Squid Game fans can't believe how the series looks without CGI in bizarre BTS video
The playground from ‘Squid Game’ is where some of the most intense moments of the show take place, but in real life, it doesn't seem nearly as eerie. Beneath the bright colours and dramatic settings, however, lay a very different reality that could shatter the haunting atmosphere remembered by fans. What caught fans’ imagination was the image of ‘Squid Game’ minus its fancy CGI tricks. Gulliver Studios, the company behind the stunning visuals, dropped a video showcasing the magic behind some of the most iconic shots. In reality, the grand playground and stunning painted walls were just a simple blue background. All were elaborate products of special effects: including the epic arena and the giant dome with prize money hanging above the players' dorms. But that’s not all, the rat that appeared on Kang Sae-byeok’s shoulder was wholly CGI. She was not nibbling on it; it was purely a digital creation.
Perhaps the most jaw-dropping revelation was the use of 300 real extras in the first game. Fans thought the huge crowd was just part of the CGI magic, but in reality, it was made up of real people. In a particularly tense scene where Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-Jae) is almost yanked off the ground, a wire holds him up, and the team later edited it out.
Seok Jong-yeon, the compositing supervisor at Gulliver Studios, explained that the biggest challenge in the Netflix series was making imaginary places appear real. Environments based on concept art proved especially challenging, as the setting changed with each episode. For example, while the playground location was shot outdoors, the surrounding walls were created through CGI. As the lighting of the shots changed throughout filming, maintaining consistency was crucial.
Speaking to Foundry, he said, “The hardest thing was making the unrealistic places that didn't exist look as if they really existed. It was challenging to create a non-existing environment based on concept art, as each episode had a different concept and location.” He added, “For example, the playground was filmed at an actual outdoor playground but all the walls surrounding it were CG. As the time passed while filming, the shadows and shades changed, so we had to put a lot of effort to match them all equally.”
'Squid Game's' special effects supervisor Cheong Jai-hoon told Screenrant, “The most challenging part was creating a sense of balance between what is completely new and fake and balancing it with something real.” He further added, “This is a show where we created a space that didn’t exist at all and this is this is something that we haven’t seen before, but we had to create it to an extent that it would look like a real thing.”
He also admitted that if the CGI wasn't perfect, it could’ve ruined the entire series. The pressure was tremendous because if they did not get the scale and height right, it would fall apart. When the show came out, Cheong Jai-hoon said he felt nervous, almost to the point of losing sleep, but when the viewers said the show didn’t look fake and was so realistic, he felt overwhelming relief. “If you don’t have the right sense of scale and sense of height there, the whole drama would just collapse,” he said. “There was a huge pressure on my shoulders. When I first watched it after the show came out, I felt like my heart was burning and the world was going to be watching it, so I was almost losing sleep! After the show’s release, everybody loved it so much and there was no comment about it looking fake, so I was very relieved after seeing the reaction from the audience.”