Every Trick in All the Books

The mid to late '90s weren't exactly the heyday of pop culture. Children shed countless tears for deceased Tamagotchis, frat bros referenced infuriating Budweiser commercials ad nauseam, and radio personalities just would not stop with that Celine Dion song.

Thankfully, in these more enlightened days, the Tamagotchi mass extinction is imminent, Budweiser commercials now feature people who can speak like human beings, and Celine Dion has stayed in Las Vegas.

But if there's one thing we truly loved about this era, it was movie production. During this golden age, computer graphics had finally surpassed the N64 graphics of Johnny Mnemonic and graduated to the realistic dinosaurs of Jurassic Park. But computers still weren't powerful enough to render entire photo-realistic films from mere polygons like in Avatar. The result is that filmmakers combined old-school tricks with the new computer graphics to do things in films we'd never seen before, while at the same time not giving our eyes time to adjust to panoramic views of the uncanny valley.

Men in Black is a perfect example of what we're talking about.

The Monster Mash(up)

We see the film's combination of old and new right away. When Kay and Dee take an undocumented immigrant into the desert, he's revealed to be an alien named Mikey. The alien we see Tommy Lee Jones and Richard Hamilton interacting with is an actor in a costume. The actor's name is John Alexander and the suit was designed and crafted by real-life Dr. Frankenstein Rick Baker.

Baker's work in MiB won him an Academy Award for Best Makeup, marking his fifth of seven Oscar wins during a career that set the standard for practical effect awesomeness. Uber-critic Roger Ebert was amazed at Baker's ability to create so many different species of aliens: "There were times I thought we were seeing the new seven dwarfs: Slimy, Gooey, Icky, Creepy, Sticky, Barfy and Pox."

But even the standard-setting Baker knew they'd have to resort to CGI when the character was going to have to run and jump. With many of their computer graphic artists having previously worked with latex monsters, Industrial Light and Magic wizards were able to create a model that looked the same as Baker's on-set monster, even reflecting animated light the same way the on-set one reflected stage lighting (source). The CG Mikey takes over for the on-set Mikey when the alien attacks the curious INS officer, and the results are seamless.

At least, they were seamless back in the day. Today's audiences have adjusted their eyes to such trickery, and the advent of HD TVs and Blu-ray discs have done these effects no favors in the home market. But the effects hold up better than some done even years later, and if you're a hipster who believes VHS is the only "authentic way" to watch movies at home, you're in for a real treat.

Oh, and if you're curious, Mikey's explosive death was courtesy of a 50-gallon drum of blue goo exploded in front of the camera. Check out the MiB DVD extras for more slimy details.

This switch between practical, on-set costumes and computer graphics happens throughout the film. The Bug in Edgar's skin is the result of Vincent D'Onofrio's many hours in the makeup chair, but certain effects, like his stretching face, were rendered by computers. Computer graphics also helped in less noticeable but very important ways, like removing the harness and cables carrying the perp up the Guggenheim Museum.

One of the more impressive, if dated, visual effects comes at the end of the film, when Jay battles the Bug to keep it from escaping Earth. Originally, Baker created a Bug puppet to serve as the final boss, but Sonnenfeld and his producers thought the ending needed more action than dialogue. So they scrapped the puppet and created the entire Bug in computer graphics, resulting in 45 CG shots at $100,000 a pop. That's $4.5 million spent, when you think about it, to make Will Smith punching the air seem exciting (source).

A Tale of Two Aliens

To help make the on-set costumes and puppets more believable, the cinematographer and production team used all sorts of camera trickery. One example can be easily seen—or in this case not seen—in the MiB breakroom. The worms are puppets and the rods controlling the puppets are sticking through the walls. By using simple camera work, the cinematographer was able to hide the rods and nail the illusion. Ironically, that's a lot of hard work to bring the world's laziest slackers to life.

Our favorite example of camera trickery comes during Rosenberg's death scene. When Jay opens the jeweler's face, it reveals a tiny alien inside driving the automaton from an empty brain cavity turned control station. Thing is, there were two different Rosenberg aliens on set. The small alien was filmed with Will Smith and Linda Fiorentino. But that little guy was too small for Baker and his team to get the necessary gears and gizmos to make the creature realistically breathe, articulate, or show emotions. To do this, the team created a much larger version of the alien (source).

To make them seem like the same creature, the camera only showed the large alien in close ups and then showed the smaller alien in long shots with Smith and Fiorentino. By carefully cutting between the two, the production crew made you feel that they were the same creature.

Awesome on the Set

Finally, we should give a nod to the locations where the film was shot. Some scenes are filmed on location in New York City, others are on classic studio sets, and still others use green screens to add computer effects in post-production.

The New York City shots are pretty obvious. For example, the use of the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan and Flushing Meadow Park in Queens. The green screen is used to enhance certain scenes, such as Smith's fight with the Bug, but they never dominate the design like they would in films in the following decade—looking at you, George Lucas.

The sets designed by Bo Welch are where the movie really shines. His design of the MiB headquarters is otherworldly with its metallic color scheme and use of circular design—pod chairs, giant circle lights and offices that look like fish bowls. But the fact that it's all a practical set gives it a feeling of realism and place.

Another set used on the film is the Arizona desert in the film's opening scene. Rather than trying to find a film location, waiting until the sun went down, and then trying to eke what footage they could in the few hours before sunrise, Sonnenfeld decided to have the desert built on a set so they could film at their leisure (source). It also allowed them to put everything where they wanted for easy filming. Oh, and the desert used during the opening credits sequence is a miniature set filmed with a CG dragonfly added in later.

That's the perfect example of the almost counterintuitive nature of filmmaking—sometimes it is easier just to build a desert than it is to go looking for one. Same goes for aliens, we guess.