People think the scene is completely practical but not really XD It's a fusion of: - mostly practical (before when his hair starts to grow, and after the transformation and the base) - stop motion (frames and clips rapidly move after eachother) - CGI (final touch, morphing the frames more effectively, especially during the decomposing part of the transformation) CGI is not bad. If used well it's absolutely gorgeous to look. Heck, Jurassic Park did it and that was back in the 90's. The trick is that if you want to create something believable you have to use several forms of effects to fool the audience easier, like they did here! And almost no movie does that anymore, CGI has dominated the industrie completely. Jurassic Park used a different effect for each scene, heck each moment in a scene. Every now and then an animatronic is there, then the CGI model kicks in, and back to the animatronic. If you vary with effect forms it is harder for the audience to tell which is which and is easier fooled.
There’s no stop motion and only a little CGI. It’s all practically shot with animated figures for each stage of decomposition, filmed on a motion base doing the same movements each time, then digitally morphed between each figure to create the full shot. It's all about using whatever is best for the effect, which is often a practical effect enhanced in post production. Using computers to finalise shots is now just as fundamental as colouring or dubbing now. But unfortuantely many movies over enhance everything that nothing feels true, people just assume it's all CGI- so there are no standout moments like there were in the heyday of movie effects.
Finally a comment praising CGI and not saying it's ruining movies. CGI is just a tool that you can use properly or not. It's used effectively a lot of the time in a variety of movies but it's done so well that nobody notices it's even there. Because some CGI is so hard to notice when it's done well, people only think about it when it's obviously being used (for example, a space ship in space) and only use those scenarios to decide if it's good or not.
Thank you for this glimpse into the past and for having the foresight to record it (risky as it may have been). I only wish there was more footage like this from the heyday of practical effects. Not having 'lived' it, I can never get enough of this stuff.
Or, you know, at least impressive. Even if you could see the strings attached from time to time, you'd go "Oh, they built/painted THAT?" Like with Toth's melting face. I can see it's wax melting, but someone built a head with muscle tissue underneath out of wax!
CGI is just a tool that you can use properly or not. It's used effectively a lot of the time in a variety of movies but it's done so well that nobody notices it's even there. Because some CGI is so hard to notice when it's done well, people only think about it when it's obviously being used (for example, a space ship in space) and only use those scenarios to decide if it's good or not. Those scenarios are not all that CGI is used for.
If I remember correctly, they built three puppets, each 'older' than the last (with a fourth used for the decaying clothing) then used an early form of morphing to transition between them (which ILM had just used in the movie Willow)
