They’ve saved the biggest trip for last as the most popular time-traveling movie trilogy of all time comes to a rousing conclusion in Back to the Future Part III!
To create the complex scenes where Fox has to act opposite himself playing both Marty McFly and Seamus McFly, ILM’s engineers developed a high speed, motion-controlled silent camera dolly making it possible to film moving-camera composite shots of actors while recording live dialogue.
The pioneering technology would go on to be recognized with a Technical Achievement Academy Award® in 1998. Other notable effects sequences include Clara’s hoverboard rescue, the locomotive careening off the railroad trestle, and the flying future train — the latter two achieved though the use of intricately-detailed scale miniatures.
