In today’s big budget movies, almost anything you see could be a visual effect. From buildings to cars to giant flying robots and more, the men and women who create today’s modern visual effects are masters of their craft and are able to take an ordinary scene of two people staring into the void and turn it into a piece of movie magic.

We’ve seen the “after” of all this work in hundreds blockbuster movies, but what about the “before”? Well, a new website wants to highlight just that. Over at Before VFX, they’ve collected a ton of photos from various blockbuster movies that show what the site calls “The Canvas” of the visual effects shot.

In other words, they show what the scene was actually like before any visual effects were added and before an audience ever saw one frame. It’s a fascinating look into just how much goes into the making of a modern movie blockbuster and how much we owe the VFX artists who do this work every day.

Plus, as Dustin Rowles at Pajiba put it, it shows us “how little credit we give A-list actors for their ability to interact and engage with green screens.” How little credit indeed. It can’t be that easy.

Check out several pics after the break and head over to Before VFX for a ton more.

Rango just had the largest opening weekend total of 2011. The animated film directed by Gore Verbinski made a cool $38M this weekend, snagging first place at the box office and bragging rights for the biggest opening of 2011 thus far.

This is the first film made entirely by Industrial Light and Magic studios. The film cost $135M to make, but it has made a nice dent in its budget. Unfortunately audiences that were polled when they left the movie weren’t overly enthusiastic about the film. It’s average rating was “C”.

Matt Damon’s latest thriller The Adjustment Bureau took second place with $20.9M. That is Matt Damon’s best weekend since 2007’s The Bourne Ultimatum. Audiences gave it a “B” score.

Beastly came in at number three with $10.1M.  That might sound disappointing, but Beastly only cost around $17M to make, so as long as teenage girls attend a few more weekends, the film should be fine. 78% of the audience were female, and almost half was under the age of 18.  That seems about right. All those gals gave the film a “B+”.  Take that, critics.

The Farrelly  brothers’ Hall Pass only dropped 33% from last week, making $9M for fourth place. After flirting with the top spot last week, Gnomeo and Juliet tumbled down to number five this week. It has made just over $83M in its first four weeks in release.

With every big-budget original idea, there always seems to be another film with a similar plot right behind it. In this case, we’ve got Chris Nolan’s Inception hitting theaters this summer, and now, along the same lines of psychological thriller, we’ve got Matt Damon in The Adjustment Bureau.

Granted, this idea came first in the form of a novel by Philip K. Dick, but it still doesn’t excuse Universal for releasing the film a few months after Inception. In Bureau, Damon plays Senate candidate David Norris who falls in love with the quirky Emily Blunt. They get together, get it on, and Damon is visited by a group of greyhairs in suits who explain that they “control how things work” and his relationship was never supposed to happen.

The film has  elements of The Matrix, Dark City, and Inception, with some potentially great performances from Mad Men and Iron Man 2’s John Slattery and Superman’s Terence Stamp. The film also comes from writer/director George Nolfi who worked with Damon on 2007’s Bourne Ultimatum, so there’s a little bit of history too.

Check out the trailer after the jump, courtesy of Yahoo Movies, and keep an eye out for The Adjustment Bureau when it hits theaters on September 17.