Editing Stargate (film) (section)

===Visual effects===
Jeff Kleiser and Kleiser-Walczak Construction Co.'s visual effects team of 40 people created the look of the Stargate. They used self-written image-creation and compositing software, as well as commercial digital packages to create the Stargate, the morphing helmets worn by Ra and the Horus guards, and the cityscape of Nagada. The morphing helmets were not true 3D but 2D elements, as Kleiser explained: "You shoot the character without the headdress, you shoot the character with a headdress. And then you have to go in and, and create all these little sections that you would then wipe off to reveal—and it had to match up, the two things had to match up. I think the cameras were moving as well."<ref name="Hoare">{{Cite web |last=Hoare |first=James |date=June 17, 2022 |title=CGI Fridays {{!}} Jeff Kleiser's Strange Journey from Super-8 to Stargate |url=https://www.thecompanion.app/2022/06/17/cgi-fridays-jeff-kleisers-strange-journey-from-vegas-to-stargate/ |access-date=June 24, 2022 |website=The Companion |archive-date=June 24, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220624143257/https://www.thecompanion.app/2022/06/17/cgi-fridays-jeff-kleisers-strange-journey-from-vegas-to-stargate/ |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Footprints in the sand were often digitally removed. The creation of the wormhole, which was fully digital, was one of the biggest challenges in the making of the film. The ripples had to be digitally composited to appear accurate and realistic. Scanning lasers were lined up parallel to the gate to illustrate the amount of body that passed the surface of the Stargate plane. Afterwards, the parts of the body that had or had not yet gone through the gate (depending on the side of filming) were obliterated with a digital matte, a process that removes unwanted components from an individual frame or sequence of frames.<ref name="specialeffects" /> The funnel of water that precedes the Stargate opening was filmed by discharging an air cannon into a water tank, as Jeff Kleiser explained: "We didn't know how much air pressure to set the cannon on but it went from 1 to 500&nbsp;lb, so we said 'Let's try 100—start the camera rolling and hit the thing.' It evacuated all the water out of the tank and onto the camera and everybody. It turned out that 1&nbsp;lb was about the right amount."<ref name="Hoare"/>

The use of computers generating a big 3D storyboard allowed Emmerich to try out different shooting angles before settling on one angle.<ref name="specialeffects" />