Lift Up Cars with Super Human Strength

Published on April 17, 2020

Adobe After Effects Tutorials

After Effects, lift up car, Practical effects, Super Hero, super strength

Super Human Strength

You probably may have noticed already, but we are really in a Super Power mood. The last two weeks we did an elastic arm power and a super speed dash. Both very cool super powers and this week another power will join the ranks, Super Human Strength.

For this effect we were first thinking about doing something with 3D software (Blender). But we quickly noticed that we weren’t skilled enough for such complicated animations. We are actually just starting out with 3D so we have a long way ahead of us.

That’s way we decided to go practical! We have always enjoyed watching movies who use practical effects and we love using it ourselves. In the past we have made some videos about this as well.

Why use practical effects?

Back in the days when they started making films, there weren’t even computers. So obviously they had never thought about creating CGI and visual effects. That’s why they had to create everything with practical effects.

Practical Effects create a sense of realism, CGI can often times look a bit too digital and that distracts a viewer. But looking at a scene and realizing they shot it with practical effects just makes the ‘wow’ factor much higher.

One of our favourites when it comes to practical effects is the Star Wars Saga. Back in the days, all of the intergalactic scenes, vehicles and creatures were created with the use of practical effects and even in the newer films they use a lot of these practical effects again. That’s one of the reasons why we love the entire saga!

Can practical effects still compete in these modern times?

Nowadays a lot of movies and series rely on the saying “we’ll fix it in post“. Meaning they use a lot of CGI and computer science to create effects. But there are still a lot of huge movies that use a ton of practical effects. For instance Inception (2010), where Christopher Nolan created a huge rotating set, a room that was floated with water and a café that was completely blown apart in the middle of Paris.

So the original magic of movies still remains. And nowadays a lot of movies combine both practical effects and CGI to create the best result possible, that takes it to a whole other level.

Practical effects for creating the super strength effect

In our video we also use practical effects. We use a slider movement while shooting a car shot to make it look like the perspective changes, next we key that onto a shot with our actor. We combine both shots, add a fake shadow and it immediately looks like our actor is lifting up the car.

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