Front: 15-mile-wide City Destroyers disengage themselves from the alien Mother Ship which has positioned itself behind Earth's moon (production painting by Oliver Scholl). In all, Independence Day utilizes over 40 special effects shots. Each one can have ten or more elements and each element requires its own shot.
Right: "The coordination between the effects work and the main shoot got really complicated because there's so much blue screen work," says director/co-writer Roland Emmerich. "It was hard to figure out what to shoot first and how to shoot it."
* Source: Back of Card