Watch A Terrific Effects Reel For 'The Great Gatsby'

Baz Luhrmann's films have become increasingly reliant on digital effects over the years, and his recent adaptation of The Great Gatsby is a massive confection of digital imagery and practical photography. Sometimes the blend is seamless, other times less so, but Luhrmann consistently uses digital effects to create a vision of New York City that may have never quite existed, complete with surrounding areas and lavish Long Island homesteads.

Now you can watch a reel that, in a few minutes, begins to break down just what was real and what was not in the finished product.

This video only covers the very bare scope of the effects in the film, showing from a general perspective what was built as a set and what was composited in later. (Hint: most of the scenery was digitally added, as you likely surmised.) But it doesn't cover some of the effects used to enhance real objects such as Gatsby's car. Nor does it explain which of the composited environments were pure digital creations, and which were composites of plates shot at real locations and digital elements.

The video is not embeddable at this point; click the image below to check it out.

Here's what Chris Godfrey, the VFX supervisor on The Great Gatsby, has to say on the reel's Vimeo page:

Baz has graciously agreed to let us release this 'before and afters' reel to show our peer group the VFX work completed on his film 'The Great Gatsby'. While this specific reel was the work of Animal Logic (as my primary vendor), in total I worked with 7 vendors including Animal Logic, Rising Sun and Iloura in Australia, ILM in San Francisco and also Prime Focus and Method Vancouver. We also ran an amazing internal SWAT team that completed over 400 shots. Congratulations to all who did such fabulous work on almost 1500 shots.

Many thanks to Baz, CM, Catherine Knapman, Chris DeFaria and Mark Brown – and of course Prue Fletcher and Joyce Cox.