
In a well-lit, methodical pan around the room, the various actors grow or (mostly) shrink, their faces rearrange, and then, just like that, there are seven Harrys in the room. For anyone old enough to remember the clumsy, split-screen actor-doubling special effects of yore, the scene is bittersweet. To throw off Voldemort's Death Eaters, six members of Team Harry pass around the Polyjuice Potion and take on the young hero's form. The most jaw-dropping VFX sequence, though, flies in the face of some of this year's biggest digital blunders.

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More than any of the previous films, the penultimate Potter is full of CG-enhanced action scenes, with far more technical hits than misses, and more moments worth praise than we can list. The key here was attention to detail, from the variety of tricks used to digitally remove fingers (Dren has just three) to the shot-by-shot transplanting of the actress's eyes, their natural movements intact, to newer, more unsettling spots on her head.
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Recalling the unflinching but flawless closeups of District 9's alien refugees, this low-budget production conjures a monster that seems more lifelike than some actors, while using strictly off-the-shelf software and techniques. The most convincing period, though, is mid-way through, when Dren has the look of a lovely teenage girl, albeit a bald one, with eyes too widely spaced to be human, that same venomous tail, and legs that seem part cat and part satyr.

She's always disturbing, from the moment she waddles on screen, an embryonic, armless kidney bean of a newborn with a stingray's barbed tail, to her final, winged demon form.
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The seamless stitching together of real and full-CG environments and objects, all in motion while the camera climbs and veers like the bio-inspired bot it's chasing-the kind of movement that can make VFX wobble and stand out-is a scene-setting gamble that pays off.ĭren, the genetically engineered half-human, half-who-knows-what subject of this movie is a roller coaster of good, bad and, at times, transcendent VFX. The updated semi-transparency of their cloaking fields and the shimmer when they shut down are impressive, particularly in near closeup.

In that same swooping shot, which begins with the UAV's heat-vision perspective, then pulls behind the drone as it banks into the jungle, we come face-to-face with a trio of new Predators. But that UAV, which only takes centerstage in a single extended shot, is a monstrosity in miniature, a headless falcon powered by a tiny jet engine. The dogs wound up being standard CG beasts-too fast, too fluid, and weightless until they were killed and replaced with a physical prop. In the weeks leading up to the release of Predators, much of the hype centered on the alien hunters' updated gear, their packs of dogs, and their use of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).
