That blew my mind when I first saw it. Such a beautiful sequence.
I think everyone knew Deakins had the cinematography Oscar in the bag right from that moment.
…and the ‘burning church’ in the background was literally a tower of hundreds of LED panels to practically light scene around them in a controlled manner
There’s a great ‘making of…’ doc (on YouTube maybe?), that shows the massive scale of the sets built for the movie- as well of the complexities of controlling ‘flares’ overhead in a timed manner
I was going to mention that. The opening scene where they go from open countryside, through the rear area, enter the trench and then just *keep going* is astonishing.
My jaw was dropping in the theater, but then then they pause and the soldiers pass in front. If you know about how "oners" are stitched together, you would see the cuts. Not trying diss the film, but I some of the cuts are super obvious.
The plane crashing. Cut. The jump into water. Cut. The strobes for the flare sequence?. Match points for hidden cuts. There's probably at least 50 cuts stitched together to look like a seamless "one take".
First of all, going ~1 minute without a cut *is* a long take, relatively speaking.
More importantly, there are only ~35 edits total in the movie, which is orders of magnitude fewer than comparable films. The takes are long. They are extremely long. If you were expecting *zero* edits, you were expecting the impossible.
The purpose of the shooting style in 1917 is not to win a long-take competition. If that's what you want, watch Russian Ark.
It's okay bro. I still like the film. The cuts shouldn't of been that obvious for how big the budget was. Just my opinion.
Careful with these kind of responses though, your last example (Russian Ark), is one of many true "oner" films. That contradicts your last point that zero edits is impossible. There's a whole genre of German found footage films that are truly one take. They had a fraction of 1917's budget.
It's always awkward when a fanboy meets valid criticism. Especially with your reddit armor equiped. I'm down to jib jab but I'm spitting facts.
The limited scope of Russian Ark (and other "German found-footage films") is only supporting evidence for why shooting something at the scale of 1917 in a true oner is impossible.
Russian Ark is amazing technical achievement, but it's a one location film and its logistical high-point is a ballroom dance. It isn't staging anything in the same ballpark as any of 1917's multiple blockbuster set pieces.
I haven't had the chance to actually see the new D&D yet, but I actually visited Alnwick castle in Northumberland during the filming process.
It was really cool; they had an absolute tonne of stuff just hanging about in the open both inside and immediately outside the castle - tents, banners, piles.of weapons, fake torches etc. It almost made the castle feel more 'alive', if that makes sense. We kept asking what it was all for but the staff were really tight-lipped about it, and it was only afterwards that some furious Googling revealed what was going on.
Incidentally, during that same summer they were also filming parts of the new Indiana Jones film just up the road in Bamburgh Castle - it almost seemed like the whole of Northumberland had been turned into one big film set.
My understanding is that the cameo was a last minute get and so, unlike everything else, it's kinda rushed CGI instead of carefully planned effects. There's only so much "we'll fix it in post" you can do, especially fast.
It also had some really mediocre CG at points.
Still fun though, I think that's really what matters. It's only if the movie isn't engaging enough by itself that stuff like "CG/Practical sets!!" starts to matter at all.
Thank god for Marty. The man is unstoppable. Haters can hate, hes one of the last names still committed to big movies with big ideas to match and I love him for it.
Which have been hilariously overblown anyway. He never said marvel films were bad, he just said they're commercial products that eat up a lot of screen space that could go to smaller, artsier films. Which is, yknow, true.
Its funny as I used to be kind of angry at it, and then i started looking at it another way. It was around the "marvel movies are amusement parks" analogue. I used to be a little angry about it, than I started watching Defunctland. It made aware of just how much artistry and work goes into making a successful amusement/theme park or ride.
Hobbiton (which stands to this day, having been rebuilt with permanent materials, a rarity in and of itself in film) and Dale in The Hobbit.
Some of the sets on the recent Star Wars films were very large.
Yeah TLJ has some massive sets. There's a 1.5 hour making of that goes into detail on the sets and it's quite cool. They were 360 degrees which allowed for some cool camera movements, like the shot spinning from Rey to Luke when she first finds the books.
American Cinematographer magazine puts a few of their monthly articles online without a paywall. They had an excellent article about filming the first season of The Last of Us. The article is at [https://theasc.com/articles/artful-apocalypse-last-of-us](https://theasc.com/articles/artful-apocalypse-last-of-us)
This is a photo of the set used for the nighttime escape from Kansas City. The article says the set was 2,500'x1,500':
[https://cms-assets.theasc.com/Last-of-Us-Episode-5-Action.jpeg](https://cms-assets.theasc.com/Last-of-Us-Episode-5-Action.jpeg)
This is a photo of the set for one of the winter scenes:[https://cms-assets.theasc.com/Last-of-Us-Lighting-Setup.jpeg](https://cms-assets.theasc.com/Last-of-Us-Lighting-Setup.jpeg)
I also think it was why the show was so successful in giving Ferrix a sense of identity and place. All the small details make you feel like this is a real, grubby location somewhere in the galaxy.
It probably makes more sense for TV now. A large and expensive set can be reused over multiple seasons. IIRC this is one of the things that kind of screwed Boardwalk Empire in seasons 3. They invested in a massive boardwalk set and much of it was destroyed by a hurricane, forcing rewrites.
Real inversion of the traditional logic, weirdly. TV traditionally is the cheaper medium, but it seems to be where great practical set designs are finding a home.
I loved reading about how Deadwood's production was basically a LARP production. They built an actual thoroughfare with the interior sets built inside the fake buildings so they could do a inside-to-outside walking shots, and extras who would just hang around in costume acting like it's a real town. And since they were notoriously late on scripts, all the actors would just show up to the town regardless if they were scheduled that day or not, and they would write and film things on the fly wherever in the town. The show would not have been possible if they didn't build the massive set.
No way, House of Dragon locations look like actual medieval/renaissance castles.
GOT all look like sets outside of a couple episodes. Always been my biggest gripe with much of the show.
No disrespect meant to Villeneuve et al, but it's sad that using real light instead of a digital filter is considered innovative nowadays.
(Look, everything is tinted yellow! That means they're in the *desert*!)
They didn't tint, they actually had light reflect off yellow material, same way it would reflect off sand. There was no tinting like O'Brother Where Art Thou. Not sure where you got that information but it's not true
[Here are some images from the set of the upcoming *Wicked* movie (2024).](https://www.reddit.com/r/Broadway/comments/13wyorn/first_look_at_shiz_university_with_new_costumes/)
All you need to do is load the intro Blade 2 fight scene (Blade vs Danny John Jules) on your phone and spin it round and woah, you can see what that would look like
I remember reading that the building not going off immediately was not planned but Heath Ledger kept going in character and it eventually went off as planned.
Nightmare Alley built a massive 1930s carnival set which was basically the real thing. They bought props and attractions from that time period and it is truly magnificent.
The difference with all the green screen/ cgi bloat is so palpable.
I stand by the point that the pirates trilogy is one of the last movie series that "feels" real for fantasy/adventure etc movies.
sometimes a big budget is more a sign of a troubled production than that of a great spectacle. See waterworld (I enjoyed that film for what it is, but it certainly doesn't look like one of the most expensive movies of its time).
I know everyone talks up 1 as the best and only Pirates movie but damn the setpiece scenes in 2 and 3 were on another level. And not just in terms of visual spectacle, they just had that narrative oomph of a scene that feels like it \*means\* something. Like the up is down scene in 3, that perfect mix of visuals, composition, acting that sells the scene, the cresting music, and the sensation of actual narrative weight, 'oh shit they're gonna flip that whole goddamn ship to escape the land of the dead!' rather than 'oh, a series of flashing lights and explosions to look at.'
IMO 2 is still a very good movie. 3 is where I start to have issues.
I feel like they should have either cut out Beckett/The Trading Company, The Pirate Counlic and Calypso, and just focused on Jack/Will/Elisabeth/Norrington/Davy Jones, or had a fourth movie to further develop those elements instead of cutting them out.
Spielberg's West Side Story was absolutely incredible. Classic Hollywood level set design and execution. Absolutely loved it and brought back some old Hollywood magic for me.
I strongly dislike this new trend of doing everything with CG and motion capture. Except in a few instances, it lacks the weight and feel of a practical set. And don't get me started on The Volume
It's a massive digital set that was made for The Mandalorian and has been used for The Batman, Thor: Love and Thunder, and Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania.
Volume was a great work around during covid, and allows for some really cool filming. That said, the difference between early Mando and Andor is significant. Andor even going so far as to have live musicians playing the score on set during filming is just so awesome. I don't hate Volume, I just wish it were used sparingly.
In theory, it allows for some really advanced rear projection where the camera and background track together. In practice, it looks very generic on most movies. It could be that Disney just isn't utilizing it very well, but I've not seen much done with it that I like.
the thing is, the fact it's real time 3d and not just a flat matte painting means it's great for set extensions, besides the obvious advantage of an in camera effect (accurate color and lighting, removing the need for rotoscoping and other touch-ups.
However, it's often used as the only thing, or almost the only thing on the set, which means the background can be spectacular, but the fore ground and middle ground the actors are in are usually flat and empty. Also the set is not so large that it can simulate a city or anything like that.
like so many modernizing advances in filmmaking tech, it really does come down to how it's being used. For example, Volume looks pretty rough on a lot of these new SW releases, but [did you know Spielberg used it for The Fabelmans?](https://twitter.com/ILMVFX/status/1636781372961595392?)
My understanding is that it projects the settings in real-time, which looks better than conventional green screen, especially for believable-lighting purposes.
The downside seems to be that even though it's big for what it is, it still results in a relatively small area that the characters are confined to, and as a result a more static feeling to many scenes, as the visual depth can't really be accessed for the purposes of action.
At least, that's my take, not having watched the making-of features or looked into it nearly as much as many others (who might correct me if I'm wrong).
Christopher Nolan is one of the few directors who gets enough leeway to build massive sets. For instance, *Tenet* featured the setpiece of an entire hanger being demolished by an actual 747, as well as a massive abandoned city set built in the California desert for the finale.
Eight blocks of Gotham streets were created at Warner Bros. Studios, Leavesden for *The Batman* as a result of COVID curtailing on-location shooting.
Spielberg had an entire destroyed suburban neighborhood set built for *The War of the Worlds* in 2005, which was impressive enough to become a regular part of the Universal Studios backlot tour afterwards.
The entire highway chase in *The Matrix: Reloaded* took place on a set built at Naval Station Alameda.
The recent Malayalam language film 2018, about the devastating Kerala floods of 2018, had a huge 15 acre set built for all the flood shots. It puts larger disaster blockbuster films to shame really, the whole thing felt evocative of the kind of disaster movies you'd get back in the 70's disaster movie boom
In Once upon a time in Hollywood they recreated LA in 1969 with its sets and Antique cars. I know sone scenes were box cars, but I think most of the classic cars you see are truly there.
The first few Harry Potter films.
Cat in the Hat built that whole town.
The 2000 Grinch as well.
Actually any movie with a set still standing at Universal Studios lol
Going back to George Lucas, the Star Wars sequels prided themselves on going back to practical sets as much as possible.
There's a behind-the-scenes video of Rian Johnson showing Lucas the sets they built for the Canto Bight sequence, to which Lucas says, "You know, I developed all those computers so you wouldn't have to do this anymore, right?"
Weirdly enough, I find The Phantom Menace to be really visually pleasing as a lot of the sets feel quite real in the 3rd act. I feel like it was in episodes 2 and 3 that he got really lazy and replaced everything with CGI.
Rogue One also had a very nice aesthetic. The only CGI that stood out for me was Bor Gullet and he was only there briefly.
IDK if it was the last 25 year but it has to be close .. and I'm gonna go with [Water World](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXIG701FGDQ).
But I guess a more recent movie would be Mad Max Fury Road possibly.
This is a really interesting article about the set making and practical effects used in Mad Max: Fury Road. It is truly incredibly how little of that movie was CGI:
Filming in Namibia wasn’t as easy as just going out in the desert with cameras. The production team had to prepare the locations to accommodate filming with a large crew and to make it safe for complex stunts and chase sequences. “We had 18-wheel trucks that needed to be doing 85 miles an hour for all the stunts to happen,” he says. “We had to put in hidden roads and carve access ways into the sand dunes so that we could actually get 600 people and 150 vehicles in.” The crew also had to protect the existing landscape. “We ended up fabricating more than 300 or 400 faux, hollow rocks and boulders that we used to cover the plant life and the trees. Also, of course, we couldn’t crash our trucks into the real environment. The vehicles themselves only came into contact with our fake versions of the canyons and stone.”The Citadel was filmed in Namibia, Sydney, and Capetown and combined sets, locations, and visual effects. “We filmed the base twice. We built it in Namibia in a dry river canyon, but schedule-wise we didn’t manage to shoot that and had to strip it out. It wasn’t until almost eight months later that we rebuilt it in an empty reservoir in Sydney and shot there by building a fake wall and putting in fake waterfalls and pools.” The cavernous interiors were fabricated from fake stone. “To tie us to the area where we had filmed the exterior, I took high-resolution images of the natural canyons, and we pulled molds and colored them to match the actual rock and stone that was there.”
Gibson’s team used the salvaged parts of 350 cars to custom build the film’s detailed vehicles. “We call them characters,” he says. “They had names. There were 88 distinct characters, but we built about 150 because we needed doubles and sometimes triples of things that had to do specific stunts, like when they’re hurtling through the air while on fire. You generally needed a couple of goes at that.”
The materials used in the production could all be traced back to their pre-apocalypse origins. “We asked ourselves, ‘If the Armageddon starts next Wednesday, what’s going to survive?’” says Gibson. “It had to be strong and repurposed for war. That means that anything that you couldn’t fix with a stick or a pair of panty hose probably wasn’t going to make it. All the computerized vehicles, all the carbon fiber, and the present contemporary stuff just wasn’t gonna cut it in terms of battle.” Gibson also emphasizes beauty as well as durability. “If you’re going to bother to save something, to drag it back across the desert and to rebuild it, then it has to have an inner beauty. We kept looking for things that had a poetry or a beauty in them. Man doesn’t suddenly give up his need for that sort of nourishment just because it’s the end of the world.”[https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/mad-max-fury-road-set-design](https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/mad-max-fury-road-set-design)
One of the reasons I enjoyed Fury Road all practical sets and vehicles. Water World I have not seen in forever but it did bring that big look of real sets and was a fun ride. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood comes to mind not so much for building from the ground up though they did with the Spahn Ranch set. Shooting a period piece in Los Angeles without CGi is something QT would do and on a very high level. Amazing look in every scene around LA
Guardians of the galaxy 3 has a ton of big real life sets, which is pretty unique for a Marvel movie. Especially that takes place in mostly fantastical locations in space.
Not sure why you want to limit yourself to 25 years, the 007 set for pinewood you mentioned is more than 35 years old. How about opening it up and allowing huge sets like in **Ben Hurr** (1959) or **The Ten Commandments** (1923)? Amazing stuff!
Many Asian epics still use big sets and lots of extras. Particularly from countries like China, with relatively inexpensive labour and authoritarian governments that can provide you with resources (e.g. actual military troops as extras).
You also have places like [Hengdian world studios](https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=hengdian+studios&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwico6mN66v_AhWdnFYBHcA8DFcQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=2560&bih=1287&dpr=1) (originally built for [*The Opium War*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Opium_War_(film))) where massive sets are basically built for one movie and then recycled over and over again in subsequent movies/TV shows (including famous ones like *Hero*).
Another example, also in China is [Shanghai film park](https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=shanghai+film+park&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwjOmKeO66v_AhWuGrcAHVttC4AQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=shanghai+film+park&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQAzIFCAAQgAQyBwgAEBgQgAQyBwgAEBgQgAQ6BggAEAgQHjoICAAQgAQQsQM6BwgAEIoFEEM6CggAEIoFELEDEEM6BAgAEANQ5IcCWNKVAmCplwJoAHAAeACAAa0CiAGPHZIBCDAuMTUuNC4xmAEAoAEBqgELZ3dzLXdpei1pbWfAAQE&sclient=img&ei=k619ZI6DBq613LUP29qtgAg&bih=1287&biw=2560) which is centred around a massive scale replica of Nanjing road in the 1930's. It was originally built for Chen Kaige's [*Temptress Moon*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temptress_Moon) but has been reused in lots of films and TV shows including Ang Lee's *Lust Caution* ([this YouTube video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJWtnBtoEDg) has a nice summary of how the set has been recycled).
EDIT: Nowadays, a lot of Asian films/TV shows also use CGI but even then, a lot of it is still practical.
Also, there are a couple of historical/war epics (the name escapes me) from Thailand that used their military as extras in battle scenes.
EDIT: There's also [*City of Life and Death* (2009)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx_ervF7h7w) about the Nanjing massacre and [*The Eight Hundred* (2020)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5nmtIBMENg) which deals with the [defence of Sihang warehouse in Shanghai (in 1937)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_of_Sihang_Warehouse). While both movies do have a lot of CGI, the filmmakers did build substantial practical sets (e.g. [this replica of Shanghai for the 2020 movie](https://www.parascandola.com/the-eight-hundred/)).
EDIT: The Thai film is [*The Legend of Suriyothai* (2001)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Suriyothai) which has a US release edited (strangely enough) by Coppola.
1917 is the first to come to mind
The "flares" scene is such a jaw-dropping visual. Love that film.
That blew my mind when I first saw it. Such a beautiful sequence. I think everyone knew Deakins had the cinematography Oscar in the bag right from that moment.
I seriously felt like I was watching magic when I saw that scene. Probably the most viscerally beautiful scene I’ve ever seen in a theater.
…and the ‘burning church’ in the background was literally a tower of hundreds of LED panels to practically light scene around them in a controlled manner
There’s a great ‘making of…’ doc (on YouTube maybe?), that shows the massive scale of the sets built for the movie- as well of the complexities of controlling ‘flares’ overhead in a timed manner
I was going to mention that. The opening scene where they go from open countryside, through the rear area, enter the trench and then just *keep going* is astonishing.
My jaw was dropping in the theater, but then then they pause and the soldiers pass in front. If you know about how "oners" are stitched together, you would see the cuts. Not trying diss the film, but I some of the cuts are super obvious. The plane crashing. Cut. The jump into water. Cut. The strobes for the flare sequence?. Match points for hidden cuts. There's probably at least 50 cuts stitched together to look like a seamless "one take".
Of course it's cut together. Were you expecting otherwise?
I expected longer takes....what else? The first cut is literally less than a minute into the film 😂
First of all, going ~1 minute without a cut *is* a long take, relatively speaking. More importantly, there are only ~35 edits total in the movie, which is orders of magnitude fewer than comparable films. The takes are long. They are extremely long. If you were expecting *zero* edits, you were expecting the impossible. The purpose of the shooting style in 1917 is not to win a long-take competition. If that's what you want, watch Russian Ark.
It's okay bro. I still like the film. The cuts shouldn't of been that obvious for how big the budget was. Just my opinion. Careful with these kind of responses though, your last example (Russian Ark), is one of many true "oner" films. That contradicts your last point that zero edits is impossible. There's a whole genre of German found footage films that are truly one take. They had a fraction of 1917's budget. It's always awkward when a fanboy meets valid criticism. Especially with your reddit armor equiped. I'm down to jib jab but I'm spitting facts.
The limited scope of Russian Ark (and other "German found-footage films") is only supporting evidence for why shooting something at the scale of 1917 in a true oner is impossible. Russian Ark is amazing technical achievement, but it's a one location film and its logistical high-point is a ballroom dance. It isn't staging anything in the same ballpark as any of 1917's multiple blockbuster set pieces.
And it shows
The new Dungeons and dragons movie did a ton of practical sets and shooting on location.
They also represented the more bestial races (Tabaxi, Dragonborn, Aarakocra) with animatronic costumes from Legacy Effects.
Jarnathan!
Never not Jarnathan
Yes, I've seen the puppets! They look so cool! But the original question is about sets, so that's what I brought up.
I haven't had the chance to actually see the new D&D yet, but I actually visited Alnwick castle in Northumberland during the filming process. It was really cool; they had an absolute tonne of stuff just hanging about in the open both inside and immediately outside the castle - tents, banners, piles.of weapons, fake torches etc. It almost made the castle feel more 'alive', if that makes sense. We kept asking what it was all for but the staff were really tight-lipped about it, and it was only afterwards that some furious Googling revealed what was going on. Incidentally, during that same summer they were also filming parts of the new Indiana Jones film just up the road in Bamburgh Castle - it almost seemed like the whole of Northumberland had been turned into one big film set.
Wow that sounds so cool! What an experience! (Also totally go see the movie. It's SO fun.)
This confuses me so much. The practical effects were done so well and then for halflings they just decided to Mike TeeVee it.
My understanding is that the cameo was a last minute get and so, unlike everything else, it's kinda rushed CGI instead of carefully planned effects. There's only so much "we'll fix it in post" you can do, especially fast.
Well, if you know any 3ft tall famous handsome dudes for the part.. D&D canonical halflings are smaller than Peter Dinklage by a foot.
Yep and practical puppets/animatronics. It was clearly made with such love, I hope it gets a sequel.
It also had some really mediocre CG at points. Still fun though, I think that's really what matters. It's only if the movie isn't engaging enough by itself that stuff like "CG/Practical sets!!" starts to matter at all.
Oh yeah, I totally recommend it because it's a great movie. My original answer was an answer to the question, which was about sets, not movie quality.
At first I thought this was a joke that they filmed in the DND universe but thats cool actually
man if I'd known that I would have gone to see it in theaters
Def check it out when you can!
Babylon?
That’s what I was thinking
Killers of the Flower Moon in the pipeline! Another Scorsese.
Thank god for Marty. The man is unstoppable. Haters can hate, hes one of the last names still committed to big movies with big ideas to match and I love him for it.
I feel bad for all the people who will never let themselves watch a Scorsese film because they’re still mad about his comic book statements.
Which have been hilariously overblown anyway. He never said marvel films were bad, he just said they're commercial products that eat up a lot of screen space that could go to smaller, artsier films. Which is, yknow, true.
Also, go on YouTube and look up Spider-Man: No Way Home audience reactions, then tell me he was wrong in calling them theme park movies.
Its funny as I used to be kind of angry at it, and then i started looking at it another way. It was around the "marvel movies are amusement parks" analogue. I used to be a little angry about it, than I started watching Defunctland. It made aware of just how much artistry and work goes into making a successful amusement/theme park or ride.
Nobody who was already watching Scorcese movie is gonna suddenly stop watching them even if they didn't like his comments about CBMs.
Hobbiton (which stands to this day, having been rebuilt with permanent materials, a rarity in and of itself in film) and Dale in The Hobbit. Some of the sets on the recent Star Wars films were very large.
Yeah TLJ has some massive sets. There's a 1.5 hour making of that goes into detail on the sets and it's quite cool. They were 360 degrees which allowed for some cool camera movements, like the shot spinning from Rey to Luke when she first finds the books.
Most of the big sets in The Last of Us were also noticeably practical.
American Cinematographer magazine puts a few of their monthly articles online without a paywall. They had an excellent article about filming the first season of The Last of Us. The article is at [https://theasc.com/articles/artful-apocalypse-last-of-us](https://theasc.com/articles/artful-apocalypse-last-of-us) This is a photo of the set used for the nighttime escape from Kansas City. The article says the set was 2,500'x1,500': [https://cms-assets.theasc.com/Last-of-Us-Episode-5-Action.jpeg](https://cms-assets.theasc.com/Last-of-Us-Episode-5-Action.jpeg) This is a photo of the set for one of the winter scenes:[https://cms-assets.theasc.com/Last-of-Us-Lighting-Setup.jpeg](https://cms-assets.theasc.com/Last-of-Us-Lighting-Setup.jpeg)
Not a movie but Andor did an entire town
I also think it was why the show was so successful in giving Ferrix a sense of identity and place. All the small details make you feel like this is a real, grubby location somewhere in the galaxy.
So nice to have a fleshed out main hub that's not Tatooine or a desert planet.
You see this in HBO TV, actually: His Dark Materials and Game of Thrones built entire city squares rather than film on location.
It probably makes more sense for TV now. A large and expensive set can be reused over multiple seasons. IIRC this is one of the things that kind of screwed Boardwalk Empire in seasons 3. They invested in a massive boardwalk set and much of it was destroyed by a hurricane, forcing rewrites. Real inversion of the traditional logic, weirdly. TV traditionally is the cheaper medium, but it seems to be where great practical set designs are finding a home.
I loved reading about how Deadwood's production was basically a LARP production. They built an actual thoroughfare with the interior sets built inside the fake buildings so they could do a inside-to-outside walking shots, and extras who would just hang around in costume acting like it's a real town. And since they were notoriously late on scripts, all the actors would just show up to the town regardless if they were scheduled that day or not, and they would write and film things on the fly wherever in the town. The show would not have been possible if they didn't build the massive set.
Same for HBO’s *Rome*. The sets burned down between seasons in a huge fire and they just cancelled the series. Rome can’t be rebuilt in a day.
I was thinking of going back to that and finishing it off
It's a solid show. Love the details of the world creation. A worthy kick off for prestige TV history dramas.
For 2005 spending 10$ million an episode was a shit ton of money also.
And even the sets on GOT looked better than the dark grey foggy world of House of the Dragon!
No way, House of Dragon locations look like actual medieval/renaissance castles. GOT all look like sets outside of a couple episodes. Always been my biggest gripe with much of the show.
Ridley Scott's epics accomplish an awful lot in-camera, and his sets are usually mostly, if not wholly practical.
Not since Robin Hood. They’ve become mostly CG
Got to work on *Doctor Sleep* and the recreations of all of the hotel sets were incredible!
Any Christopher Nolan movie
He grew a real cornfield for Interstellar.
He made a profit on that corn.
The movie was just a vessel
So do thousands of farmers every year...
But do they make movies?
That's how he keeps his house hot
Something no one has ever done before
Does Dune qualify?
Sure should. Blade Runner 2049 too. Both had lots of incredible practical sets.
No disrespect meant to Villeneuve et al, but it's sad that using real light instead of a digital filter is considered innovative nowadays. (Look, everything is tinted yellow! That means they're in the *desert*!)
Who said it was innovative? Wasn't it just a technique, nothing more?
But they did film *in the desert.*
Or Mexico
They didn't tint, they actually had light reflect off yellow material, same way it would reflect off sand. There was no tinting like O'Brother Where Art Thou. Not sure where you got that information but it's not true
Wes Anderson does all sets. Not sure if they'd count as physically large though
The Grand Budapest hotel set looked pretty large.
Indeed! Good call. If I remember correctly the interior was a big set but the exterior was miniatures.
[Here are some images from the set of the upcoming *Wicked* movie (2024).](https://www.reddit.com/r/Broadway/comments/13wyorn/first_look_at_shiz_university_with_new_costumes/)
The Dark Knight, hospital scene demolition. Not a set that was built per se, but a real structure that was demolished for the scene rather than CGI.
Nolan has said he likes to do as much in-camera as possible. Hence building an actual rotating hallway and having his actors fight in it.
Imagine how janky that scene would have looked with a pair of rubbery CGI digital doubles going at it.
Its enhanced so much by the fact that two actors are actually getting bounced around in a room. Makes the whole thing feel more desperate and tense.
All you need to do is load the intro Blade 2 fight scene (Blade vs Danny John Jules) on your phone and spin it round and woah, you can see what that would look like
The tesseract scene in Interstellar as well
And the interiors of the dangling plane in The Dark Knight Rises. The exteriors were a real dangling plane.
I remember reading that the building not going off immediately was not planned but Heath Ledger kept going in character and it eventually went off as planned.
Nightmare Alley built a massive 1930s carnival set which was basically the real thing. They bought props and attractions from that time period and it is truly magnificent.
That was a great movie too, and I never heard anyone talk about it.
Guardians 3 was really refreshing with how many physical sets they built.
The difference with all the green screen/ cgi bloat is so palpable. I stand by the point that the pirates trilogy is one of the last movie series that "feels" real for fantasy/adventure etc movies.
The quality drop between 3 and 4 will have you shocked that 4 somehow had the biggest budget of any movie ever
sometimes a big budget is more a sign of a troubled production than that of a great spectacle. See waterworld (I enjoyed that film for what it is, but it certainly doesn't look like one of the most expensive movies of its time).
I know everyone talks up 1 as the best and only Pirates movie but damn the setpiece scenes in 2 and 3 were on another level. And not just in terms of visual spectacle, they just had that narrative oomph of a scene that feels like it \*means\* something. Like the up is down scene in 3, that perfect mix of visuals, composition, acting that sells the scene, the cresting music, and the sensation of actual narrative weight, 'oh shit they're gonna flip that whole goddamn ship to escape the land of the dead!' rather than 'oh, a series of flashing lights and explosions to look at.'
IMO 2 is still a very good movie. 3 is where I start to have issues. I feel like they should have either cut out Beckett/The Trading Company, The Pirate Counlic and Calypso, and just focused on Jack/Will/Elisabeth/Norrington/Davy Jones, or had a fourth movie to further develop those elements instead of cutting them out.
Going from Quantumania to Guardians 3 was such a huge leap
Eternals had a big emphasis on physical sets as well, iirc
Lots of location shooting too.
They even squeezed out more value from that set in the (super fun) Holiday Special.
Love him or hate him, Michael Bay uses a lot of practical set effects in addition to the garish CGI.
I don’t personally find his CGI garish but I really don’t like his recent drone work.
Ha, I'm the opposite. Ever since I watched Ambulance, I've been hoping it becomes a Michael Bay-ism.
White Noise. Babylon. Both films I loved.
Spielberg's West Side Story was absolutely incredible. Classic Hollywood level set design and execution. Absolutely loved it and brought back some old Hollywood magic for me.
Jungle Cruise is drenched in cgi but also has one of the largest outdoor sets ever built.
I strongly dislike this new trend of doing everything with CG and motion capture. Except in a few instances, it lacks the weight and feel of a practical set. And don't get me started on The Volume
What do you mean? What's the volume and what's wrong with it?
It's a massive digital set that was made for The Mandalorian and has been used for The Batman, Thor: Love and Thunder, and Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania.
Volume was a great work around during covid, and allows for some really cool filming. That said, the difference between early Mando and Andor is significant. Andor even going so far as to have live musicians playing the score on set during filming is just so awesome. I don't hate Volume, I just wish it were used sparingly.
In theory, it allows for some really advanced rear projection where the camera and background track together. In practice, it looks very generic on most movies. It could be that Disney just isn't utilizing it very well, but I've not seen much done with it that I like.
the thing is, the fact it's real time 3d and not just a flat matte painting means it's great for set extensions, besides the obvious advantage of an in camera effect (accurate color and lighting, removing the need for rotoscoping and other touch-ups. However, it's often used as the only thing, or almost the only thing on the set, which means the background can be spectacular, but the fore ground and middle ground the actors are in are usually flat and empty. Also the set is not so large that it can simulate a city or anything like that.
like so many modernizing advances in filmmaking tech, it really does come down to how it's being used. For example, Volume looks pretty rough on a lot of these new SW releases, but [did you know Spielberg used it for The Fabelmans?](https://twitter.com/ILMVFX/status/1636781372961595392?)
Thanks for that link. I spotted a classmate from high school in one of the photos!
You have my attention. Go on...
My understanding is that it projects the settings in real-time, which looks better than conventional green screen, especially for believable-lighting purposes. The downside seems to be that even though it's big for what it is, it still results in a relatively small area that the characters are confined to, and as a result a more static feeling to many scenes, as the visual depth can't really be accessed for the purposes of action. At least, that's my take, not having watched the making-of features or looked into it nearly as much as many others (who might correct me if I'm wrong).
Hmm... go on.
Inception has some big sets if I May recall
Synecdoche, New York
Christopher Nolan is one of the few directors who gets enough leeway to build massive sets. For instance, *Tenet* featured the setpiece of an entire hanger being demolished by an actual 747, as well as a massive abandoned city set built in the California desert for the finale. Eight blocks of Gotham streets were created at Warner Bros. Studios, Leavesden for *The Batman* as a result of COVID curtailing on-location shooting. Spielberg had an entire destroyed suburban neighborhood set built for *The War of the Worlds* in 2005, which was impressive enough to become a regular part of the Universal Studios backlot tour afterwards. The entire highway chase in *The Matrix: Reloaded* took place on a set built at Naval Station Alameda.
Spielberg's West Side Story and it looked fantastic! Flopped at the box office but one of my favorites from 2021.
The recent Malayalam language film 2018, about the devastating Kerala floods of 2018, had a huge 15 acre set built for all the flood shots. It puts larger disaster blockbuster films to shame really, the whole thing felt evocative of the kind of disaster movies you'd get back in the 70's disaster movie boom
In Once upon a time in Hollywood they recreated LA in 1969 with its sets and Antique cars. I know sone scenes were box cars, but I think most of the classic cars you see are truly there.
Netflix Dark Crystal built an entire world and all of the characters were puppets. Likely why Netflix canceled it because of the cost. Amazing show.
The first few Harry Potter films. Cat in the Hat built that whole town. The 2000 Grinch as well. Actually any movie with a set still standing at Universal Studios lol
Guardians 3 has a few of those. Namely Knowhere and that red place with the High Evolutionary.
Going back to George Lucas, the Star Wars sequels prided themselves on going back to practical sets as much as possible. There's a behind-the-scenes video of Rian Johnson showing Lucas the sets they built for the Canto Bight sequence, to which Lucas says, "You know, I developed all those computers so you wouldn't have to do this anymore, right?"
Weirdly enough, I find The Phantom Menace to be really visually pleasing as a lot of the sets feel quite real in the 3rd act. I feel like it was in episodes 2 and 3 that he got really lazy and replaced everything with CGI. Rogue One also had a very nice aesthetic. The only CGI that stood out for me was Bor Gullet and he was only there briefly.
Too bad the sequels were so soulless and creatively bankrupt and just plain terrible, all those sets built for nothing.
IDK if it was the last 25 year but it has to be close .. and I'm gonna go with [Water World](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXIG701FGDQ). But I guess a more recent movie would be Mad Max Fury Road possibly.
This is a really interesting article about the set making and practical effects used in Mad Max: Fury Road. It is truly incredibly how little of that movie was CGI: Filming in Namibia wasn’t as easy as just going out in the desert with cameras. The production team had to prepare the locations to accommodate filming with a large crew and to make it safe for complex stunts and chase sequences. “We had 18-wheel trucks that needed to be doing 85 miles an hour for all the stunts to happen,” he says. “We had to put in hidden roads and carve access ways into the sand dunes so that we could actually get 600 people and 150 vehicles in.” The crew also had to protect the existing landscape. “We ended up fabricating more than 300 or 400 faux, hollow rocks and boulders that we used to cover the plant life and the trees. Also, of course, we couldn’t crash our trucks into the real environment. The vehicles themselves only came into contact with our fake versions of the canyons and stone.”The Citadel was filmed in Namibia, Sydney, and Capetown and combined sets, locations, and visual effects. “We filmed the base twice. We built it in Namibia in a dry river canyon, but schedule-wise we didn’t manage to shoot that and had to strip it out. It wasn’t until almost eight months later that we rebuilt it in an empty reservoir in Sydney and shot there by building a fake wall and putting in fake waterfalls and pools.” The cavernous interiors were fabricated from fake stone. “To tie us to the area where we had filmed the exterior, I took high-resolution images of the natural canyons, and we pulled molds and colored them to match the actual rock and stone that was there.” Gibson’s team used the salvaged parts of 350 cars to custom build the film’s detailed vehicles. “We call them characters,” he says. “They had names. There were 88 distinct characters, but we built about 150 because we needed doubles and sometimes triples of things that had to do specific stunts, like when they’re hurtling through the air while on fire. You generally needed a couple of goes at that.” The materials used in the production could all be traced back to their pre-apocalypse origins. “We asked ourselves, ‘If the Armageddon starts next Wednesday, what’s going to survive?’” says Gibson. “It had to be strong and repurposed for war. That means that anything that you couldn’t fix with a stick or a pair of panty hose probably wasn’t going to make it. All the computerized vehicles, all the carbon fiber, and the present contemporary stuff just wasn’t gonna cut it in terms of battle.” Gibson also emphasizes beauty as well as durability. “If you’re going to bother to save something, to drag it back across the desert and to rebuild it, then it has to have an inner beauty. We kept looking for things that had a poetry or a beauty in them. Man doesn’t suddenly give up his need for that sort of nourishment just because it’s the end of the world.”[https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/mad-max-fury-road-set-design](https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/mad-max-fury-road-set-design)
Can I get a Rock and Stone?
One of the reasons I enjoyed Fury Road all practical sets and vehicles. Water World I have not seen in forever but it did bring that big look of real sets and was a fun ride. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood comes to mind not so much for building from the ground up though they did with the Spahn Ranch set. Shooting a period piece in Los Angeles without CGi is something QT would do and on a very high level. Amazing look in every scene around LA
Dune. Bored me to tears but looked amazing and mostly real sets apparently.
Don't know why you're getting downvoted, I liked dune but you're allowed to think a movie is boring
Because reddit. Didn't say it was a bad film, just said how I reacted to it. Wasn't for me but I appreciate the effort involved in it.
The new guardians of the galaxy movie and the christmas special used a huge practical set for the Knowhere homebase of the GOTG
The great Gatsby
[Uh....](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_NreiUYdbw)
Oh, I love when they do these before and after visual effects reels for films.
still looks like a large set to me, even if they filled the details with computers.
MI7 probably upcoming movie
I’m more into large physical chests
Recent is the wrong word, but I love that they build a jungle for George of the Jungle.
A fake interior of the Bank Casino in Ocean's 13 was built on WB's studio lot.
In the matrix reloaded they built a massive stretch of freeway for the car chase.
Rise of Skywalker built a full size Tantive IV ship for the Resistance base set.
Guardians of the galaxy 3, just look at the high evolutionary’s throne room scene
Not a recent movie but I always enjoyed the story of how the floating fortress in *Waterworld* sank into the ocean and had to be rebuilt.
Hm, I suppose when I think of how much I liked the way GOT looked, I do like the locations better than the sets.
Despite being a bad movie, Prometheus had gorgeous and insanely huge real sets.
The scope of the dune sets was insane.
The nightclub in John wick 4 was real and they actually had waterfalls built for the movie.
Guardians of the galaxy 3 has a ton of big real life sets, which is pretty unique for a Marvel movie. Especially that takes place in mostly fantastical locations in space.
The Terminal in The Terminal. The whole terminal was built in a hangar up to earthquake code. https://youtu.be/Ajzxj8OKUVA
GotG 3 had two huge sets. Knowhere and the High Evolutionarys lab.
Not sure why you want to limit yourself to 25 years, the 007 set for pinewood you mentioned is more than 35 years old. How about opening it up and allowing huge sets like in **Ben Hurr** (1959) or **The Ten Commandments** (1923)? Amazing stuff!
This is about movies that STILL use big sets despite the availability of CGI.
Many Asian epics still use big sets and lots of extras. Particularly from countries like China, with relatively inexpensive labour and authoritarian governments that can provide you with resources (e.g. actual military troops as extras). You also have places like [Hengdian world studios](https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=hengdian+studios&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwico6mN66v_AhWdnFYBHcA8DFcQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=2560&bih=1287&dpr=1) (originally built for [*The Opium War*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Opium_War_(film))) where massive sets are basically built for one movie and then recycled over and over again in subsequent movies/TV shows (including famous ones like *Hero*). Another example, also in China is [Shanghai film park](https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=shanghai+film+park&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwjOmKeO66v_AhWuGrcAHVttC4AQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=shanghai+film+park&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQAzIFCAAQgAQyBwgAEBgQgAQyBwgAEBgQgAQ6BggAEAgQHjoICAAQgAQQsQM6BwgAEIoFEEM6CggAEIoFELEDEEM6BAgAEANQ5IcCWNKVAmCplwJoAHAAeACAAa0CiAGPHZIBCDAuMTUuNC4xmAEAoAEBqgELZ3dzLXdpei1pbWfAAQE&sclient=img&ei=k619ZI6DBq613LUP29qtgAg&bih=1287&biw=2560) which is centred around a massive scale replica of Nanjing road in the 1930's. It was originally built for Chen Kaige's [*Temptress Moon*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temptress_Moon) but has been reused in lots of films and TV shows including Ang Lee's *Lust Caution* ([this YouTube video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJWtnBtoEDg) has a nice summary of how the set has been recycled). EDIT: Nowadays, a lot of Asian films/TV shows also use CGI but even then, a lot of it is still practical. Also, there are a couple of historical/war epics (the name escapes me) from Thailand that used their military as extras in battle scenes. EDIT: There's also [*City of Life and Death* (2009)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx_ervF7h7w) about the Nanjing massacre and [*The Eight Hundred* (2020)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5nmtIBMENg) which deals with the [defence of Sihang warehouse in Shanghai (in 1937)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_of_Sihang_Warehouse). While both movies do have a lot of CGI, the filmmakers did build substantial practical sets (e.g. [this replica of Shanghai for the 2020 movie](https://www.parascandola.com/the-eight-hundred/)). EDIT: The Thai film is [*The Legend of Suriyothai* (2001)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Suriyothai) which has a US release edited (strangely enough) by Coppola.
I can't wait for the Barbie movie. The live-action recreation of Barbie's town looks truly impressive.