Totally agree! Without CGI in the past, filmmakers had to work hard to give movies great effects. The result is that the effects are better than CG stuff!
Since forever, it seems, moviemakers have had the urge to destroy New York. Their argument seems to be: "Destruction is visually satisfying, and to make the strongest possible impression on Americans, one must destroy their icons. Not only once, but as often as possible."
The high speed cameras used to slow down the action and make the miniature effects more realistic were incredibly expensive in 1933, and there were only three channels for sound (voice, music, effects). Imagine watching this movie, then going across the street to see King Kong in the same day.
The incredible special effects were accomplished under the supervision of Ned Mann. He did such a fantastic job that the Korda brothers, director Zoltan Korda and producer Alexander Korda, hired him to handle the special effects for the British features THINGS TO COME (1936), THE MAN WHO COULD WORK MIRACLES (1937), THE DIVORCE OF LADY X (1938), and a few others. If there had been an Oscar category for Best Visual Effects, DELUGE would have been nominated.
City destruction, yes. Those scenes of people running? No, that'll never look good with only practical effects. Combining CGI and practical effects would be the best solution.
@leDespicable CGI looks good in those cases, but relying on it especially for water and simulating destruction always feels uncanny. I don't think there's been a movie that uses both CGI and assets to their best
those miniatures are great, im curious as to how they were made, alot of them crumble and collapse so realistically as opposed to falling over like the stacked cardboard boxes in other films
The amazing thing is, all this is just the beginning of the film, the rest is about the survivors. As Samuel Goldwyn said: "What we need is a picture that starts with an earthquake and builds to a climax."
0:40 There goes the Chrysler Building. 1:08 There goes a building in Times Square. 1:15 There goes the Empire State Building. 1:18 Looks like the spans of the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges have given out but the suspension towers remain standing. 1:25 There's the Statue of Liberty. 2:49 There's Grand Central Station (or what's left of it I should probably say). Now the tsunami is destroying the parts of the station that the earthquake didn't. 4:25 There's Lady Liberty again. Now she's the last recognizable thing in the damaged city. I hope that ship heading right towards her doesn't crash into her pedestal, which would cause the statue the giveaway and sink the ship. There's probably a few other famous New York skyscrapers that I missed, but either didn't know the names at the top of my head or were too damaged from the earthquake to recognize.
Seeing the 9.6 earthquake in San Andreas where there are still buildings standing, while this film basically destroys everything even strong structures such as the Empire State Building, I would guess this quake would be at 50.0 magnitude. Even 10.5 or 10.9 (in 2012) could not produce that scale of destruction.
The scale is logarithmic, magnitude 50 implies such a ridiculously large number that I don't think you were aware of that fact. Leveling NYC probably doesn't need any super strong fictional earthquake, ESB might be strong but non-seismic buildings like it aren't going to survive something like a 8.5. The buildings in San Francisco should be much stronger, they actually were build with large earthquakes in mind.
New York City could not survive a 7.5 earthquake due to the fact that you have a lot of levels underground underneath buildings throughout the city that are probably 10 to maybe twelve stories under the streets of New York City and to top it off too. A lot of those buildings are substandard where they probably could not survive a 5.3 shaker that would shake for about maybe one two maybe three minutes that's probably not going to happen in the future but it possibly can be.
Meesmoth a 50? Bruh the meteor that killed of the dinos was a magnitude 15 theres no possible way a 50 could do that a mag 50 would probably rip apart the earth
Always wanted to see this movie (the FX mainly) ever since I was a kid. Thx uploader, this is one of the awesome things about RU-vid, finally being able to see great stuff.
Just imagine if King Kong was up there at 1:15. "Oh, no, it wasn't the airplanes, it was this damn earthquake killed the bea-" (gets crushed by the insane earthquake)
The way the water flooded into the city and how the water washed up against the Statue of Liberty reminded me of 2 scenes from The Day after Tomorrow. But that's pretty impressive for a movie destruction scene in the 1930s!
maybe you could remake by making it not black and white that wouldve make it better but i dont really care that no matter how bad or unrealistic a destruction scene is for me is still a destruction scene so it is still a good scene
This looks way more devastating and scary than plain CGI. imagine if they combined this technique with today's technology it would make for one hell of an effect!
You know VFX creators don’t care anymore when a movie from the 90s that is pretty much all practical effects looks better than the CGI in the majority of movies we see today
Well looks like Titanic's sister ship, RMS Olympic, made a cameo appearance in this film during the tsunami scenes. Notice the four-funnel liner that looks similar to Titanic, and we all know only Olympic left in service, her career was still ongoing at that time. She was retired in the late 30s (can't remember the exact year), so the ship featured in this film is clearly Olympic.
Actually, yeah, it is most probably the Olympic. There were no other 4 funnel liners during that time that match the general description of that ship. The german, french, and cunard ships all had different funnels so it could not have been them, so it must have been olympic. The closest other ships I could find would be those Union Castle ships, but those ship's funnels had a darker colour.
the only thing similar is the new york city tsunami day after tomorow doesnt have a earthquake and deluge doesnt have the world freeze over nor does deluge have a bunch if tornadoes
I want to see this movie, but its very hard to find. This is the first disaster movie ever made, and the effects is very impressive for its time. Even some disaster movies today looks even more fake than this with its poor quality CGI.
New York City has suffered for so long and so many times. Tsunami, earthquakes, comet crash, snowstorm, destruction by aliens, zombie attacks, nuclear blasts, deadly viruses etc.
You don't know that this was the 1st disaster movie, you can't compare today's effects with back then, the acting was much better back then, no fake effects or green screen!
first of all WOOOW never ever SEEN THIS OR HEARD OF IT UNTIL NOW!!! 1933??? my granny was born in 1931 and my grandfather was born in 1930 😳😳😳😳 my moms parents!! the effects are insanely crazy for this to be a 91 year old film!! what even blows my mind is the people who watched this film have passed away meaning we won’t ever see someone say “I was this age when this came out in the cinemas, the audience was screaming grasping almost passed out” nothing well maybe my great uncle on my fathers side which is my grandfather’s brother he was born in 1918 n is still alive today but idk if he’s seen this movie probably!! but wow the effects are super awesome I wanna make a disaster movie one day so I was doing research on earlier disaster films rather then the ones I grew up on this is dope now I wanna watch the entire movie
It’s an interesting little movie. This scene comes at the beginning - the real focus of the movie is what comes after, how civilization can recover can overcome the inevitable battle of good vs bad.
I may be 32 years old and a lover of old movies, but in all honesty, I have NEVER, repeat NEVER even heard of this movie, let alone watch it... until today (Wednesday, July 26, 2023)! I do admit though, the effects are impressive! What's disappointing is that other disaster movies after this one didn't have as good effects, even Earthquake which came out 4 decades later!
new york...king of city in the world..from..1920s..30s..40s...50s...60s...70s...80s...90s....and now 2000s...no1 big and glamors city in the world...from malaysia
This is probably the best destruction scene of a city in the history of media. No Michael Bay like destruction, no over the top CGI, this is pure epicness! This is 1000000x better than The Day After Tomorrow.
If water droplets get too close to the camera it can ruin the sense of scale in flooding scenes. So they added a bit of detergent to the water to make whitewater, which makes the waves look bigger.
If I was King Kong watching this from the perch of some bridge over the East River, I'dprobably shrug my shoulders and go book passage on the next boat heading to Skull Island.
I came across the full movie the other day. Its very good. I was surprised at how good this sequence is for its time. It was a bit unnerving given the climate change discussions which abound and that the planet faces oceanic rises now . I live on Arran Isle in Scotland and it has been VERY stormy lately!
On the one hand, it's cheesy and you can easily tell the buildings are just hallow models. And still, somehow CGI isn't all that much better. At the end of the day, practical effects win over CGI.
Wow, I am impressed. Roland Emmerich has nothing on this. Well, I do like the flooding in Moonfall. But, this is great stuff. I love the shots of victims getting pulverized on upper floors as the buildings they are in collapse. If todays films could deliver this style of effects, like in the Good Ole Days of Toho, I would be delighted. CGI is so boring. Wasn't that the Public Library at 2:49?
