So I am a visual effects (VFX) artist, putting fake things into movies with computers (often referred to as CG effects). You think you know me? You don't know me! You know that CG makes things like Gollum and dinosaurs and pretty much everything in Avatar, but most of the CG you've seen in your life, you didn't know was CG at all.

For instance, did you know that there was only one real helicopter in Black Hawk Down? Or that most movie sports stadiums are filmed completely empty, or that no buildings were harmed in the filming of the Bourne trilogy? If not, then we know we did it right. If you ever find yourself saying, "That's a pretty cool CG effect there!", that means we fucked it up.

Everyone assumes VFX happen in an office that looks something like Mythbusters except with excited artistic types gathering around computers, talking about what kind of dinosaurs they want to make today. And for the top ranking people, the ones who get to talk on the DVD special features, it might be.

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But several steps down the ladder from those guys, you have an army of peons whose job descriptions seem to have been created as part of some cruel psychological experiment. If you dream of a career making super heroes fly, these jobs are where you'll start, and you may never leave.

So, as you watch some $200 million VFX-filled blockbuster this summer that has CG in basically every frame, remember to say a prayer for the...