When it comes to superhero television shows, The Flash reigns supreme. Unlike Arrow or Gotham, The Flash features one of DC's signature heroes doing the incredible each and every episode.
A large chunk of the show's success can be chalked up to its impressive visual effects. After all, without believable effects, Flash's superspeed wouldn't be all that impressive. But when used to brilliant effect like it is in the show, it makes every episode a dream come true.
If you've ever wondering what all goes into making the show's visuals a reality, you owe it to yourself to check out the behind-the-scenes video below. Oftentimes it's hard to tell what is CG and what's real while watching the show, but that might be because everything is moving at breakneck speeds. In the video, The Flash VFX supervisor Armen Kevorkian breaks down some of the show's most impressive visual feats to date, showing which scenes are real, which scenes are CG and which ones are a little bit of both.
That helicopter Flash runs across? Unsurprisingly, not real. The runaway chemical truck? A little bit of both. It's a real truck at the start, but once Flash takes off all the wheels to get it to stop, the truck seamlessly becomes CG as it crashes into a nearby building.
All of the show's CG sequences start off with the team making a previsualization of it. These are rough sketches of the CG, as it were, and are sometimes pretty funny to watch. The previz of Flash and Reverse Flash racing, for example, with both of their arms wildly moving back and forth in what look like graphics from a glitched PlayStation 2 game, are particularly entertaining.
It just goes to show that making a superhero look good isn't easy, but they do it each and every episode on The Flash. The show airs at 8 p.m. EST Tuesdays, 7 p.m. CST.
