Far From Houdini:The 'Magic' of the VFX Breakdown

VFX breakdowns are short ancillary videos that advertise the digital animation work undertaken by a VFX company for a particular film or television programme. Claiming to take viewers ‘behind the magic’ of VFX, breakdowns disassemble a wide variety of shots and sequences, and point to the extensive use of computer-generated imagery in contemporary blockbuster cinema. But as much as breakdowns reveal some illusions, they conjure others. Breakdowns operate in a register of speed, fluidity, and efficacy, showing neither the many people nor the extensive periods of time that it takes to painstakingly generate all these VFX. In this article, I reveal how the omission of labour and duration in VFX breakdowns both reflects and contributes to a broader (mis)understanding of digital effects as immaterial, instantaneous, and magical. My case study is Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019), a film that links VFX with magic, evokes the breakdown in some of its spectacular visuals, and even outright villainises those effects artists who seek fair recognition for their work