Effects Reels That Brought Your Favorite Movies to Life (Vol. 1)

This is world-building at its best: go behind the scenes of your favorite films and shows, from Guardians of the Galaxy to Game of Thrones, to see how massive castles, spaceships, explosions, and more get created

Game of Thrones, season 4

The Rodeo FX team won an Emmy for its work on the fourth season of Game of Thrones.

Terminator 2

The Fifth Element

Gimme da cash! Visual effects house built Digital Domain built the incredible future version of New York in miniature for 1997's The Fifth Element.

Alien

Go deep inside the making of the terrible, claustrophobic world of Alien.

The Avengers

This is Industrial Light and Magic's Oscar-nominated visual effects work for 2012's The Avengers: watch The Helicarrier get built pixel by pixel.

Blade Runner

Watch Douglas Trumbull and Ridley Scott explain how they worked with designer Syd Mead to build the iconic Blade Runner universe.

Prometheus

British production and post-production house MPC built the visual effects on Ridley Scott'sPrometheus.

District 9

Neill Blomkamp worked with Vancouver's Image Engine for much of the visual effects onDistrict 9.

X-Men: Days of Future Past

MPC also built the mutant world of X-Men: Days of Future Past. Watch the Sentinels get built, piece by piece.

Dune

This is how David Lynch and his team shot the massive Harkonnen and Atreides ships in Dune.

Star Trek

ILM visual effects designers break down how they created the Star Trek reboot's skydiving sequence scene with Kirk, Mike Olson, and Sulu.

Star Trek Into Darkness

ILM also worked on JJ Abrams' Star Trek into darkness. This video breaks down the Enterprise's crash into San Francisco and Spock's fight with Khan.

The Dark Knight

Christopher Nolan worked with New Deal Studios to build scale models for The Dark Knight.

Fast & Furious 6

MPC also helped create the fast-drifting world of Fast & Furious 6.

Godzilla

MPC's VFX Supervisor Guillaume Rochern (who also worked on Life of Pi) led the effects work on Gareth Edwards' Godzilla, reinventing the lizard king for the 21st century.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

ILM also built 2014's Captain America: The Winter Soldier: watch as Helicarriers crash into S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters in the film's wild final action sequence just outside of Washington D.C..

Tree of Life

Visual effects legend Douglas Trumbull explains how he embraced "organic effects" instead of computer graphics in Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life.

Cloverfield

Here's 22 wonderful minutes on how the visual effects team built New York, monsters, and more for 2008's Cloverfield.

Pacific Rim

ILM modeled much of downtown Hong Kong for the kaiju battles — and total destruction.

Guardians of the Galaxy

Guardians of the Galaxy British visual effects company Framestore conceived of and designed the most complicated Marvel environment ever created when they built Knowhere, the fictional outpost located inside the severed head of a celestial being in last summer's blockbuster Guardians of the Galaxy.

Day of the Dead

Guardians of the Galaxy Tom Savini has been a go-to effects guy in horror for decades, not the least of which is for his realistic and gruesome splatter effects. Here's the behind-the-scenes of the last of George Romero's original zombie trilogy, 1985's Day of the Dead.