Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie mostly made use of practical effects, using an animatronic alien (with a puppet version), a monster suit with many puppeteer-operated tentacle arms, and plenty of vehicle miniatures. Only when we were completely unable to do the effect in front of the camera, we would use digital effects. Sometimes they were done to enhance a shot, to remove strings, poles or puppeteers, and other times it was to fix mistakes made while on set. During shooting, we had limited time, due to the expensive Los Angeles locations, and also worked with a union cast and union crew. For a low budget independent film, it was extremely difficult to get all our shots in time. Every day was a frantic race against the clock. Therefore, there were lots of shots that needed to be completed later, digitally. For example, all the shots with TVs or monitors in the background. There wasn’t time to plug them into a power source, and sometimes the images that needed to go on the monitors were not finished yet, such as graphics or animated sequences like the EeeTee 2 game. The digital effects team was big! We had about 80 people working on different shots. There were hundreds of shots that required effects work. We thank everyone for all your hard work! Effects done in computer are known as VFX (Visual Effects) in the film industry, even though all effects are “visual.” (Practical effects are usually called Special Effects. After all, they are more “special”.)