Watch Visual Effects Supervisor Rob Legato's 'Art Of Creating Awe' TED Talk

Academy Award-winning visual effects supervisor Rob Legato has been involved in many Hollywood classics and blockbusters over the last two decades, including: Apollo 13, Titanic, Armageddon, Cast Away, Harry Potter, Bad Boys 2, The Aviator, The Departed, Avatar, and Hugo. Over the summer, Legato gave a TED talk entitled "The Art of Creating Awe" about how visual effects are used to recreate reality or sometimes even "trump the real thing".

In the TED Talk, Legato shows us behind the scenes footage of how the movie magic was created, how he tries to recreate the idealized memory of a moment and not necessarily the reality of a moment We learn about the reaction from a NASA consultant who worked on Apollo 13 and legendary astronaut Buzz Aldrin. We see how he seamlessly blended real footage of the Titanic with shots of miniature models, and how our brain is tricked into believing that its all real. And lastly, Legato shows how set size limitations on Martin Scorsese's Hugo resulted in some creative choices: Moving the floor to create the illusion that the train was moving and combining a five different sets and a multitude of shots into the long "steadicam" shot from the beginning of the film.

In the wake of excitement over NASA's mars rover Curiosity I recently revisited Apollo 13, and was amazed at how well the visual effects held up for a movie released 17 years ago. And after watching Legato's TED Talk, I'm pretty sure most people watching the film today probably don't even notice the visual effects. Watch Legato's TED Talk embedded after the jump.

Thanks to FirstShowing for alerting me to this video.