Motion Picture Special Effects
“Special visual effects have added to the allure of motion pictures since the early days of cinema. French director Georges Méliès is considered the most influential pioneer of special effects. His film “A Trip to the Moon” combined live action with animation, demonstrating to audiences that cinema could create worlds, objects, and events that did not exist in real life” (Tanis par. 1). Through examples of the new techniques and the movies where they were presented, this paper will detail the changes that special effects have seen over the last twenty-five years.
Special effects have been used ever since the film industry became popular. Three-dimensional film technology became popular in the1950s, when it enjoyed a brief period of use (Sklar par. 3). Although motion-picture film, like still photography, normally yields two-dimensional images, the illusion of a third dimension can be achieved by projecting two separate movies. Members of the audience wear 3-D eyeglasses so that the right eye sees one picture and the left eye sees the other, producing the effect of three dimensions.
Three-dimensional film technology is still being used today at Universal Studios in Florida. When my family visited the amusement park there was a feature 3D film that was rendition of “The Terminator.” Three-dimensional film has changed, because now the members of the audience no longer have to wear glasses with one red and one blue lens. Now the glasses are clear, but still allow the user to get the same three-dimensional effect that they would the red and blue glasses.
Another example of the lasting power of early techniques is stop-motion photography. The original “King Kong” used this technique, in which the King Kong figurine was repeatedly filmed for very brief segments and then moved, so that when the film was projected at normal speed, King Kong appeared to move. The same technique animated the figures in “James and the Giant Peach” (“Nova” par. 2).
After World War II there was a lull in the development and use of special effects. Technical advances in the design and manufacture of motion-picture cameras made it easier to film on actual locations, and the trend in cinematic storytelling tended toward realism, resulting in less call for fantastic illusions. Then in 1968 the film “2001: A Space Odyssey”, in which astronauts ap...
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Some of the special effect used in these films are animation. For example, the penguin scene in Mary Poppins. Another example of this is transitioning and flashbacks. An
There first invention produced was the Technicolor System 1 Additive Color, which I’m sorry to say flopped massively due to the unfortunate screening of The Gulf Between in 1917 which only a few frames remain of this film today. This was the first public premier of the technology and was disastrous. The film was captured through two separate filters red and green and the light through those two filters was captured on a single reel of film, when processed this negative had red and green information captured on a black and white reel, when this was processed the reel was placed into a projector and then threw red and green filters. To project the image an adjustable prism that had to manually lined up by the projectionist as two separate images formed on the projection screen this did not work as planned as the projectionist failed to line up the images correctly.
...rth was a combination of traumas that he had witnessed during his exposure to warfare in the trenches. This theme is exemplified throughout “Frankenstein” by suturing the sufferings of both World War One and the Great Depression. The creature and the villagers suffer equal destitutions of despair and desolation while the upper class citizens uphold their status within a fragmented economy. The wealthy members of society believed their control extended over all of mankind and its view on creation. James Whales’ concentration on the villagers and creature alike substantiate that the “re-animation” of the dead into a new and improved life generated the notion of normality and an absence of collective advancement. The traditions and status quo remained the unchanged throughout World War One, the Great Depression, and both Whales’ and Shelleys’ version of “Frankenstein”.
The start of special effects in film is largely attributed to Georges Méliès and his process of removing a section of a moving picture to place another moving part within.
Movies are a great way to take a break from your hectic life and just relax. Movies have been entertaining you and everyone around the world since the mid 1800’s. The evolution movie went from black and white pictures to color and sound to finally 3-D film. Directors, artists, and inventors took hundreds of years to just perfect putting the one by one captured pictures in a fluid motion to make a ten second movie. So, just think about trying to create the 3D effect or even how movies were created.
Isaac Newton was born into a poor farming family in 1642 with no father. Newton's father had passed away just a few months before he was born. His mother intended Newton to become a farmer but his lack of interest and the encouragement of John Stokes, Master of the Grantham grammar school and that of his uncle, William Ayscough, led to his eventual admission to his uncle's college. Trinity College, Cambridge, as a student on June 5, 1661. As a boy in Grantham, Newton had been intolerable to his servants and found it difficult to get along with his fellow grammar school peers. As a student, he bought his own food and paid a reduced fee in return for domestic service, a situation that appears unnecessary in view of his mother's wealth. In the summer of 1662, Newton experienced, some sort of religious crisis which led him to write, in Sheltonian shorthand, his many sins, such as his threat to burn his mother and step-father.
According to historians like Neil Burch, the primitive period of the film industry, at the turn of the 20th century was making films that appealed to their audiences due to the simple story. A non-fiction narrative, single shots a burgeoning sense
Two dimensional computer generated imagery was used to express depth and to produce new shades that could not be depicted just through animation and drawing.
In the early 1900’s Georges Melies introduced his film “A Trip To The Moon” to audiences in France. This film, when first seen by viewers at this time, was jawdropping. Melies who happened to be a magician, and illusionist before becoming a filmmaker, made one of the first-ever narratives in motion picture history. Similarily throughout “Trip To The Moon” and many of his later films, Melies, who also worked in theatre, took full advantage of what is known as Mise-en-scene. Mise-en-scene is defined as: All the elements placed in front of the camera to be photographed: the settings and props, lighting, costumes and make-up, and figure behavior. In “Trip to the Moon” Melies created a world to which no one had ever seen on film, and utilized all the characteristics to which mise-en-scene is based upon.
On April 1667, Isaac Newton had returned to Cambridge university and, against stiff odds, he was elected a minor fellow at Trinity. His success came good fortune. In the next year he became a senior fellow upon taking his master of arts degree, and in 1669, before he had reached his 27th birthday, he succeeded Isaac Barrow as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. The duties of this appointment gave Newton the chance to organize the results of his earlier research. In 1672, after his election to the Royal Society, he had communicated his first pub...
Newton worked day and night for almost 2 years on Philosophiae, Natrualis, Principia mathmatica, which translates to Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. This book is now said to be the single most influential books in physics and possibly all of science.
Before discussing his three achievements, it is important to note that Newton had some college experience but did his significant work was at home. Newton entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1661. His interest in mathematics began in the autumn of 1663, a date which matches the beginnings of his deep mathematical studies. When the plague forced the University to close in the summer of 1665, he returned to Lincolnshire [where he was born]. For a period of less than two years, Newton began revolutionary advances in mathematics and other areas such as optics, physics, and astronomy (O’Connor and Robertson). It is important to know where most of his discoveries were done in order to understand the reasons behind his inventions.
Offering the unique ability to visually and audibly convey a story, films remain a cornerstone in modern society. Combined with a viewer’s desire to escape the everyday parameters of life, and the excitement of enthralling themselves deep into another world, many people enjoy what films stand to offer. With the rising popularity of films across the world, the amount of film makers increases every day. Many technological innovations mark the advancement of film making, but the essential process remains the same. Pre-production accounts for everything taken place before any shooting occurs, followed by the actual production of the film, post-production will then consist of piecing the film together, and finally the film must reach an audience. Each step of this process contributes to the final product, and does so in a unique right. The process of film making will now start chronologically, stemming from the idea of the story, producing that story into a film, editing that footage together, and finally delivering that story to its viewers.
If we go back beyond Lumière Brothers’ projection of their cinematography in Paris over Christmas 1895, which is too straightforward birth narration of cinema; ancient visual forms like Egyptian hieroglyphics or pre-cinematic technologies of image capture and projection, known as magic lanterns, employing a series of lenses and light sources, were early proof of humanity mesmerised by the play and tricks of light and shades.
Today, movies use CGI to create special effects to replace thousands of extras, stunt people, and puppet like characters, as witnessed in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. The evolution of special effects and Computer Generated Imagery technologies has taken the film industry to a whole new level. Computer Generated Imagery began with awkward and dull effects in the early 1980’s. The 1982 film “Tron” was a desperate attempt from Disney to jump on the CGI bandwagon and start a revolution in film making technologies (imdb.com). Although this film showed an attempt at something that had never been done before in the history of cinematics, it was weird and confusing.