I’ve got to admit it’s getting better.

Brad Pitt is no spring chicken, but it still took some work to put an 85-year-old version of his face on a child’s body in his newest movie. The first step: a new markerless, wireless, uncanny-valley-clearing motion capture process, termed “volumetric cinematography” by the effects studio.

And that’s only the beginning of the magic routine a single movie can go through: a story spaning ninety years might pull out CGI, old-fashioned matte painting, “youthening”, and more.