Special effects before CGI

Sorry its a Chevrolet commercial, but I find it interesting how special effects were done before CGI. 26 men, 8 days and a ton of equipment for a 2 minute commercial.....

what's "cgi" ?

computer-generated imagery

I remember watching Flash Gordon on the Late Late and the spaceships were suspended by visible strings.

Where the heck have you been? Hibernating since the 70s ??

The exploded car seems a bit gratuitous, but amusing...
Yup, before computers, FX was really time-consuming and clever.
A girlfriend in the mid-80s worked at an FX place in SoCal; a fascinating place to walk through.
One of the jobs they did was the mushroom clouds for a movie - called The Day After, IIRC.
They made the mushroom cloud events in a chamber maybe 36" tall.

Before CGI, they had to be creative. Nothing compares to a REAL car stunt. The CGI crap used in the Fast and Furious movies made action movies a complete joke. These idiots have cars jumping between skyscraper buildings, out of cargo planes, bodies flying through the air to land on flying cars...all sorts of stupid stuff.

Like the sharknado movies....sad.

Yes. The action movies have become a mockery of themselves.

I didn't know what it meant either.

My bad. I thought it was common knowledge.

It is common knowledge for anyone that has had their eyes open. If you can figure out how to get on the internet, you cannot be a total idiot. How stuff like that slips by is that they just don't pay attention.

Whatta ya mean I wasn't paying attention????

What were we talking about?

For "The Day After" (1983), they wanted to use actual nuclear test footage but (I think) the gov't wouldn't allow it for some reason. (I seem to recall that they insisted that the film show explicitly that the USSR attacked first, and the director refused).
Anyhow they squirted ink into a tank of water, then turned the shot upside down so it looked like a climbing mushroom cloud.

I have a car chase movie from 1978 that features a set piece of a Corvette jumping from one building to another. I'm 99% sure it was done with a miniature though.

What movie? Is it on youtube?

In the ad at the top I noticed that the seat goes on the bare frame @2:10-2:11. Shouldn't the body be in place first? Maybe it's a Flintstone car.

My bad, it wasn't a 'Vette, but a Mercedes Benz sedan. The star was driving the 'Vette. Speedtrap! with Joe Don Baker.