In a lot of science fiction or fantasy films/tv series, they need to create an environment that is either very surreal or very idyllic. To make the audience feel like they're in the film they're watching, you have to create an environment that really sweeps you off your feet. A lot of the times for series like Game of Thrones, scenes are shot outdoors in open fields or other places. To then make it fit into the idyllic, medieval surroundings the book describes, a lot of environmental properties are added to the scene, castles, forts, walls, or even whole armies and camps. Environmental expansion is useful in a lot of ways, you don't need to hire thousands of extras to represent an army, usually you only need a small number of people, and these will then be "copied" in the computer and thus a whole army will be generated. Because we never see their faces, they only need to move, which is usually done through crowd simulations.
But I was talking about environments and not crowd simulations. Nowadays a lot of movies are shot in studios, where either a complete base of a set is built where the actors in act and afterwards the extra surroundings get created that have no interaction with the actors. Or they film in front of a green/blue screen with a prop or part of a set where the entirety of the scene will be computer generated. Scenes shot in a green/blue screen studio are shot there for probably two reasons: one; it's too dangerous to do it for real somewhere outside (for example the dangling from a cable off an ice wall, see second GIF at the top, or the hot air balloon basket in the river down below) or two; the environment they need to create is in no way achievable with props.
Very impossible scenes to shoot from the past century are for example the Pirates of the Caribbean quartet. They used a MASSIVE tank where a ship could fit in to film the scenes that occur on the open sea. Of course they also used scaled down replicas to shoot the film, otherwise it would've probably cost a lot more money than it already did. Environmental expansion/alteration is also used when a film is set in the nearer past, when they need to change the skyline of a city for some buildings didn't exist yet in, for example, the 70's. A good example is probably Rock of Ages. This Rock Opera was filmed a few years ago, but was set in Los Angeles. They've shot scenes on different locations, but still had to alter a lot since it's set in 1987
A lot of people, watchers of films, know of course that a lot of visual effects is involved in modern film industry because it's very often very obvious. But a lot of the time it goes unnoticed because it seems like such a "simple scene to shoot, why would visual effects be involved". People don't seem to realise that a lot of films aren't shot on location anymore, especially because they have a budget that allows them to use computer generated effects.
Speaking of budget, it reminds me of a funny fact. In 2013, they released Oldboy, a recreation of the ten year older film produced in South Korea. With a budget of 3 million dollars, lack of special effects and a filming culture in where they shoot a lot on location, they didn't need a bigger budget than that. It hit box office with 15 million dollars. The 2013 american remake however: packed with action and lots and lots of visual effects called for a budget of 40 million dollars, while making "only" 4.7 million dollars off it in box office. Is budget and special effects everything in a film: apparently, it seems not, but we sure think it's all visually appealing.
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