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Special effect

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Lasers were used in the 2005 Classical Spectacular concert
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Lasers were used in the 2005 Classical Spectacular concert
Special effects (abbreviated SPFX or SFX) are used in the film, television, and entertainment industry to visualize scenes that cannot be achieved by normal means, such as space travel. They are also used when creating the effect by normal means is prohibitively expensive, such as an enormous explosion. They are also used to enhance previously filmed elements, by adding, removing or enhancing objects within the scene.

Many different visual special effects techniques exist, ranging from traditional theater effects or elaborately staged as in the "machine plays" of the Restoration spectacular, through classic film techniques invented in the early 20th century, such as aerial image photography and optical printers, to modern computer graphics techniques (CGI). Often several different techniques are used together in a single scene or shot to achieve the desired effect.

Special effects are often "invisible." That is to say that the audience is unaware that what they are seeing is a special effect. This is often the case in historical movies, where the architecture and other surroundings of previous eras are created using special effects. Special Effects are traditionally divided into two domains : Optical Effects, that rely on manipulation of a photographed image, and Mechanical Effects - effects which take place during the live-action shooting. A good example of optical effects would be the USS Enterprise flying through space, whereas a mechanical effect would be a mechanically-operated prop such as R2D2, or the zero-gravity effects employed in .

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Developmental history

In 1895, when the film industry was just starting out, Alfred Clarke created what is commonly accepted as the first-ever special effect. While filming a reenactment of the beheading of Mary, Queen of Scots, Clarke instructed an actor to step up to the block in Mary's costume. As the executioner brought the axe above his head, Clarke stopped the camera, had all of the actors freeze, and had the person playing Mary step off the set. He placed a Mary dummy in the actor's place, rolled the tape, and allowed the executioner to bring the axe down, severing the dummy's head. “Such… techniques would remain at the heart of special effects production for the next century” (Rickitt, 10). This was the first time an effect was used in film to make the audience believe that something that wasn't happening was. Clarke tricked his audience into believing what they saw was real, and from that moment on, nothing shown in film could be believed to have happened. During the 1920's and 1930's, the Motion Picture Industry perfected numerous effects. Some 'in-camera' effects such as Pepper's Ghost were a modification of theatrical special effects, whilst others relied on fooling the camera itself, such as use of miniatures and double-exposure in Metropolis, single-frame stop motion animation, used in The Lost World and King Kong, back-projection, and Matte Paintings were perfected during the 1930's.

In 1935, RKO studios produced Becky Sharp, the first commercial film to use Technicolor. The ability to produce color films added to the look of reality of film. During World War II, black and white films were the most common in the new popular war movies, but a new phenomenon had reached filmmakers; the use of miniatures.

To create complex shots of airplanes leaving a ship, or a fleet of aircraft carriers moving across the ocean, the producers of the movie used a large tank of water with model boats and planes and filmed the shot. Using special machines to produce waves, the filmmakers were able to create almost realistic shots of boats and airplanes. (Model tank water was especially difficult to film realistically since its behavior changes with scale.) “Films such as Ships with Wings (1942) relied on model ships, planes, and miniature pyrotechnics for their portrayal of war” (Rickitt, 23). This posed a question to audiences; how do we know what is real and what is unreal?

Although Orson Welles "Citizen Kane" is not reliant on special effects to tell its story, the film made groundbreaking use of Optical Printing. Prior to the invention of the Optical Printer, effects had to be made in-camera. The optical printer, essentially a projector facing a camera, allowed the rephotographing of previously-shot footage in a repeatable manner. The Optical Printer revolutionised the optical effects industry.

is notable for its use of miniatures, and of the high quality demanded by Stanley Kubrick for the effects shots. Distrustful of travelling matte processes such as blue screen, Kubrick preferred all mattes to be laboriously hand-animated. 2001 also pioneered the use of front projection, which was used in the Dawn of Man sequence to simulate the wide vistas of Africa on-set.

In 1977, a new blockbuster movie hit the market: Star Wars, directed by George Lucas. What made Star Wars unique was improvements in blue screen travelling-matte and optical-printing technology in conjunction with developments in computer control of the camera, allowing the precision repeatability required for travelling matte compositing. Lucas' effects shop's biggest innovations were to use the outdated VistaVision cameras that photographed widescreen images horizontally along 35mm film stock, rather than vertically, using far more of the film per frame, so that when the effects were composited and transferred to standard film stock the effects looked as clean as the non-effects shots (previously when such bluescreen effects were composited they appeared grainy and blurry compared to the rest of the film). A variety of techniques to shoot the ships in space included running the models down wires and having the models stand still and the camera move. Following success of Star Wars and planning a sequel, Lucas turned the effects shop created for one movie into Industrial Light and Magic for The Empire Strikes Back.

In 1993, Lucas' close friend, Steven Spielberg, directed Jurassic Park. This film used computer generated imagery (CGI) to create realistic monsters without the use of stop motion, which was not always successful. What Spielberg did was to film the scene with the actors acting as though their dinosaur counterparts were there, then the film was digitally scanned and composited by computer, adding the computer-generated dinosaurs. Digital compositing made the optical printer obsolete, as digital compositing avoided the inherent graininess of optical compositing, and also allowed for instantaneous viewing of a composite, whereas film required developing. This new technology really pushed special effects to new heights. Two years later, entire films could be made on a computer such as Toy Story (1995). Audiences had lost all sense of reality in film, if indeed there had been any since 1896, with the new CGI. Everything on screen now looked so real that it was almost impossible to tell what was a backlot set, or an actor in costume, or what was entirely or mostly produced on a computer. Many fear that we have lost the comfort of knowing that what we see isn't real, due to the ever-changing effects industry.

Special Effects Animation

Also known as effects animation, special effects animation is a specialization of the traditional animation and computer animation processes. Anything that moves in an animated film and is not a character (handled by character animators) is considered a special effect, and is left up to the special effects animators to create. Effects animation tasks can include animating cars, trains, rain, snow, fire, magic, shadows, or other non-character entities, objects, and phenomena. A classic case of this would be the lightsabres and laser-bolts in the original Star Wars, or the Monster from the ID from Forbidden Planet, both of which were created by rotoscopy.

Sometimes, special processes are used to produce effects animation instead of drawing or rendering. Rain, for example, has been created in Disney films since the late-1930s by filming slow-motion footage of water in front of a black background, with the resulting film superimposed over the animation.

Among the most notable effects animators in history are A.C. Gamer from Termite Terrace/Warner Bros.; and Joshua Meador, Cy Young, Mark Dindal, and Randy Fullmer from the Walt Disney animation studio.

Special effects animation is also common in live-action films to create certain images that cannot be traditionally filmed. In that respect, special effects animation is more commonplace than character animation, since special effects of many different types and varieties have been used in film for a century.

Special effect companies

Visual special effects techniques in rough order of invention

Special effects artists

CGI versus SFX

Effects that are created via computers, or during editing are known as CGI (Computer generated Imagery) Effects, or Visual effects — not Special Effects. Special Effects are those effects which are created during filming on-set, such as bullet hits, fire, flame, and explosions, wind, rain, etc. AI refers to "Artificial Intelligence." It is the creation of a computer generated character who has the ability to think and make decisions for itself.

Landmark movies

References

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
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