INDEPENDENCE DAY miniature effects 

I never would have guessed some of those scenes were miniature. These guys are artists, they bring the movie alive. they deserve more credit IMO.

The effects still hold up today - amazing work!

A movie I have seen hundreds of times and yet I never realized how many miniature effects were used in it. I was that 17 year old who watched it on day 1, and I must have watched it a good 10 times in theaters alone. I still watch it every July 3rd.

Long live practical miniature fx. CGI will never replace what these guys can do.

Fantastic craftsmanship! The amount of work that went into this to make Independence Day is mind boggling. GREAT JOB ALL!

Well... This kinda explains why this movie from 1996, still looks better than most movies today.

Perfect blend of models with CGI I thought. Wish it was still more like this era.

You just had 1,000's of plastic modelers faint all over the world to know you could build that many models with great detail in such a short time, crazy fun summer flick, Thanks for the memories.

And it was really something when the movie came out, because they showed us something that we really haven't seen before on movies. The miniatures looked so real when I saw the movie and I think I was only 10 at the time, and it blew my mind - the effects are noticeable now, but still, the movie looks great. And respect to all the craftsmen in the movie.

Golden era of movie model ! Such a great work !

I'm in vfx (on a few Emmerich productions) and this channel let's me fall in love with the work on a daily basis. 🙌

The talented people behind the camera are the real magic of Hollywood. Great writers and actors are rare.

I remember the super bowl trailer for this film and was blown away by it and I couldn’t wait for the film to premiere. I wasn’t disappointed. Seeing it on the big screen was amazing. I saw it again recently and it still holds up today. IMHO ID4 is one of the great sci fi films to be made.

You will not find a finer gentlemen then Mike Joyce, an amazingly talented effects specialist and kindest person their is!!

Awesome dedication - I've made models for 50 years and I can't imagine the amount of work and time that these guys put in (very often only to be blown up!) Kudos!✌️👍😊

This work looked amazing on the big screen back in ‘96. Saw the film five times at the cinema that summer at age 16. Great memories!!

Back in the golden era of special effects. These hold up way better that pure CGI.

Thanks for putting this out there …. Kudos to ALL the people behind the scenes who helped make things happen …

Those would have been the bog standard Hasegawa 1/32 Hornets then. Always wanted to know. Nice to spot the venerable 1/72 Italeri C-130 and the 1/72 Heller E-3 Sentry awacs. Funny; I got two 1/72 C-130 hanging behind my workbench as well - indeed like fish!

Oh the memories! I devoured every bit of behind the scenes info when this movie came out. I liked it as a good popcorn flick, but LOVED the miniatures and fx work. So much so I remember driving about 30 miles to the nearest Wal-Mart to buy it on VHS on release day bc that was the only place open at midnight, lol. I took a lot of ribbing for doing tgat, but I didn't care, seeing the Special FX again and again were worth it to me. Brilliant work! :)

In Germany they told Emmerich was praised for using miniatures and toys and saving a lot of money to the studio. They acted as if Emmerich invented using miniatures.

It's amazing, the blu Ray never had an effects segmant like this. The models are beautiful and look real . I thought after the abyss and jurassic Park there was alot of cgi

I love these videos so DAMN much, thanks!

Exactly why older movies will always be better especially ones that were very attention to detail! Independents Day still is a great movie and the all of the work to make it real still holds strong today!

Some amazing interviews. Your giving an insight into the industry that rarely gets seen.

Absolutely amazing. Those models looked amazing in the film

Great job. They never cease to admire the work of people who create miniatures and other pre-computer special effects. - Великолепная работа. Не перестают восхищаться работой людей, создающих миниатюры и прочие докомпьютерные спецэффекты.

Really appreciate the longer talks, thanks!

Still so interesting to listen to you guys. I love your work. Thanks for sharing your stories and your hints and winks behind the scene. Keep up the good work.

One of my favorite movies as a kid, i used to pop the movie in a VHS-player when i felt like it, good times!

Independence Day was the last great practical effects movie.

Analog special effects is so much better than CGI.

Much better than CGI.

Been waiting to see the film on this channel. Absolutely stunning work I had no idea how they pulled those shots off!

very cool. rare pics of the mothership shown in here 5:12

Love that move. IT made that summer great!

there's something about movie out of a miniature set that is so much realistic than how a realistic life-like CGi movie can be...

I had a magazine about "Goldeneye" and how they did the effects in that Bond movie. When the jet crashes into the radar station, that was miniature work. Derek Meddings said if you can do everything "in camera" that saves a lot of money.

The Lindberg scale model company was one of the merchandisers of Independence Day, and they were selling kits of the alien and the Attacker ship and the Hornet and Stearman biplane and one of their selling points was "our kits were used by the effects department". Had no way of knowing how true that was but I guess it got confirmed now! Oprah Winfrey did a program on movie special effects and Independence Day's effects were featured.

Wow, this was awesome, I'll have to watch the movie again!

Ah, for the days of pre-slap good Will Smith scifi movies…. ID4 is, on many levels such a fun and well made genre film. Thanks for the look at the miniature work!

Mind blowing I still cant tell with most of the work. Well done man.

I wonder how the popular miniature makers on RU-vid compare to those in the film industry. When I watch _Studson Studio_ or _Boiley Hobbies_ their skills are amazing but when I see the scale and productivity of the makers on these movies I wonder how much more is possible.

I worked at a place that was in the licensed prop replica business and we got a ton of molds from ID4. Everything from mailboxes, to cars, to radios.....molds of everything from the destruction scenes. We only produced the alien fighters and I painted up some of the large F-18's to hang over our booth at Comicon 1994? Thanks for doing this video.

When Independence Day came out they showed how they created those tons if flying Hornets and alien ships on the computer just by 'copy and paste'. But they never showed all the real model stuff like you get to see it here... By the way, I first became aware of miniature construction for films when an article about Roland Emmerich's "Moon 44" appeared in a german cinema magazine back then. There it was explicitly shown how the models were built and how certain scenes in the film were shot with them. The flight scenes in the moon valleys in particular were created differently than one might think. I found that extremely interesting, I was absolutely fascinated - I was still a teenager and had just started the modeling hobby. It's a pity that I accidentally saw this booklet at my brother's, I would have loved to keep it (this booklet is long lost today...).

I was stationed at MCAS El Toro from Feb 73 to late June 76. Nice to hear that the movie scenes were actually in Montana.

Awesome. Practical effects are so much better. You can tell the love that went into this movie... Unlike its sequel.

I had a high school friend who played a role in this movie. It was a shock the first time I saw the movie because I didn't know he was in it (8 or 9 yrs after high school). It was pretty cool to see.

I am amazed at how much of this is miniature

No wonder it’s called movie magic. I thought that they might have been some of those radio controlled jets that are out there. Your eye for detail is amazing. I saw a movie a long time ago.Where the landing gear was sappose to come down on a airliner. They used stock footage from a B-52.

As one who builds model fighter jets as a hobby...working on this would have been a dream. Haha

Had NO IDEA the tarmac scene with all the Tomcats and Hornets was a miniature. We watch the movie once a year, every year on July 4th, so, between all that and the number of times I went to the theater, I have seen this movie A LOT. No idea...

Practical and funny at the same time. Ironic how that kind of inguinity helps make a film timeless while Hollywood today is abusing vfx and cgi instead of using them to help elevate their films.

Outstanding effects....

You guys are amazing model builders , I didn't even know they were model aircraft in the movie.

Going from this to full CGI is Emmerich's biggest mistake. Besides his scripts tho.

WTF!!!!!! I thought that was all CGI!!!!! Mind literally blown away!!!!!!!

The problem is studios used cgi to completely push miniature effects out of the industry. Studio movies don't do miniature effects and in-camers special effects anymore. Haven't done in 20 years atleast. Maybe one niche director here and there, maybe some cartoon channels with one show that relies on stop motion, and maybe a few speciality movies. If studios used both miniature sfx and cgi together to do the best job possible then people wouldn't call out and hate on cgi workers so much. This stuff is what engineering is about honestly. Building prototypes and testing them. It's delicate work. But everyone in industry just wants to sit in front of a computer and get the product out as cheaply as possible.

Is that the ROJ X-wing fighter that is now at the propstore ?

Welcome to Earth!

No wonder it looked so good

THATS why these effects still hold up almost thirty years later. They look very real. And it's pathetic how bad CGI is now.

Making miniatures , or scale models is really fun .

This Movie Had everything from A to Z as far as Special effects and Movie Class.. Jets, helicopters ,Dog fights , Plane crashes , Fights, explosions ,gun fire, aliens, nuclear Bombs, earthquakes, fireworks , military, Spaceships, Area 51, Conspiracies , Astronauts, demolition, world wide scenery, cities ,oceans, deserts, Desert people, a Love story and almost all types of story's, Man I can think of a lot more 😱😱😱😱😱😱🤘🤘 they even said Tamale in this Bitch 😁😁

Great episode!

I actually thought that the some of the air craft scenes were shots of real jets!

This was very interesting.

I used to fly on the AWACs back in the 80s

Awesome!

Better then CGI

magic!

good job

Amazing talent to build these things and then create the desired effect. It must be a bit frustrating when they go to all the trouble to build an exact replica of the White House just to see it blown to bits.

independence day is biurifore movie is My favorite and the miniature efects exelent vvorks congratulations guys tanks you very much okay bye bye 👍💝👌💯👑💝🇦🇷💝💝💝🇺🇸💝😂😁😀😇😷🙏🆗

I wonder if that pattern you see at 9:50 on the alien spaceship is an Easter egg reference to the Millennium Falcon

I will still use practial effects and miniatures, minimal use of cgi vfx.

Me too i always thought the flight scenes wher all real lol okay on Top Gun i knew they use scale planes for some scenes its impressive how many scenes are still made with models and the viewer thinks they use real planes

Absolutely fantastic, amazing pooptube channel. One of the best 👌 👍

Indiana Jones 5 looks mostly CGI. I think they over use it. I don’t know if they’re too lazy or what but I don’t like these mostly CGI action scenes. I really enjoyed the visuals of this movie!

Earned a sub.+like! Love it!

The magic of film😂!

In the movie 13 days about the Cuban missiles crises, they exploded a radio control model of a U2 spy plane , with the sound and visual effects added, it looks dead real .

I think one of the reasons why they can do CGI nowadays so effectively is because ALL of the footage, even with the actors, looks so heavily digitally altered. Crushed blacks, heavy colour bias and so on. Cinematography today has generally gone all to shit. I wish there were more traditionally based film makers and movies made today.

Brilliant! :)

The irony is now that CGI is the main go to when it comes to movie magic, they completely forgot to work on plots and story line. Independents day will always be a classic...

The White House exploding is still one of the greatest practical special effects in the history of movies. The only thing that would have made it even better is if they didn't cover part of the explosion with a helicopter.

It seems like only yesterday that this movie came out. With everything being CGI these days are all of these talented type of people out of work?

The miniature work was the stars of ID4. No offence Jeff Goldblum.

4:23 I had NO idea that was in camera! all this time I thought it was just stock footage they had sourced somewhere but the fact that an f15 and a f14 flying in formation always caught my attention. would the navy and Air Force split up escort duties?

Artists!!! not just computer

How did they add all the detail on the city destroyer ships?. You can see some of the detail at 9:16 and I doubt they sculpting in all that tiny detail by hand.

Did you interview people that worked on the miniatures for The Fugitive (1993) train crash scene? Warner Bros. told the staff not to discuss the use of miniatures so they could promote the scene as all real-for-real. But the real train crash footage shot did not work- well so they had resort to using miniatures.

Real movie makers!

Star Wars Prequel trilogy was actually made in this way.

they should have included the tomcats doing more

Just curious why they didn't computerize everything; as it seems it would be much less time consuming, much more cost effective, and easier? I personally prefer the 'old school' way, yet I was surprised it wasn't all computerized. Nice job, guys.

@9:51 that looks like the millennium falcon on the left... is that an Easter egg there?

is this film available on any streaming service?

How does he built them? There are 1/48 Revell models? Or the pieces are man made or customized?

"computer power wasn't there yet", and it still isn't, fire, flames look cartoony af