Special effects

Special effects are techniques used in visual media to create illusions. Many categories and varieties of special effects exist, and they can be used for different purposes. Although some believe that special effects apply only to live action, others believe cartoons, video games, and simulations can have special effects as well. In addition, disagreement exists as to whether visual effects requiring digital technology belong to a category of special effects or are a completely distinct field.

Special effects may be used to portray fictional beings, vehicles, buildings, or entire landscapes. They can hide things from the audience that would otherwise be visible and disrupt the presentation, such as signs or labels that clash with the period or location in which a film is set. Special effects are often employed in action and fight sequences to create the illusion of danger without harming or threatening any of the actors or stunt people involved.

Background

Special effects have been part of film since the industry began in the 1800s. Since a universal definition of special effects does not exist, pinpointing their origin is difficult. The principles of many special effects techniques used in film were taken from stage plays and magic performances.

Oscar Rejlander often is credited with the first special effect. In 1857, he combined sections of about thirty photograph negatives to create a single image. Decades later, Eadweard Muybridge used series of pictures of horses and people. By displaying them rapidly in sequence, he created the illusion of movement. Movie and animation techniques stemmed from this innovation.

By the 1890s, technology allowed the production of short, silent films. One of the first films to use trickery to achieve an illusion was 1895's The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, which used actors to depict the historical event. The filmmakers had an actor playing Mary come to an execution block and then stopped filming. The actor was replaced with a dummy while all other onscreen actors held their positions. They then resumed filming and beheaded the dummy.

In the early twentieth century, filmmakers discovered many more techniques that are now considered basic tools of filming. Georges Méliès was one of the most prominent filmmakers behind the discoveries. He was intrigued by the various illusions that camera work made possible, and he experimented with many techniques over the course of hundreds of short films. Techniques included time-lapse photography, dissolves, and tampering with film exposure to create different visuals.

As technology improved, filmmakers overcame early limitations. By the 1920s, feature-length movies were more common, and movies that could record sound changed the types of stories the medium could tell. The use of miniatures and matte paintings allowed filmmakers to craft environments that were entirely fictional or that they could not feasibly work in. Filmmaker Willis O'Brien was a pioneer of stop-motion animation. The technique involved filming a model one frame at a time, moving it slightly between shots to create the illusion of movement. It was used famously in The Lost World (1925) and King Kong (1933).

Impact

More special effects techniques and refinements emerged throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. Ray Harryhausen helped refine stop-motion animation. He thrived in the 1950s and 1960s. The same era gave rise to the Godzilla series and other Japanese giant monster films, which used detailed monster suits, miniature cityscapes, and various perspective tricks to create the illusion of massive creatures rampaging through cities.

The 1970s saw the birth of the blockbuster. In earlier years, science fiction, fantasy, and action films typically were viewed as cheaply made entertainment with little artistic value. The success of Jaws (1975), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), and Star Wars (1977) changed that. Star Wars in particular revolutionized the special effects industry, and studios began dedicating far more emphasis and manpower to special effects than they had in the past. Separate special effects companies, a rarity up to that point, became much more common.

Several films that were iconic for their special effects came out late in the decade. The 1978 Superman film's tagline was "You'll believe a man can fly," and it used innovative camera work to show Superman in action. The first Star Trek theatrical film debuted in 1979, giving fans their first look at Star Trek with a sizable special effects budget. Alien (1979) showed the potential that special effects could bring to the horror genre by depicting a creature bursting through a man's chest.

In the 1980s, two Star Wars sequels continued to push the envelope of film. An American Werewolf in London (1981) and The Thing (1982) used makeup, models, and animations to showcase gory transformation sequences. Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) combined animated characters and landscapes with live-action ones, which had been done before but never as seamlessly or in as many scenarios.

Computer-assisted visual effects became more frequent in 1990s blockbusters. The early stages of Jurassic Park (1993) had the effects team using go-motion animation, a more efficient successor to stop-motion animation. When the filmmakers saw what they could do with computer-generated images (CGI), however, they changed their approach.

Forrest Gump (1994) used compositing techniques to have its fictional characters appear in historical footage. Late in the decade, The Matrix (1999) used computer animation to create highly stylized fight scenes. Bullet time, which involved slowing or freezing the onscreen action while the camera moved at a normal speed, was highly influential.

In the twenty-first century, the Lord of the Rings trilogy was acclaimed for its effects. The use of motion capture to portray the character of Gollum was tremendously influential. Motion capture gave CGI characters far more realism than before and gave other actors someone with whom they could interact. It also used several perspective tricks to have characters that were supposed to be very different sizes interact with one another.

Avatar (2009) demonstrated the possibilities of 3-D films. Movies had been shot in 3-D since the early twentieth century, but it often was seen as a gimmick. However, 3-D filming technology had improved drastically, and with the ability to film digitally, creating an immersive world became much more feasible. The film also demonstrated the power of motion capture technology and its ability to bring the characters to life. The sequel in 2022 pushed the boundaries even further.

Bibliography

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