Flight of the Navigator | VFXcool

For Flight of the Navigator (1986) they sent renders of the ship directly to film because the system could only hold one frame at a time. ▶ this video

The pylon holding up the ship out of frame reminded me of the Captain Disillusion video on how they did the ship in Flight of the Navigator. ▶ this video

This comprehensive video on the special effects of Flight of the Navigator, including the role of the Foonly F1, is one of the most fascinating things I have ever seen on YouTube. I cannot recommend it enough: ▶ this video <edit: I see that someone else has already posted this video. However, I'm going to leave this comment up because holy shit watch it >

See also: Flight of the Navigator | VFXCool - Captain Disillusion A fantastic video detailing the VFX of Flight of the Navigator. ▶ this video

Missing from this list: the Foonly F1, used to create the animations in Tron (1982) and later to render the spaceship in Flight of the Navigator (1986) - of note as the first use of reflection mapping in a motion picture. I highly recommend this video on the making of Flight of the Navigator. Apart from being highly entertaining, it also goes into stunning detail on all the special effects, in particular how exactly one goes about putting CGI into film in the 1980s (as the narrator points out - Final Cut Pro hadn't been invented yet!). ▶ this video

Slightly off topic, but Captain Disillusionment did a great video recently on Flight of the Navigator: ▶ this video