO CGI" propaganda from the studios is to demoralize the CG Artists as a way to help crush any talk of unionizing. CGI VFX Artists have worked w/o union protections for years, making them the most easily exploited workforce in the entertainment industry. This exploitation has a negative effect on wages and benefits, but also manifests itself in Credits and Awards; the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences has greatly truncated it list of awards for VFX, and often for smaller VFX houses the credit for a film or episode will be little more than a nod to the company in total. By constantly bad-mouthing the work of CGI Artists, it appears to rob the discipline of its value (despite the fact that there is almost no production that completes without using their talents), making the Artist less likely to make a stink when they are forced to work long hours for diminished wages under impossible deadlines for demanding and unreasonable clients.

I figured out much of what you were saying just by being on the ASD spectrum and by thinking about what my eyeballs are seeing throughout my teenage years, and even I have learned a lot from this series. Thank you so so much. It's really eye opening how producers can just lie to large amounts of people in an active effort to discredit the hard work of the very talented VFX artists who made most of what we see in most of the movies we watch. Imagine working for years to make a beautiful movie and your boss pretends that if you even 'existed, it would be a bad thing. VFX artists need to be brought to the forefront and get the credit they deserve. I've shown this series to quite a few people. It's very clear to me that most people dislike CGI because it's so good that they think most of the movie they are watching is what the camera saw (never mind the fact that that's not been the case for decades due to color grading, but whatever).

By now I'm just here to see the bits where you go "This is CGI, and this is CGI, and this is CGI and this..."

As a military aviation nerd it was so funny to keep seeing people talking about the no CGI thing in Top Gun: Maverick. Yeah I‘m pretty sure the filmmakers didn’t go to Iran to get some of the last flightworthy F-14 Tomcats for some movie. And I‘m also pretty sure the Russians didn’t give them their most advanced fighter jet just so someone could brag about not using CGI lol.

The biggest embarrassment about directors lying about the use of CGI is the erasure of just how good the VFX teams have gotten. Plan your filming around VFX, pay the VFX teams a fair wage, give them recognition for their successes, and you get a good result that most audience don't even notice aren't practical. Skimp out on any of those, and you get The Flash. I think you might still have some legs for future videos diving into subtle CGI work. I mean, I watch Corridor every weekend for a neat VFX breakdown, and CD when he remembers to exist, but I'm pretty sure there's room for more if you wanted to keep the channel going and build an audience even more.

Part 4 was as good as part 1. So thank youfor this quality ! :D It was a really good serie, can't wait to see other essay from you ! No yelling, no surface level of knowledge, just a good, insightfull video that is well made. The CGI vs Practical useless converssation in theaters/online is so stupid. You showed really well how every good movies now HAS to have CGI & good compositing.

Thanks, Mister Rabbit Hole. And thanks to Blender Guru and CG Garage for promoting this channel 😊

I feel like the use of CGI for my short Acéré was pretty invisible, but I was so proud just to get the chance to use it! It elevated what I was able to do practically, since I could paint out wound FX until the blood gag had to activate, and it absolutely improved the film. In my making of released same day as the short I went to great lengths to show how it was done. This series has been eye opening to just how much that is not the regular case, but I genuinely believe many industry figures will see this, as they apparently did with my work on how to shoot action, and it should lead to some embarrassment and therefore, change.

Just wanted to say you do a great job of using example shots of whatever you're talking about. Too many 'essay' type channels don't show an example of what they're talking about or just use generalized stock footage. It's been real nice to see.

I haven't even worked on any of those movies (I wish I did) and I'm always very pissed with all the lies all those actors, producers and even directors say. Throwing under the bus a huge amount of amazing artists that worked their asses off for their vision. I can't imagine how much more pissed the artists that worked on those movies feel.

I hope you'll continue making videos even though this series is over. Great stuff!

Thanks for setting the record straight! The hundreds of digital artists in the end credits of, well, most productions, should be recognized for their work. Not quite on this topic, but last week I saw a US TV network news story on the discovery of the original 3-foot 1960s USS Enterprise model. It got SO many facts wrong, it was cringey for a Trek nerd like me. I'm reminded again how inaccurate entertainment / feature news coverage can be. So thanks for tweaking the noses of bad and/or lazy entertainment 'journalism.'

As a vfx artist, I hope that this four part series is just the beginning for the channel. Absolutely impeccable work and easily some of the best coverage of VFX I have seen. Also anyone interested in checking out more like this series with deep dives into vfx I highly recommend the vfx notes podcast that Hugo Guerra does.

Now that this saga is complete I would love to see a video of you talking about some of the vfx achievements we got to see over the last couple of decades and talk some more about the directors that are actively proud of the vfx used in their movie.

I tried the “take a shot every time he says CGI” drinking game. I died. This is my CGI double typing the comment

This and KaptainKristian’s video on David Fincher completely reformed my views on CGI. Thank you for this amazing series. You know far more and far better about this under appreciated craft than I or anyone else can. I would like to say that I would be extremely open about VFX, should I have a movie career, but reality will always have a different way of working.

I can't even describe just how impeccable this series was. Great work!

This channel started out on a banger.

"You're just pressing a button and the computer does the rest" Is the worst one IMHO. As a fellow 3d modeling and rendering artist, I feel for you.

The real reason people are so vocal for their disdain of overdone CGI, is that when it's OVER-RELIANT. This doesn't mean if the entire shot is CGI, but if the CGI is used because the director has no clear vision and only got the final shot through trial & error and blind iteration. That means, you get CGI that looks bad not because it's bad, but that it's badly designed. It's like a painting with a wonky pose going against anatomy, or perspective that changes.

I can't think of a series of youtube videos that has had more impact on how I actually move through the world. I've sent these videos to so many of my friends and will continue to send them on for some time to come. Thanks so much for putting this all out these and I'm really looking forward to what you do next

16:44 16:36 even the cows and THE HAT is CGI😂😂

Bravo! This 4-part series is just awesome! Looking forward to what you will bring next to this channel.

As the average viewer who would never know, your first video on this is when I suddenly realized why so often I had looked at "practical no CGI shots" and kept wondering "but how did they do it?" Because so many shots advertised this way aren't physically possible. They have things like holes in people, hundreds of tendrils moving in a way that can't be done with hydraulics or wires or whatever.. and I just kept wondering "but how?" And it never occurred to me they were just lying. Every piece of evidence that it was a lie I filed away as "well they weren't talking about THAT shot". I kinda forgot about that first video and KZfaq didn't recommend the others to me until just now, so I missed seeing them as they were published, but I'm glad to get to the end of it now and finally finish making that connection.

I was 12 when the Phantom Menace came out. I didn't notice the "bad CGI" at the time. After I learned what "bad CGI" looks like, I felt like it was distracting. It never occurred to me that "practical" was better - just "I wish I hadn't noticed". Also, I have a huge respect for digital artists, who represent multitudes of highly creative and talented people who's work we might never have enjoyed were it not for modern digital tools. My hat is off to those people, and to you for shining light on their incredible contributions to cinema!

Scheduled premiere? He's all grown up four videos in...

Another brilliant one! Sad that this series is already over, but looking forward to what you create next! 😊

One of the best video essays i've seen. Entertaining, informative, well-researched, and providing tons of footage to back up what you say.

This might have been my favorite series on youtube! Thank you for making these. You have really opened up my eyes on some of this stuff!

I think it was The Hudsucker Proxy that first convinced me that I had no clue when I was being fooled by CGI.

Big shout to you for this incredible series. We’re all fighting the same battle and we need to support each other and the industry!!!

Hilariously, the clicker still in those The Last of Us articles was also full CG. Love this series, you've delivered all these info so cleanly with great examples. As a VFX artist it's such a handy rundown to flick to people. Great job - looking forward to whatever you tackle next!

This series was a refreshingly honest take on VFX in general, and Hollywood's attitude in particular. Great work, thanks for enlightening us all!

I absolutely adore this four-part series you've put together, and I cannot thank you enough for the hard work, research, and commitment you've clearly poured into doing this topic real justice.

Great! I was wondering when the fourth part would drop. Brilliant!

THE KING IS BACK!

I'm a french editor and I thank you for your job and explanations on this subject !

I am so happy to hear that you will continue doing videos! You can't keep those editing skills, knowledge and humor away from us. You are now my nr 1 youtube channel. What amazing work. I love your humor and your editing! The wait for your next video is going to be tough. Hälsningar från Sverige!

Thank you for this beautiful series, I’m excited to see what’s coming next!

I've been waiting for this video for weeks

So excited to see the last part in this series! KZfaq did it's job recommending your first video to me not long after it was posted. I've immensely enjoyed this series.

I've been waiting for this moment for so long. Thanks for bringing us this videos. I really apreciatte your work. Thanks a lot!

I can't wait to show that old coworker of mine who said "it spoils the movie when it's all made by computers"

M. Night Shyamalan twist: This whole series was CGI! Including _YOU_ the viewer!

Great series! Really enjoyed watching these. As someone who finds visual effects fascinating and wants to learn more, it truly is a blessing to get home and watch this. I can't wait to see what you release next!

I was eagerly waiting for part 4. Now I want a big budget movie with actually no VFX just so the "aaaa CGI bad practical good" people can realize how much work, art and talent is required by the VFX teams. It really hurts to see when big productions just blatantly lie to the audience.

I gotta say thank you to Corridor Crew for pointing us toward your channel. Great work and I can't wait for more from you.

I hate this no CGI BS because I've always loved it. But what really bothers me is that there are some amazingly talented people, entire studios and they're being hidden. They don't even get featured anymore in the making of's and its harder than ever to appreciate work done. And I want to appreciate it. I love it, its a massive part of TV and movie watching for me. In games I understand the graphics engine used, I know the studio's and developers. I know some of the individuals too. They're celebrated enough there are programmers who are famous and designers who are famous. No one in gaming ever believes its anything but CG and they love it. Why can't we appreciate movies and TV in the same way?

Fantastic series, Jonas. So well executed. Looking forward to what comes next!

This was a great series, thank you for taking the time to create this. You've got great tempo an pacing. There's no need for any upbeat instrumental background music. Looking forward to see what else you've got down the line. keep it up.

My mom created me with no cgi

Celebrate artists regardless of the medium. The idea that directors or producers think some artists are more valuable than others is no great surprise. Screw those people. Call them out whenever possible. This is the most wonderful series and I would really love to see more.

I have loved every second of this series. Thank you so much for this. Amazing work and shout out to all the VFX artists who work invisibly without credit to make the worlds we love. I wish you received the proper credit for your work.

Thoroughly entertaining series, well done! For me the eye opener about this whole practical > CGI, no CGI, CGI bad, stuff was watching behind the scenes footage from the Wolf of Wallstreet years back, and realising just how much of the sets and backrounds and all that were entirely computer generated, which I could have never guessed. It was that moment that I realised that it's not about what you use to make your movie, but about how you use it. People came to hate CGI because big CGI spectacles came to replace good story telling, believable characters and immersive environments, camera angles/movements as well as authentic settings. But that wasn't the fault of the tool, rather than of those deciding how to use it.

Incredible research and breakdown

I'm more excited for this video that I was for The Rise of Skywalker

Months ago I found about this channel watching Corridor Crew and I love it. I believe it is going to grow immensely. I wish you all the best!

Happy to hear, you will be making more videos beyond this project. I was recommend the first video shortly after it released and has been subscribed since. :) looking forward to more quality insight.

The final edition

I think the whole cgi is bad thing is because the obvious shots were more criticised than the invisible ones, and people being told no cgi makes the obvious ones more invisible so no one actively looks for it. It’s a good thing you made this series so that soon no one has to tell you “no cgi” for that immersion that you don’t get for looking for cgi

I am beyond hyped for what else you could release in the future. This series was a needed masterpiece. At one point i was expecting you to reveal that either you or your set is fully CGI and ask us viewers if we noticed it 😂

Looking forward to seeing where this channel goes in the future. If your next videos have even an ounce of the quality of research and presentation as this I can see the explosion of growth you've had the last 6 months continuing upward. I give most people the benefit of the doubt. When they relish the claims of only practical effects used they really do have a curiosity of how these movies are made, and videos like these can only help to illuminate what might go on behind the curtain. This is coming from someone who is currently learning VFX because of videos like these have made a positive influence on me.