The “Mad Max” franchise fuels your need for speed, action, and firepower. Set in a dystopian world where fuel and water are scarce, the makeshift automobiles and trucks roar across the dangerous desert, trailing behind the warmth of George Miller’s futuristic imagination.
But none of those blasts really occurred, and the unique pieces of post-apocalyptic vehicles didn’t really tumble or get broken into small parts. They really didn’t leap high up the dunes. All that was possible in post-production, thanks to green screens and suspended platforms on set. And the movie ended up crushing it at the Oscars because of all that hard work.
Black Panther
It was no easy feat to bring the world of Wakanda to the big screen. With the help of a blue screen and the incredible artistic talents of the film crew, the Black Panther's beloved home was created, inspiring millions of moviegoers around the world.
Here we see a behind-the-scenes glimpse of a royal room in the Wakanda kingdom. The blue screen in the background shows the sections of the shot that would be replaced with majestic views of Wakanda during post-production. It is still one of the most beautiful movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It might be in the top five.
Gravity
Imagine working on a movie set in outer space without heavily relying on the green screen. That’s how tough it must have been back in the day, and when we watch old science fiction movies today they look not only implausible but silly, too (though we still love them).
In order to mimic how her character would actually move in an anti-gravity environment in space, Sandra Bullock bravely performed some of her scenes underwater (with professional supervision of course!). While she was filmed in a pool, a green screen was used to place her in a space station. When you watch these suspenseful scenes, it's no doubt that you'll be holding your breath just like Sandra!
300 - Rise of An Empire
The film, "300," is based on the 1998 comic series by Frank Miller. To translate this into a film, they had to recreate the places during the Persian Wars, and it is said that it took them sixty days to film it, retelling the events of the Battle of Thermopylae. And the sequel - "300 - Rise of An Empire," was also a green-screen masterpiece in its own right.
The visual effects relied a lot on the green screen, which had to surround soldiers clashing in the middle. They used the superimposition chroma key technique, so archival images could be brought back to life. Also, the production involved plenty of prosthetics, dummies, and props.
Avengers: Infinity War
To embody a supervillain in a modern movie would require extraordinary visual effects and more. Otherwise, it would almost certainly be a flop, considering the standards viewers have developed in judging movies. Now imagine creating Thanos, who was born on Titan, and carries the Deviant’s gene. Thanos must have looked so horrific that even his own mother, Sui-San, was shocked by it.
She feared that Thanos would soon grow up to be so evil that he would destroy the universe. This one-of-a-kind supervillain appeared in the film, Infinity War, which was released in 2018, and the character was played by Josh Brolin. To make all these traits tactile to the audience, they had to scan the actor’s facial expressions and match them with CGI. Whatever Brolin’s facial expression was, Thanos’ version was automatically generated.