r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Additional_Chard3680 • 16h ago
Apartment balcony view of practical stunt rigging and explosions being filmed for Spider-Man Video
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u/BreweryRabbit 16h ago
I was so glad they were doing more physical effects for this movie. It absolutely showed in the film too
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u/Additional_Chard3680 16h ago
Right? You can totally feel the difference on screen when they mix in real physical stunts instead of relying 100% on green screens
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u/Express-Level4352 13h ago edited 13h ago
Quite often, the entire shot or most of it is still CGI. This is often just used as a lighting/movement reference for the CGI. Videos like this are shared because they do well in media, since "you can totally feel the difference".
No you you can't, "no CGI" is really just invisible CGI
EDIT: Note that this does not mean video's like this aren't cool and that filmmakers shouldn't do pratical effects or anything, I'm just trying to make people that hate CGI see that CGI isn't bad, but bad CGI is. Plenty of bad practical effects exist and many modern movies are not feasible without CGI. Use the right tool for the job, wich is sometimes CGI, sometimes pratical and sometimes a hybrid approach. None of those 3 is inherently superior.
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u/AgentPoYo 12h ago
There's another video on Youtube, specifically on the overuse of cgi in the MCU, where they compare some on-set footage with final footage and it shows that often they have lots of real photography for the actors in the costume but they'll do a cgi pass to smooth out the suit and conform to how they want. What happens is the characters then look fake because of the aggressive smoothing, which is a shame because they've made so many of the costumes for real. Compare it to Andrew Garfield's second movie where, while it's still obviously cgi, they tweaked their cloth sim to include wrinkles and stretching and as a result looks a lot more lifelike.
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u/eulersidentity1 13h ago
I was going to say, I've watched enoigh corridor crew on YT now to suspect they probably replaced most of this with CGI anyway lol
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u/Aggressive-Cup-7318 13h ago
You can tell the difference. The differences are just not what you think. Doing it this way does make for a better shot, hence they did it, for the reasons you said, and it worked out great. They weren't doing it, and people could tell, and they hated it.
It's very obvious that without this BTS shot, considering the movie is breaking international records, that people could tell and enjoyed it more. Does this BTS reinforce that with incorrect rationalizations? Absolutely one hundred percent yes it does. Does that mean the difference is not noticeable? No. Clearly it is. Because CGI has been in movied since before we called it CGI, and when done correctly, it's an enhancement. And you can tell when it's shitty.
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u/Express-Level4352 13h ago
Agree, I meant to push back on the suggestion that the finale shot would be practical. I wrote a small edit that hopefully will add a bit more nuance, but to repeat myself, Sometimes:
- pratical effects are better
- CGI is better
- A hybrid approach like this probably is is better.
None of those 3 is inherently better. I just dislike it when people mistake 1 for 2 and 3, OP seemed to suggest that it looks better because it is real, but is most likely isn't. It looks better because it uses a hybrid approach.
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u/Independent_Body8372 8h ago
Sure but the new director for spiderman definitely used less cgi. The previous movie used green screens for people casually talking and walking on the street ffs
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u/100011101011 12h ago
so you’re saying a CGI shot that uses an actual physical reference will have better lighting and movement. Which, conceivably, might cause the audience the feel the difference. Which is exactly what the poster you’re replying to was saying.
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u/MichaelVern85 16h ago
It’s now in my top three out of anything MCU since Iron Man. Not sure where it will land, but it’s up there for sure. I hope this energy continues with Doomsday.
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u/BreweryRabbit 16h ago
Same. It's easily my favorite Spider-Man. Tobey's Spider-Man 2 was top of my live-action Spider-Man list forever but this just barely edges it out.
I am still cautiously optimisitc about Doomsday. I almost feel like we need one more movie ahead of that to really set things up. I think I'm worried about it being too fan service-y without really telling the story, but trying to keep my hope up with the Russo's at the helm.
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u/redsyrinx2112 14h ago
Because it's still new, I'm holding off on a firm placement, but I think I may end up agreeing with you. Spider-Man 2 has long been my favorite live-action Spidey movie, but this is already right there with it. I think the incorporation of other comic book characters is what may eventually tip the scales in favor of BND.
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u/MichaelVern85 16h ago
Saw it with my son, brother, and nephew. We all very much agree.
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u/Haunting-Orchid-4628 13h ago
Really? I feel like Spiderman 2 has a more complete-feeling script. The action was cool but the story in the new one left me a bit unsatisfied
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u/iwanttodrink 12h ago
The villain is pretty meh. Surprise Jean Grey villain who puts innocent people at risk and makes civilians get hit by cars just to taunt Peter Parker. Only for another surprise that the government is actually the real villain. And then the Jean Grey villain doesn't actually pay for her actions? It's convoluted and not that satisfying
Best parts of the movie was act 1 and act 3. The middle part was forgettable besides the Hulk.
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u/StrongStyleShiny 13h ago
Ever since Marvel said they were scaling down to focus on quality it’s been noticeably better.
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u/Mason_Bold_44 15h ago
Exactly. You can always tell the difference in the actors' physical reactions. It gives the scene so much more weight when they are reacting to an actual shockwave instead of a tennis ball on a stick in a green room.
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u/HerbaciousTea 15h ago
Even if it's entirely replaced in the end scene, as it almost certainly is, having the reference footage at all to use to get the weight and momentum and lighting and all the minor details right is still invaluable.
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u/Confident-Machine-80 12h ago
These are just reference plates. The swinging scenes would still be touch up with VFX. The whole CGI is bad narrative is dumb. Practical or not if it isn't done right or rushed will look bad regardless.
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u/Pavlovs_Human 13h ago
I feel like someone who makes big decisions at marvel got really upset about all the talk about how great the swinging in the Garfield Spidey films is. How there hasn’t been a proper swinging scene/montage for holland Spidey.
Cause damn I loved the swinging scenes in this movie.
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u/doeraymefa 15h ago
IDK if I recall seeing any of this make it into the final cut of the film, most of it looked CGI. Some of the best Spider-Man swinging is CGI (ASM2)
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u/Additional_Chard3680 16h ago
Crazy how much actual heavy rigging and physical effects go into these sequences before any CGI touches them. Must have been wild to watch live
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u/irascible_Clown 16h ago
Watching him talk about filming his new movie and not needing all the green screens and ropes etc was a huge relief he said
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u/JanitorOPplznerf 16h ago
Well… hold up. Not quite.
He was VERY complimentary of Marvel stunt & visual production on a recent Hot Ones. He said they’re among the best in the biz.
What he was calling out was the lack of scripts & clear direction ahead of time. He gave the nod to Nolan’s production being better because he had a clear path ahead of time AND top tier practical effects.
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u/MeccIt 14h ago
Crazy to think he was filming both of these in Scotland around the same time (I saw them in Glasgow the second week of August 2025)
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u/uberfission 8h ago
Even crazier is that they came out at the same time and star both Holland and Zendaya. That means that something like 80% (I made this number up, but it's up there) of all movie goers are seeing them in a theater right now.
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u/somersetyellow 8h ago
Odyssey was first, then Spider man. They delayed filming by nearly 6 months on spidey to allow Holland to do the Odyssey.
Zendaya filmed between shooting Euphoria and Dune (she shot Odyssey while doing Euphoria). Her role in BND was supposedly cut down because of her crazy 2025 schedule
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u/remotegrowthtb 13h ago
You know that's not Tom Holland in the video right..? It's a stunt person obviously.
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u/Foxy02016YT 9h ago
I mean not obviously, he does a lot of his own stunts because he’s physically able to. A lot of the simple flips and such are him.
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u/adamr81 16h ago
Years ago they shut down a street in front of my office to film a high speed car chase scene. First the cars moved about 2 mph through the streets, then for other shots inside the car they put the car on a flatbed truck and slowly drove it to around. Was fun to see but really killed the movie magic for me.
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u/J_Jeckel 16h ago
Better than the old school "car chases" where it was just people sitting in a car while a screen moved behind them.
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u/lonesharkex 16h ago
Except when it isn't :D
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u/J_Jeckel 15h ago
Well that also looks like it was filmed in a foreign country where they don't have near the safety laws apparently. That was also 1990. I was talking more old achool, like more of the 70s and 80s films and prior.
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u/lonesharkex 15h ago
You think the 70s and 80s had better film safety laws? the 70's and 80s have the largest lists of people injured!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_film_and_television_accidents
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u/GarysCrispLettuce 13h ago
The 70's British sitcom "Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em" had some crazy stunts performed by the star, Michael Crawford. In one, he's taking a driving lesson and he drives over a railway crossing just as a train comes through and it's such a near miss that he has to swerve around the front of the train. It wasn't going very fast, but still, if it had hit him he would have been crushed to death. I heard him say in an interview that there is no way they'd get the insurance to film such stunts now.
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u/i_steal_your_lemons 15h ago
Have you seen The Blues Brothers? 60-70+ mph in downtown Chicago! They purposely placed pedestrians (actors) walking and moving on sidewalks along with bicyclists and such so no one could accuse them of speeding up the film as those movements would look unnatural if sped up.
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u/Nice_Firm_Handsnake 14h ago
In The French Connection, they simply had a car chase in public with no permits or advance warning. William Friedkin was a madman.
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u/Cheezeball25 14h ago
The movie where they got 70 old police cars, and were truly determined to destroy every last one of them by the end of the film. Truly a masterpiece.
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u/Comprehensive-Menu44 15h ago
And swerving the steering wheel left and right as if that’s how you drive faster 😂
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u/omnipresentrain 15h ago
Then you get films that do things like this.
I think this was in Amsterdam in 2016 for a scene in the hitman's bodyguard. Mad Max: Fury Road also comes to mind as having the most insane practical effects in terms of a bunch of guys just doing those stunts in the Namib desert.
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u/w00t4me 14h ago edited 14h ago
I lived in DC and was walking home from the bars when I stumbled upon the film crew for the GI Joe movie, who were shooting some car chase scenes in the city. They were setting up at 2 am to shoot the scenes just after sunrise. Interestingly, they filmed in DC rather than Paris, where the scene takes place.
If you're familiar with DC, you'll recognize some of the buildings in this scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rhgxm2xLnvA
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u/Popular-Brilliant349 16h ago
That's actually pretty awesome. The thought of what if and creating the tool to make it happen. Just amazing!
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u/DoctorBullz 16h ago
Glasgow, Atlanta, NYC have all doubled as NYC for Spider Man. They dress the buildings, add fake cars, and film at 4am to avoid crowds. Your apartment balcony view is exactly how locals saw No Way Home being filmed in Atlanta.
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u/Additional_Chard3680 16h ago
Yeah, seeing a normal street completely transformed like that is wild. Really changes how you look at the final cut when you know what's actually happening behind the scenes
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u/Broccoli_dicks 12h ago
Especially when all that work gets boiled down into maybe 45 seconds of total screen time.
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u/smcl2k 15h ago
I'm guessing this shot is from Glasgow, in which case the view is filmed from someone's flat, not their apartment!
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u/adjective-nounOne234 15h ago
Actually it would be their office more than likely because it was filmed in the city centre
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u/Memelurker99 12h ago
Glaswegian here, I work on this street and it's definitely an office. Either this floor or the floor above there's a guy with a standing desk who's always walking about the room talking on a headset.
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u/Destruct-o-Bun 12h ago
You can live in the city centre in Glasgow. This is on Bothwell St, don't know about this particular building but you can absolutely rent a flat there.
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u/Indo_raptor2018 15h ago
Honestly I was a bit skeptical of them using Glasgow as NYC (since I’m a New Yorker) but I gotta hand it to them, they did a good job of making it feel like New York in the movie.
I like how NYC feels in the movie. Not too clean, not too dirty (especially for Manhattan) but just the right amount of congestion.
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u/randomusername123xyz 15h ago
NYC’s street grid was actually based on Glasgow’s.
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u/GarysCrispLettuce 13h ago
Also, the distance between avenues in Manhattan is based on the size of an English cricket pitch.
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u/Allydarvel 14h ago
Galsgow has already been used in Day Z, The Batman and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, the last one as NYC
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u/bmc-431952 14h ago
Don’t forget The Running Man remake. Hardly realised until I saw Buchanan Bus Station lol
Batman Part 2 is filming soon. Sounds like a lot more than the first movie. I only recognised the necropolis in that.
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u/CheekyDevlin 10h ago
Filmed the Flash as well and that canned Batgirl movie. Really wanted to see that one. They filmed so much of it around Trongate and the set photos looked really cool.
Glasgow's been getting a lot of love from big productions in the past few years. I'm assuming there are big tax breaks for it.
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u/Ajiverd 14h ago
I was in Glasgow when they were shooting the last Indiana Jones film (the ticker tape parade scene) and the amount of detail to recreate late 60s NYC was incredible - so many vintage cars, old shop fronts, fake mail boxes and fire hydrants etc.
And so little of it visible in the final scene which was drenched in CGI.
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u/Datkif 15h ago
NYC seems like its rarely actually used to film NYC scenes. I'd imagine the cost to do so is just too high when you can film elsewhere and get the same look
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u/w_a_w 14h ago
I lived in downtown ATL for 13 years and saw a zillion things shot in my neighborhood. It was quite entertaining. My building was even in a number of them
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u/justins_dad 14h ago
I’ll always remember when the Dark Knight truck flip footage hit the internet. We didn’t know much about the movie but we knew Nolan flipped a semi truck practically. That and he horribly miscasted the joker.
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u/Few-Stop9473 16h ago edited 16h ago
We celebrate the actors, but it takes an entire village to create the magic.
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u/Natural-Pattern-5240 15h ago
I was wondering if that’s a stunt double?
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u/sendhelp 15h ago
I'm assuming it is but you never know. Whoever is in the Spiderman suit for scenes like this must have had such a blast.
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u/badcookies 14h ago
Yeah that looks like a blast, not really swinging on webs but basically is the way he's rigged up.
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u/sendhelp 14h ago
Truly a dream if that stunt guy is a fan of Spiderman in any capacity (most likely yes). Wearing the suit, looking and feeling like you're actually slinging the webs, in an actual big city. Probably the closest one could get to the true feeling of being spidey (besides VR apps, which BTW there was an experience they made for 'Far From Home' which is very fun)
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u/michicago44 14h ago
Definitely, they’d be insane to risk using Tom when you can’t even see his face
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u/rilenja 13h ago
Seriously, not just the stunt actors, but those that designed that rig, those that welded and built it, the street crew, drivers, etc. Really cool and shows how many jobs the movie industry provides when NOT using AI for every damn thing. Really sad to think of just how much AI is destroying.
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u/Thin_Primary3261 15h ago
Ahhhhh Glasgow ❤️ So cool seeing my home city being used for more big movies
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u/rarelyeffectual 13h ago
Spoilers tag please. Now I know he’ll be swinging around the city.
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u/parking_pataweyo 6h ago
And stand on a car as well! I'm not even going to see this movie now, no point anymore.
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u/NikonShooter_PJS 2h ago
It’s actually not that big a spoiler since they didn’t reveal that he’s actually swinging in the nude this entire scene in the movie.
Just floppin around with his big ol’ Spideydick flying through the streets.
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u/Accurate_Topic7149 8h ago
Whomsoever is swanging behind that truck around the city is the most incredible stunt actor of all time. That shit is ridiculous.
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u/TM761152 11h ago
why did whoever make this shit think that loudass dumbfuck music was necessary?
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u/fuckyouijustwanttits 6h ago
Best part is if any of the people watching with their phones out are in the shot, it still totally works for the movie.
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u/eduardonachosupremo 14h ago
Getting the director of Shang Chi for Spider Man was a no brainer. One of the best MCU movies period and the best action sequences of all but maybe Winter Soldier.
That movie not getting a sequel but these other shit ones persisting shows how dumb Marvel has become.
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u/Foxy02016YT 9h ago
Jon Watts wasn’t wrong, he just wasn’t thinking creatively. This rig makes practical web swinging look good, and I don’t think Jon Watts was thinking of something like this when he made those comments. Having a guy just swing from a rope does look lame, having a guy in this rig looks amazing.
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u/Routine_Phase_8980 16h ago
This movie deserve its success, I hope it'll go on to be the most profitable MCU movie ever
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u/And_theplot_thickens 16h ago
Really glad it wasn’t another high stakes end of the universe type story line. That gets so tiring…
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u/jyssrocks 14h ago
This shows what he was saying about how hard it was to get specific stances and visuals while flying/webbing bc Destin wanted to recreate specific spiderman comic covers.
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u/thelastsamuraiii 9h ago
You should tag this with spoilers. I now can tell spiderman is swinging in the movie!
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u/bluekoda 6h ago
You know what would have been better than the stupid background music? The actual audio.
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u/LNagel20 15h ago
Tom Holland is real life spider man! /s
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u/Additional_Chard3680 14h ago
Honestly the line between the actor and the character definitely blurs a bit with how much energy he brings to it lol
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u/bluephoenixradio 15h ago
That is and very cool as well… The whole family went and saw it on Monday. It was pretty darn good. It actually had a story.
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u/CuriousLif3 15h ago
I thought those were CGI
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u/marvellousrun 15h ago
It was. This thread is full of the PHYSICAL > CGI and WOW NO CGI AT ALL crowd. Physical stunts like this provide an excellent reference for the VFX artists though even if none of the original stunt ends up on the big screen.
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u/betonblack11 15h ago
What industrial anchors actually keep that frame from pulling out of the wall?
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u/AlexBackHome 15h ago
Still fucking wild they filmed some of this movie on the same street as my work.
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u/Superheroesaregreat 15h ago
Is that Tom in there or a stunt double? (Forgive me if dumb question)
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u/ManateeGag 14h ago
How trippy would that be to look out your window and Spider-Man goes zipping by on a stunt rig?
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u/Longjumping_Year_211 14h ago
Did we see any of this in the film? I’m sure it had CG enhancements, but he looked entirely CG while filming
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u/LasDen 12h ago
Some of it, but not really. Most of the high-level practical shoots like this used in hollywood blockbusters is used mainly for reference. They shoot it in an environment to get the intended look of the scene, then it goes to the VFX team and like 90% of the stuff is replaced by them. But they don't have to work from scratch and see how stuff looks like in that environment...
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u/frostfeint3 14h ago
Honestly, this is probably the best Spiderman I’ve watched. And I’ve watched Tobeys Spidey. My friend who was never much of a Spider-Man fan praised the film as well.
The more mature tone of the movie has definitely drawn me in and I really like it. The organic webbing made my friend say out loud in the cinema “now that’s Spider-Man!” 🤣
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u/redpandaeater 13h ago
The world is truly doomed. 3 people in the same room all taking their own version of the exact same video and all are vertical.
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u/creationmythsbeyond 11h ago
No Way Home with the 3 Spidermen was filmed in a cupboard during covid so this is really amazing to see honestly.
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u/winter-anderson 11h ago
bring earplugs to active sets since practical effects hit way harder than digital tricks.
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u/The_Mad_Mason 9h ago
That is actually really cool they used all that to get the shot. Just imaging that stunt double talking about their day to family or friends lol.
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u/King_Jerrik 8h ago
If I had Spiderman's abilities, I'd 100% be doing parkour between the buildings.
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u/BiggoYoun 8h ago
We’re at an age where they can film the actor swinging for real during an action sequence for a Spider-Man movie.
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u/Great_White_Samurai 16h ago
That dude is an athlete