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There is a very creative guy called Joey Shanks who puts together videos that are tutorials in how to create various kinds of special effects in association with PBS. One of his recent projects was to show how to create a scientifically accurate Black Hole like the one in the movie Interstellar. The video allows you to see step by step how each element was captured by the camera, and then gives you a peak at how they look when all the elements are added to the composite layer by layer. This is not how the effect was actually created for the film, in part because a big piece of Joey’s approach is to do as many elements of a given build using real world objects and a camera to film them as possible. But it does give you enough information that you might get some really good ideas of how to build your own effects. I found out about this series from Cinefex, a great place to learn more about how the effects you see on the screen get built, and who is doing them.

Black Hole creation | Shanks FX | PBS Digital Studios from Joey Shanks on Vimeo.