Special Effects Technology

by Summer Keeler

Special Effects

Special effects are used in the film, television, and entertainment industry to create effects to trick audiences into believing what they see is real. The illusion of the moving picture lends itself to the creation of the unreal situation. The fantastic, impossible, dangerous, science fiction and fantasy are all genre that a script writer can call upon to excite the emotions of their audience. To make these scenarios appear real requires knowledge of make-up and masks; safe and mechanically articulated props of all sizes; and visual effects ranging from the 2-D painted matte to 3-D virtual reality models ‘acting’ scenes against a blue screen. Special Effects Technology embraces all these elements from the scientific, engineering, technical, and creative points of view. Special effects technology has made great strides since its beginnings in the late 1800s.

Special Effects Timeline: Landmarks in the Industry

1895 – Alfred Clarke created what is commonly accepted as the first ever special effect. While filming the reenactment of the beheading of Mary, Queen of Scots, Clarke had an actor step up to the block as Mary. Then, Clarke stopped the camera, had all the actors freeze, and replaced the actor with a Mary dummy. The cameras started rolling again and the axe came down, having the audience believe it really happened.

1935 – The first Technicolor film produced was Becky Sharp.

1940s – The first use of miniatures to create complex shots of airplanes, ships, etc.

1977 – Star Wars hit the market with the use of many original effects. It successfully and smoothly used stop animation and blue screen effects to create the illusion of space ships soaring around the galaxy.

1993 – Steven Spielberg directed Jurassic Park with the use of Computer Generated Imagery to create realistic monsters without the use of stop motion. Spielberg filmed scenes with the actors acting as though their dinosaur counterparts were there, then he scanned the film into a computer, and added the dinosaurs in afterwards.

From its beginnings of making people disappear and reappear, special effects has evolved into illusions with blue-screen, split-screen compositing, stop-motion and computer animation.

How do they do it?

Many of the special effects that are done today are done on computers using video editing software. This software includes Adobe Premiere, Pinnacle Studio 8, Digital Origin EditDV, etc. For many major films, producers actually create special programs to produce specific effects that they want in their film.