How Everything Everywhere All at Once's Visual Effects Were Made

Hi, I'm Daniel Kwan.

I'm Daniel Scheinert.

I'm Zak Stoltz.

We directed.

And I visually effected.

Everything. Everywhere.

All at once. Whoo.

Oh, first take.

[Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert, Zak laughing]

[eerie music]

[Narrator] Daniel's new movie is about

a Chinese immigrant,

who finds herself in a sci-fi action film.

[weapons smashing]

We ended up having almost 500 visual effects shots,

but we did that with mostly just five people,

which is kind of unheard of,

you look at any modern movie

and you look at the visual effects credits

and it just goes forever.

We ended up doing a lot

of music videos together where music videos

have no budget and very tight turnarounds.

Our film is a independent film,

it's fairly low budget for the ambition of the script

and this was the only way that we could pull it off.

It was so creatively fulfilling for us

because we love to be in there in the weeds as well,

'cause that's just how we've always done things.

[Narrator] Daniel's used a combination of special effects

and visual effects to achieve the look

and feel of their new film.

Special effects, their team is all

about the practical effects, the onset puppets,

visual effects is all in the computer.

The movie had a lot of wire removal

and a lot of simple, secret, hidden visual effects

and then a couple sequences

that are just full-blown visual effects, craziness.

[Evelyn] Across the multiverse, [screaming]

I've seen thousands of Evelyns.

So Evelyn has to zoom through a lot

of universes to get to the desired one

which is a kung fu universe in which you can fight.

We knew for a while

that this sequence was gonna be in the movie

so I actually got just a little camera,

like a little pocket camera that shoots 4k,

and just everywhere I went

I would just kind of walk around

and just film streets like this shot

of New York was just me going through New York.

The camera had shutter angle and shutter speed setting,

so I just made it super blurry.

The order of events is, Dan shot a bunch

of stock footage himself.

We cut it together. Then we cut that together,

acted it out ourselves to demonstrate it to Michelle

and she had to act,

I think, in slow motion, we tried different tempos.

[Narrator] Then they placed Michelle

in front of LED panels.

You know how on the Star War shows,

they have this massive LED screen

that is basically a good background?

We had the 99 cents store version of that.

Three panels this way,

three panels this way,

and they're vaguely LEDs,

they're really big pixels,

but enough that we could then send

the video footage through these LED screens,

they're very, very minimal

and Michelle could sit in the middle

and pretend to be flying through it.

So we had these plates all linked together

and then what we did in visual effects,

was take it and say,

Okay, well let's add Evelyn to this now

and what does it look like

when we're actually going by that fast?

Where are some of the additional elements

that we're gonna add?

So we ended up toying around with a bunch

of different streaks that we were doing

anime-style motion lines

that were just barely perceptible,

adding some glass that would shatter

when we went through

and just adding as many things

to it that made it feel like there was

this extra energy to it,

without distracting too much

from what she was actually doing

and being able to see her actually going through this stuff.

[Narrator] Now, let's look at how

the Daniels did a practical effect.

The first time Michelle Yeoh does a verse jump

where she connects to another version

of herself in a different universe,

is in an office place, in an office cubicle,

she shoots back in her office chair

and flies through a closet door.

What's happening?

And the fun thing about that shot is,

it's a 100% practical in camera,

we didn't change anything.

We basically cranked open the shutter

so you get these really nice streaks

and then we pushed her,

slowly through the office,

she had to act, she was freaking out in slow motion.

We had hidden a leaf blower behind her.

Yeah.

And so, it's just her in slow-mo

getting pushed on a wheelbarrow

and then we just sped it up

and she's actually

in the space flying backwards. Yeah.

Which was fun to introduce

verse jumping with something so practical.

[Narrator] And with the practical effects

came a lot of puppets.

Some more interesting than others.

So Jason Hammer and the Hammer effects team,

built our raccoon and our hotdog hands.

They functioned like this

but they were made with super-realistic skin

and I think maybe had

some hairs threaded in. Yeah.

It was basically just a glove

that the actresses could wear.

Yeah, basically he molded our actress's hands

and then he just stuck hotdogs

where the fingers were and that's it.

There's something about things

like that being 100% practical

that just makes shooting it so fun

and makes it so much easier

'cause the actors know exactly what they're reacting to

and they can play

and we didn't have to have someone act opposite

a tennis ball for the raccoon

or act like they had weird fingers.

They just had 'em, you know?

It's such a gift to ourselves and the whole crew.

[futuristic music]

The core thing that we all realized

as we're doing visual effects on Daniel's film

is that it really does need to stay grounded

in what is going on in the story.

The visual effects should never overtake that.

There are moments

when we have big visual effects stuff going on.

There's something so charming

about Michele Gondry's work, which we love,

and we were like, We don't want this to be a movie

where there's waves of blue energy,

coming off of everybody as they punch each other.

This is decidedly not that genre.

We wanted to celebrate the magic

of just editing, of a jump cut,

of something popping and being something different.

Yeah, it goes back

to one of the first sci-fi movies,

A Trip to the Moon,

and that's what they did, just mashed cuts

and then smoke. Mm-hmm.

So simple, we're just doing that,

but with cheating 'cause we have after effects,

that's the only difference.

It really is all about the story.

500 visual effects shots done

with five guys in their bedrooms during the pandemic

and you watch the movie

and they're not perfect and they're not going for realism

but they work and they're beautiful

and I'm very proud of them

'cause they have their own unique style.

We need to be encouraging

other independent filmmakers to understand this language.

[futuristic music] Because this is how

all movies are gonna be made now,

is there's always gonna be some element

of visual effects,

even when you can't tell,

because the technology

has become so easy and effortless to use.