Impact filmed in reverse. Stitched together with knife wobble. Camera is locked down as well so you can do lots of stuffwith the frame and diaz reaction. The two frames of the flying knife still my be cg.. its hard to tell with the blur..
I really think it was just filmed in reverse. Set up the shot with the knives already in the wall, yoink 'em out real fast with a string, composite out the strings and reverse the shot in post.
Saw this gag wayyyyyy back in the 90s at Universal Studios in Hollywood. They had a trolley tour and we drove past a set that looked like the motel from "Psycho" and someone pretended to throw a knife and it got stuck in a pillar. But as we drove away I kept looking at the knife and saw it retract back into the pillar. Always thought it was a neat trick.
3:41 You prolly need earphones to hear it right, but right after the THUD, there's also a subtle DEDEDEDEDEDEDedede from the knife's vibration. Beautiful detail, and EXCELLENT choice for choosing Die Hard With A Vengeance, one of my favorite movies ever.
Maybe I’m a simpleton, but in the TikTok trend example that was shown, I never thought they were using cuts in those videos. I always figured that when the camera panned away from the object, the person walking would just run back to where they started and start walking again when the camera panned back to them. Because the walking is similar to, but never identical to how it looked before
My first thought was that this scene with Cameron Diaz was simply played in reverse. I think the knives might have been pulled out using some kind of wire. That would explain the holes in the clothes better than your theory.
That was one of my initial theories, but the way her garment reacts to the knife appearing doesn’t seem to track with that theory. You could be right though!
@@paul_et In another comment, you mentioned that in such a case, Cameron Diaz’s reaction would be noticeably strange. I think the shot is cut so quickly precisely to prevent anyone from noticing the reversed footage.
I think it's shot in reverse, that's why they went with that floral pattern on the garment, if you watch it frame by frame, the green pattern almost exactly matches the cut the knife makes on the visible side. It very much looks intentional. And then they used wires to pull them out, which would also allow them to wiggle the knives to get that springy effect. They cut rather quickly, as mentioned.
It makes a ton of sense. The thing is though, when I was testing that theory, I reversed the shot (which would mean it’d be playing the way it was originally shot, hypothetically) and it just looked reversed to me. The way the garment flutters and then immediately stops moving looks unnatural.
I should stop commenting on videos before watching the entire thing, but I still don't think it came out from the back. But watching it frame by frame does have some weird movement of the garment, that doesn't entirely match up with what I would expect from the movement of the knives. I would love to see an official breakdown of this scene.
Now, I'm gonna go on a limb and give the remaining 7.2% that I believe how it's pulled off by having the knife on a thin rope that is rapidly pulled towards the board and through her clothing, and they just VFX out the rope. If you go frame-by-frame in that scene, you can see her clothing already being pulled back to the board before the knife even hits, meaning it can be said rope hitting the edges of the hole in her fabric Edit: Also to the comments, it's not a reverse shot, you can see her earrings, knife, and fabric sway AFTER the knife hits like how it should be, if reversed, the movement abruptly stops.
I think the clothes would be pulled back to the board whether it was a knife on a string from in front or shot out from behind, so not definitive evidence either way. However coming from the front might actually get a better reaction from the actress since she's actually seeing the thing come towards her and narrowly miss her, as opposed to reacting to the thunk of the mechanism springing out.
It was VFX with a knife being pulled back and probably another bit composited in of the knife just vibrating. It's probably the simplest way of accomplishing that if you want that kind of realism and have the kind of budget that was available for the production.
In Gangs of New York, i think they had the knives project off the board and just ran the film backwards. Cameron Diez garmet was drapped through the blades of the knives, like the knives pierced and pegged the garment to the board. It would be so easy to do to, have the knives shaking, already piearced through the garment, then somehow have them shoot out from the board. Then run the whole thing backwards
I forgot about that. I got a copy of the movie for the 30th anniversary of the actions depicted in the movie, and I'll have to remember to keep an eye out for that.
You seem to have forgotten about the reverse shot. The knife was already stuck in the right place, and then pulled out of this hole with a fishing line or something more tricky, and then the frame was simply rotated in the opposite direction. Then all the fishing lines or wires were cleaned up, and, as you said, two VFX frames of the knife were added.
@@boychiha1685 I think they mean the shot itself is reversed. I'm sure some clever cuts would switch between reversed/not reversed takes during the knife throw --> reaction.
@@boychiha1685 The shots where we see the knives being stuck in are very short. Just 0.6 or 0.5 seconds. These short shots can be reversed. The actors don't have time to say or do anything to allow this "secret" to be revealed.
@@artemziuskin Precisely, but with the VFX that was available at the time, if they needed to take the knives portion and composite that in on top of regularly moving people, it's not much of an issue.
The knife bit can be easily done without any complicated pop out mechanism or VFX. Literally just stick the knife in the board, connect it to a fishing wire and tell the actress to GASP just before you pull the wire to yank the knife out. Then just reverse the footage. There, saved you a thousand bucks. FYI, that's exactly how they shot the facehugger skittering across the floor and leaping onto camera in James Cameron's Aliens in the scene where Ripley and Newt are trapped with the facehugger in the room.
Now I finally get the Tom and Huck one. Guy throws a knife across the courtroom at Jonathan Taylor Thomas’ face and he blocks it with a Bible. CGI knife. Cut back to wide shot of courtroom, goes back to being a prop. Brilliant.
I shot such a scene with a couple of kids and an axe. It was a lot of fun and it looks spectacular. I just used the trick they show on Film Riot. Two shots with a whip pan each, cut together. That's it. Of course I would not be able to do this on my own alone. So I have the utmost respect for your approach. 😀 Wow!
KUNG FU HUSTLE IS THE BEST! I love the knife throw/looney tunes scene. Not only is it full of perfect physical comedy but it also tells the audience all about the characters involved.
Oh, also reminds me of the DVD extras for The Returner, where they point out that instead of using CGI to make a bullet hole in a person's forehead, they put makeup on the actor for the bullet hole, and used CGI to remove it until the point where they get shot.
You're being ridiculous. If you knew anything about Daniel Day Lewis, you'd know he clearly joined a circus for 23 months before accepting the role in order to properly method act it - he actually threw the knives.
You could use an ND filter when you were shooting your own knife shot, to get blur in camera. ND Filter rings are also available for phones, to maintain the 1/48 shutter speed and keep natural appearing motion blur.
I throughly enjoyed this video and have subscribed...I'm no expert but usually when "this sort of thing" appears on my feed, you've been selected by the algorithm and good news...your video is great so expect lots of views, lots of subscribers and lots anxiety...well done, I'll check out the rest of your stuff and look forward to the new stuff.
If you want the movie magic trick, the effect could be to film in reverse. The gangs of NY scene can have the knives already in place and pulled from the board away from the talent safely with wires. This lets you reshoot quickly and easily as well while remaining practical. Plus, the fact you don't have to build a pair of contraptions for just one scene is a plus for the prop master too
All performances- street, stage, film, home and hell, even game- borrow tricks from one another when it comes to convincing the audience that what they’re watching is, at least in some way, real.
Bro, It's the fact that you go into painstaking details to somehow find an answer to questions we never had.. That's why I love film and that's why I follow you. Respect
There's an old movie from 1941 called "Time Out for Rhythm". While they're not the stars of the movie, The Three Stooges make appearances here and there throughout, mostly doing some routines (written in as auditions for a theatrical producer in the plot). Anyway, there's one scene where Curly has Coke bottle glasses and he can't see a thing (unless that's an act). He throws knives at Larry (and misses, of course), but the camera whip-pans to follow the knife as Curly throws it, all in one shot - no cuts. I don't know how in the world they did that safely, as there were definitely no digital effects back then.
Knife sliding down a wire would also be an option, like hitting an apple with an arrow. But in Gangs of New York I think outpainting already sticking knives (watch the too static hair curl on the first knife) would also be possible..
It's fairly obvious that the Gangs knives were shot in reverse. The giveaway is that the fabric moves in a way that cannot occur with the stage mechanism: it is up and tight against the wall with the knife in, low and away from the wall without the knife. Means it was probably just pulled out by strings. The hole in the fabric is likely due to repeated takes, or the order of the shots.
I feel like your After Effects tracking shot with added motion tracking to make it feel hand held etc is a smart and effective solution… but maybe not the most elegant. Pretty sure with Die Hard they just panned the camera in both shots and put in a splice. Which… I dunno, seems easier, neater, maybe not so carefully thought through, but it works, so…. Maybe the trick is not to overthink it, although your shot also works very well so there’s merit to both sides
Also, yeah, with the Gangs of New York shot, a vfx plus mechanical rig solution might be an effective way to do it, but it feels over engineered if you simply just reverse the shot and pull the knives out. Which would also explain the holes in her clothes being there before the knives hit
I think the holes in the costume and wall might also just be from prior takes. My money is on a reversed shot, but just the very impact. They had the knives stuck in Diaz' costume and then shot them out with compressed air or something of that sort (so they'd haul ass out of there) after shooting the part of the scene after she's hit.
Also note the black knife travels through a deliberately painted dark green background, then "appears" on a vividly contrasting white board worn by Bruce. That green paint is fresh as a daisy it was certainly intentional to hide the "flight" of the guy throwing the knife, because if you've thrown knives before you would know they spin through the air, but if you go frame by frame it's completely static and flying sideways. He had zero knife throwing skills. The dark green field is purposefully narrow through the knife's flight path would be, but the rest of the wall/background is intentionally white to contrast and "pop" the cast.
Maybe the knife scene in the film "Gangs of New York" was played backwards, so that the knives were actually quickly pulled out on strings. This also explains why the jacket moves with it.
You had 50% of the Gangs knife scene correct. There was trickery behind the wall, but the “moment of impact” was just the shot being reversed. They probably did have some VFX added for those two frames, but the end was definitely just a reverse shot.
I don't think that's how they did it. The motion of the dress doesn't match the direction the knives would be coming from, not to mention the knives come in perfectly straight, not spinning as they were thrown, so VFX would have to have messed that up. I suspect that the knives actually came in from in front, but they were on rails or wires that went through the dress and into the wall, and VFX was used to paint out the rails/wires. This allows the dress movement to be exactly what it's supposed to be without having to do a simulation that would look terrible. There's also the possibility that they actually had the dress stuck to the wall with knives and then they used wire to yank the knives out and just play the shot in reverse. But I don't think that's how they did it given the movement of the dress doesn't continue forward if you play the shot backwards.
If one is to use VFX to add a knife flying through the shot for two frames, then one could just as easily use VFX to modify the practical knife's timing for a couple of frames, making the effect almost completely seamless. I guess they drew the line at painting over the holes in Diaz's costume, though.
Love the knife popping trick! Though I don't really have a better explanation but I feel like the knife coming from behind maybe wouldn't work that well with the garment in this case. Because it is moving like you'd expect with the knife coming from the front and I feel like if the knife would come from the board it would be a bit tricky to pull the garment onto the board like that (definitely not impossible though) Someone else wrote it already but pulling it out seems not that implausible imo (you said the garment would contradict that but I don't really see how)
If it were me, I would just use some black and white era perception tricks and have someone actually throw the knifes on the empty board. The shot would probably be from a different angle, but I think it should work pretty well but then again, I've never shot a movie.
Maybe the knife throws are real, and Cameran was added to the shot in post. The other blade even wobbles when the second one hits the wall. Maybe they had a rig with the garment hanging there. Maybe the knives are on a wire from just out of frame to the wall and they are forced by air or something, it looks like the end of each handle has a hole in it for a wire to be fed through. The impact has to be real the way the fabric moved like the force didn't come from behind it.
Honestly I always thought that the Die Hard scene just had a knife stuck in the board the whole time, and they made the actor toss a rubber stunt knife or a plastic one (no impact noise) at the lower part of the board, out of frame.
Coming from someone who actually trained to throw knives, the Die Hard scene is entirely possible to do, for real, and safely. The person holding the board would have to remain stock still though, and not flinch.😅
I don't think they did a knife trick in Gangs of New York. Notice how Diaz's coat pulls back when it's hit by the knives (as it should). With a standard knife trick, the coat would go FORWARD because of the knives coming out from behind. My guess is it's just 100% CGI knives entering a rigged coat that's pulled back from behind the board to simulate the knife entering. The shots of the knives entering are only a handful of frames, not even a full second, almost immediately after the knives land, the movie cuts to another shot. Once it cuts back to Diaz, they're now using actual prop knives holding up the coat. Either that OR it's a custom two-part knife trick, one where there's TWO rigs, one pulling the coat back AS the knives are ejected forward, although given the thickness of the handles and how thin the slits on the coat are for the handles to go through, I gravitate towards my earlier solution.
Ah. The stars have aligned, I see. Apparently once every twelve millennia, Paul E.T. crawls out of his stasis chamber to feast on the blood of baby spinaches, and share a video.
Regarding FPS: The reason why they do 24 fps is that was the limitations that the technology could do 100+ years ago. 24 fps became standard. The reason why the don't (rarely) do anything higher for movies is the are stuck in their ways and refuse to change. The argument for the film is trying to emulate the human eye when it comes to 24 fps is not correct either. Why? Experts states the the human eye can see between 30 to 60 FPS. However, there are plenty of people who can tell a different between 30 Fps and 120+ fps in video games. Not to mention the standard for filming tv is 60 fps. Back then whenever they still using film for movies, film was and still is expensive to use. 24 fps was also cost saving. Fast forward to today. Movie studios have no excuses to film 60+ fps when using digital cameras and/or Computer Graphics.
If you’ve got any theories on that Gangs of New York knife effect, have a stab at it. Like I said, I’m still not 100% sure…
Strings!
Daniel Day-Lewis is that good he threw it for real
Impact filmed in reverse. Stitched together with knife wobble. Camera is locked down as well so you can do lots of stuffwith the frame and diaz reaction. The two frames of the flying knife still my be cg.. its hard to tell with the blur..
I really think it was just filmed in reverse. Set up the shot with the knives already in the wall, yoink 'em out real fast with a string, composite out the strings and reverse the shot in post.
Its either what you showed, or reversed the shot and they pulled the knives on strings, but I think your theory looks better.
Saw this gag wayyyyyy back in the 90s at Universal Studios in Hollywood. They had a trolley tour and we drove past a set that looked like the motel from "Psycho" and someone pretended to throw a knife and it got stuck in a pillar. But as we drove away I kept looking at the knife and saw it retract back into the pillar. Always thought it was a neat trick.
"I was really cut up about it" I laughed so hard. The amount of knife references really makes the cut for me. Great work as always Paul!
I am a simple man. When I see a new Paul E.T. vid, I click on it and I enjoy it.
3:41 You prolly need earphones to hear it right, but right after the THUD, there's also a subtle DEDEDEDEDEDEDedede from the knife's vibration. Beautiful detail, and EXCELLENT choice for choosing Die Hard With A Vengeance, one of my favorite movies ever.
Love the knife scene in Kung Fu Hustle. And the rest of the film.
Same. It sounds weird in English, though.
Maybe I’m a simpleton, but in the TikTok trend example that was shown, I never thought they were using cuts in those videos. I always figured that when the camera panned away from the object, the person walking would just run back to where they started and start walking again when the camera panned back to them. Because the walking is similar to, but never identical to how it looked before
Yeah exactly, he kinda lost me there… the whip pan cut has been around for ages and that’s not even a correct example
Yeah you’re 100% right
It was much simpler than my filmmaking brain let me realise
My first thought was that this scene with Cameron Diaz was simply played in reverse. I think the knives might have been pulled out using some kind of wire. That would explain the holes in the clothes better than your theory.
That was one of my initial theories, but the way her garment reacts to the knife appearing doesn’t seem to track with that theory. You could be right though!
@@paul_et In another comment, you mentioned that in such a case, Cameron Diaz’s reaction would be noticeably strange. I think the shot is cut so quickly precisely to prevent anyone from noticing the reversed footage.
I think it's shot in reverse, that's why they went with that floral pattern on the garment, if you watch it frame by frame, the green pattern almost exactly matches the cut the knife makes on the visible side. It very much looks intentional. And then they used wires to pull them out, which would also allow them to wiggle the knives to get that springy effect. They cut rather quickly, as mentioned.
It makes a ton of sense. The thing is though, when I was testing that theory, I reversed the shot (which would mean it’d be playing the way it was originally shot, hypothetically) and it just looked reversed to me. The way the garment flutters and then immediately stops moving looks unnatural.
I should stop commenting on videos before watching the entire thing, but I still don't think it came out from the back. But watching it frame by frame does have some weird movement of the garment, that doesn't entirely match up with what I would expect from the movement of the knives.
I would love to see an official breakdown of this scene.
still my favourite channel on youtube
Now, I'm gonna go on a limb and give the remaining 7.2% that I believe how it's pulled off by having the knife on a thin rope that is rapidly pulled towards the board and through her clothing, and they just VFX out the rope. If you go frame-by-frame in that scene, you can see her clothing already being pulled back to the board before the knife even hits, meaning it can be said rope hitting the edges of the hole in her fabric
Edit: Also to the comments, it's not a reverse shot, you can see her earrings, knife, and fabric sway AFTER the knife hits like how it should be, if reversed, the movement abruptly stops.
I think the clothes would be pulled back to the board whether it was a knife on a string from in front or shot out from behind, so not definitive evidence either way. However coming from the front might actually get a better reaction from the actress since she's actually seeing the thing come towards her and narrowly miss her, as opposed to reacting to the thunk of the mechanism springing out.
It was VFX with a knife being pulled back and probably another bit composited in of the knife just vibrating. It's probably the simplest way of accomplishing that if you want that kind of realism and have the kind of budget that was available for the production.
In Gangs of New York, i think they had the knives project off the board and just ran the film backwards. Cameron Diez garmet was drapped through the blades of the knives, like the knives pierced and pegged the garment to the board. It would be so easy to do to, have the knives shaking, already piearced through the garment, then somehow have them shoot out from the board. Then run the whole thing backwards
that's what I thought too
One of my favorite knife scenes is in The Crow when Eric catches and returns Tin Tins knives.
I also like the super realistic gunshot scene in that movie. I still don't know how they made it look like Lee was literally murdered by gunfire.
I forgot about that. I got a copy of the movie for the 30th anniversary of the actions depicted in the movie, and I'll have to remember to keep an eye out for that.
@@russellwboss That was easy, it was the having him never show up again anywhere that was hard.
You seem to have forgotten about the reverse shot.
The knife was already stuck in the right place, and then pulled out of this hole with a fishing line or something more tricky, and then the frame was simply rotated in the opposite direction.
Then all the fishing lines or wires were cleaned up, and, as you said, two VFX frames of the knife were added.
How is it reversed if the actors talks normally and picks out the knives???
@@boychiha1685 I think they mean the shot itself is reversed. I'm sure some clever cuts would switch between reversed/not reversed takes during the knife throw --> reaction.
@@boychiha1685 The shots where we see the knives being stuck in are very short. Just 0.6 or 0.5 seconds. These short shots can be reversed. The actors don't have time to say or do anything to allow this "secret" to be revealed.
@@artemziuskin Precisely, but with the VFX that was available at the time, if they needed to take the knives portion and composite that in on top of regularly moving people, it's not much of an issue.
"Hold your hand out in front of you, and wave it around as quickly as you can."
My hand: "YOU CAN'T SEE MEEEEE!!!" 🎺🎺🎺
hell yeah. next lunchbreak is bound to go crazy whenever paul's in the feed
The knife bit can be easily done without any complicated pop out mechanism or VFX.
Literally just stick the knife in the board, connect it to a fishing wire and tell the actress to GASP just before you pull the wire to yank the knife out. Then just reverse the footage. There, saved you a thousand bucks. FYI, that's exactly how they shot the facehugger skittering across the floor and leaping onto camera in James Cameron's Aliens in the scene where Ripley and Newt are trapped with the facehugger in the room.
That's true, although, they clearly did a bit of compositing so that the knives would vibrate in a convincing way once in the shot.
Bro, I'm fascinated by the magic trick. But more than that, I'm fascinated by the way you structured this video.
Now I finally get the Tom and Huck one.
Guy throws a knife across the courtroom at Jonathan Taylor Thomas’ face and he blocks it with a Bible.
CGI knife.
Cut back to wide shot of courtroom, goes back to being a prop.
Brilliant.
To all the hand-waving people at 1:52 - I salute you!
Are you saluting back and forth really quickly? I salute you!
.My goodness!!!! Paul uploaded!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.
Popped up on my recommendations. Now this is quality content
His car chase one is 👌, go find that.
I shot such a scene with a couple of kids and an axe. It was a lot of fun and it looks spectacular. I just used the trick they show on Film Riot. Two shots with a whip pan each, cut together. That's it. Of course I would not be able to do this on my own alone. So I have the utmost respect for your approach. 😀 Wow!
That knife popping contraption is a great idea
KUNG FU HUSTLE IS THE BEST! I love the knife throw/looney tunes scene. Not only is it full of perfect physical comedy but it also tells the audience all about the characters involved.
Oh, also reminds me of the DVD extras for The Returner, where they point out that instead of using CGI to make a bullet hole in a person's forehead, they put makeup on the actor for the bullet hole, and used CGI to remove it until the point where they get shot.
It's always a good day when I see Paul E.T. uploaded a new video!
You're being ridiculous. If you knew anything about Daniel Day Lewis, you'd know he clearly joined a circus for 23 months before accepting the role in order to properly method act it - he actually threw the knives.
Love your work. I was so excited to see a new video this morning!
You could use an ND filter when you were shooting your own knife shot, to get blur in camera. ND Filter rings are also available for phones, to maintain the 1/48 shutter speed and keep natural appearing motion blur.
Nice to see a new video of yours! It's always a pleasant surprise when you upload. And this was a really interesting topic :)
I throughly enjoyed this video and have subscribed...I'm no expert but usually when "this sort of thing" appears on my feed, you've been selected by the algorithm and good news...your video is great so expect lots of views, lots of subscribers and lots anxiety...well done, I'll check out the rest of your stuff and look forward to the new stuff.
Critically under viewed videos. Your content is amazing! Hopefully you pick up steam and I look forward to your next upload.
Paul E.T back wiv anova banga of a video!! 🔥🔥
Looks like i got my happy hormone shot for this month! Great video Paul!
Always a treat to see your videos!
Glad to see your return. It’s been way too long.
If you want the movie magic trick, the effect could be to film in reverse. The gangs of NY scene can have the knives already in place and pulled from the board away from the talent safely with wires. This lets you reshoot quickly and easily as well while remaining practical. Plus, the fact you don't have to build a pair of contraptions for just one scene is a plus for the prop master too
Best knife scene ever- Big Trouble in Little China. End of argument.
What a videos!!
What a video!! WHAT A VIDEO!! Loved it!
Nice video Paul. Always a pleasure
All performances- street, stage, film, home and hell, even game- borrow tricks from one another when it comes to convincing the audience that what they’re watching is, at least in some way, real.
I already knew the effect of gangs of New York knives since I was a child, thanks to the Benny Hill show!!
I remember first noticing the no throw trick in The Princess Bride. Sometimes the simplest things are the most effective.
As always a great and very informative video - you threw it!
That last scene made me spit out my tea 😂
Bro, It's the fact that you go into painstaking details to somehow find an answer to questions we never had.. That's why I love film and that's why I follow you. Respect
Kung Fu Hustle is one of the greatest movies
There's an old movie from 1941 called "Time Out for Rhythm". While they're not the stars of the movie, The Three Stooges make appearances here and there throughout, mostly doing some routines (written in as auditions for a theatrical producer in the plot). Anyway, there's one scene where Curly has Coke bottle glasses and he can't see a thing (unless that's an act). He throws knives at Larry (and misses, of course), but the camera whip-pans to follow the knife as Curly throws it, all in one shot - no cuts. I don't know how in the world they did that safely, as there were definitely no digital effects back then.
I learned this watching Film Riot about 14 years ago, and used it in an episode of “Robot, Ninja & Gay Guy” 😊
~Trav
you're awesome bud, keep it up ❤
broo that TikTok trend was one of the best i have ever seen!!
You really need a sharp mind for all those cutting edge puns.
Knife sliding down a wire would also be an option, like hitting an apple with an arrow. But in Gangs of New York I think outpainting already sticking knives (watch the too static hair curl on the first knife) would also be possible..
It's fairly obvious that the Gangs knives were shot in reverse. The giveaway is that the fabric moves in a way that cannot occur with the stage mechanism: it is up and tight against the wall with the knife in, low and away from the wall without the knife. Means it was probably just pulled out by strings. The hole in the fabric is likely due to repeated takes, or the order of the shots.
People accuse me of faking my throwing videos. It's much easier to just throw the damn knife. lol
I also learned that trick doing a high school production of Pyjama game
I feel like your After Effects tracking shot with added motion tracking to make it feel hand held etc is a smart and effective solution… but maybe not the most elegant. Pretty sure with Die Hard they just panned the camera in both shots and put in a splice. Which… I dunno, seems easier, neater, maybe not so carefully thought through, but it works, so…. Maybe the trick is not to overthink it, although your shot also works very well so there’s merit to both sides
Also, yeah, with the Gangs of New York shot, a vfx plus mechanical rig solution might be an effective way to do it, but it feels over engineered if you simply just reverse the shot and pull the knives out. Which would also explain the holes in her clothes being there before the knives hit
100%
I would’ve done it the same way if it wasn’t just me filming
@@paul_et fair point, much trickier when it’s literally just you, a camera, and a back yard
Knife video paul!
What took more time? The Gangs of New York research or thinking of knife puns?
you really make great film making videos .
This was a really nice video.
I think the holes in the costume and wall might also just be from prior takes. My money is on a reversed shot, but just the very impact. They had the knives stuck in Diaz' costume and then shot them out with compressed air or something of that sort (so they'd haul ass out of there) after shooting the part of the scene after she's hit.
Goated channel
Also note the black knife travels through a deliberately painted dark green background, then "appears" on a vividly contrasting white board worn by Bruce. That green paint is fresh as a daisy it was certainly intentional to hide the "flight" of the guy throwing the knife, because if you've thrown knives before you would know they spin through the air, but if you go frame by frame it's completely static and flying sideways. He had zero knife throwing skills.
The dark green field is purposefully narrow through the knife's flight path would be, but the rest of the wall/background is intentionally white to contrast and "pop" the cast.
I love your videos!
Maybe the knife scene in the film "Gangs of New York" was played backwards, so that the knives were actually quickly pulled out on strings. This also explains why the jacket moves with it.
You had 50% of the Gangs knife scene correct. There was trickery behind the wall, but the “moment of impact” was just the shot being reversed. They probably did have some VFX added for those two frames, but the end was definitely just a reverse shot.
Daniel day lewis is just an awesome actor. The script said he threw the knifes so that they catch her garment so thats what he did.
@05:11 reminds me of knife party's "resistance"
Really good one.
I don't think that's how they did it. The motion of the dress doesn't match the direction the knives would be coming from, not to mention the knives come in perfectly straight, not spinning as they were thrown, so VFX would have to have messed that up.
I suspect that the knives actually came in from in front, but they were on rails or wires that went through the dress and into the wall, and VFX was used to paint out the rails/wires. This allows the dress movement to be exactly what it's supposed to be without having to do a simulation that would look terrible.
There's also the possibility that they actually had the dress stuck to the wall with knives and then they used wire to yank the knives out and just play the shot in reverse. But I don't think that's how they did it given the movement of the dress doesn't continue forward if you play the shot backwards.
There's an episode of Laverne & Shirley that shows that knife trick being done.
I Love Lucy also has an episode explaining how it's done.
Benny Hill too
Perfect timing for dinner
great video as always, thank you so much :)
If one is to use VFX to add a knife flying through the shot for two frames, then one could just as easily use VFX to modify the practical knife's timing for a couple of frames, making the effect almost completely seamless. I guess they drew the line at painting over the holes in Diaz's costume, though.
bru your channel is awesome, please make more video.
How do you do headshot or realistic shooting scenes
very beautiful video
brilliant.
legend
Another banger. 🔪
Love the knife popping trick!
Though I don't really have a better explanation but I feel like the knife coming from behind maybe wouldn't work that well with the garment in this case.
Because it is moving like you'd expect with the knife coming from the front and I feel like if the knife would come from the board it would be a bit tricky to pull the garment onto the board like that (definitely not impossible though)
Someone else wrote it already but pulling it out seems not that implausible imo (you said the garment would contradict that but I don't really see how)
If it were me, I would just use some black and white era perception tricks and have someone actually throw the knifes on the empty board. The shot would probably be from a different angle, but I think it should work pretty well but then again, I've never shot a movie.
Many in the tiktok trend just walked back and forth, you can see it often than they linger to give them time to move
I'd have pulled all of those knives out on a fishing wire and played it in reverse...haha!
Maybe the knife throws are real, and Cameran was added to the shot in post. The other blade even wobbles when the second one hits the wall. Maybe they had a rig with the garment hanging there. Maybe the knives are on a wire from just out of frame to the wall and they are forced by air or something, it looks like the end of each handle has a hole in it for a wire to be fed through. The impact has to be real the way the fabric moved like the force didn't come from behind it.
Man just made us all John Cena within 2 minutes of the video.
Honestly I always thought that the Die Hard scene just had a knife stuck in the board the whole time, and they made the actor toss a rubber stunt knife or a plastic one (no impact noise) at the lower part of the board, out of frame.
I like . Thanks
the goat
Coming from someone who actually trained to throw knives, the Die Hard scene is entirely possible to do, for real, and safely. The person holding the board would have to remain stock still though, and not flinch.😅
Muy buen video capo
My first thought was that the knives came from behind and I was right!!!
fascinating
I thought the Gangs of New York scene was shot in reverse, where the knives were yanked out at high-speed, but I'm not sure if that would look right?
I don't think they did a knife trick in Gangs of New York. Notice how Diaz's coat pulls back when it's hit by the knives (as it should). With a standard knife trick, the coat would go FORWARD because of the knives coming out from behind. My guess is it's just 100% CGI knives entering a rigged coat that's pulled back from behind the board to simulate the knife entering. The shots of the knives entering are only a handful of frames, not even a full second, almost immediately after the knives land, the movie cuts to another shot. Once it cuts back to Diaz, they're now using actual prop knives holding up the coat.
Either that OR it's a custom two-part knife trick, one where there's TWO rigs, one pulling the coat back AS the knives are ejected forward, although given the thickness of the handles and how thin the slits on the coat are for the handles to go through, I gravitate towards my earlier solution.
I would of said the gangs of new york knife scene was played in reverse pulling the knife out and then playing it backwards
Ah. The stars have aligned, I see. Apparently once every twelve millennia, Paul E.T. crawls out of his stasis chamber to feast on the blood of baby spinaches, and share a video.
Regarding FPS:
The reason why they do 24 fps is that was the limitations that the technology could do 100+ years ago. 24 fps became standard.
The reason why the don't (rarely) do anything higher for movies is the are stuck in their ways and refuse to change.
The argument for the film is trying to emulate the human eye when it comes to 24 fps is not correct either.
Why?
Experts states the the human eye can see between 30 to 60 FPS.
However, there are plenty of people who can tell a different between 30 Fps and 120+ fps in video games.
Not to mention the standard for filming tv is 60 fps.
Back then whenever they still using film for movies, film was and still is expensive to use.
24 fps was also cost saving.
Fast forward to today. Movie studios have no excuses to film 60+ fps when using digital cameras and/or Computer Graphics.
fireeee