With its games of mortal children, Squid Game has amazed us. But Netflix’s South Korean hit used a lot of special effects that we couldn’t imagine. A video shows behind the scenes of the shoot.
One of the ingredients that made Squid Game so appealing to the general public is undoubtedly that the series – despite the very exaggerated circumstances of its narrative – feels very, very real. It is still hard to imagine that in real life people can be so desperate to do anything, that is, risk their lives and those of strangers, for money.
As an added bonus, the participants of this deadly competition do not compete against each other in ultimate sporting events that only a small number of people are capable of accomplishing. No, they compete in simple and understandable children’s games. Games that almost everyone has played, which makes it even easier to identify with the characters.
What was much less straightforward, however, was bringing these games to the screen. A video posted by Hyungrok Kim, a Squid Game special effects supervisor for Gulliver Studios, shows that the show has used special effects far more often than one might imagine. And while some of them are pretty obvious, there are other moments that might surprise you as can be seen in the video below:
Even if we suspected that the game of the glass bridge was not 100% real, ditto for the huge room in which the participants played tug of war, we are surprised to see the incredible number of elements that were added in post-production. This video is in many ways reminiscent of another video that shows the underside of the realization of Mindhunter (and incidentally the mania of David Fincher!)
This is perhaps the best possible use of special effects. When we are unable to say what is real and what is not.
