We all love big, fancy visual effects, but sometimes all you need is something small and subtle, like changing the color of a prop that sticks out like a sore thumb. In this video, the team over at Film Riot shows you how to pull off 3 "hidden" VFX that can repair and enhance scenes that are giving you some trouble.

Even though those three techniques might come in handy at some point in your career, perhaps the most important lesson here is to have a more mature philosophy on visual effects. It seems as though when people talk about VFX, they talk about films like Avatar, Transformers, The Lord of the Rings, and Gravity, because they manage to create these expansive CG environments and impressively realistic CG characters.

However, there are plenty of films out there that you'd never think used visual effects, like Suffragette, The Theory of Everything, and The Wolf of Wall Street. These movies don't feature alien worlds, giant robots, or massive explosions—they are gripping dramas and wild comedies about real people from this planet. However, they utilize VFX to enhance the environments and locations; a few extra houses along the horizon, a few extra students in the lecture hall, an added balcony on a building.

Here are some VFX breakdown reels from the films listed above, courtesy of The Telegraph.

So as you can see, visual effects aren't reserved for "VFX films," they can be used in subtle ways to give your film a little more to look at.

Source: Film Riot

vfxvisual effects
Editing & Post-Production