Technology in Cinema

In 1901 the movie L, Homme à La Tête en Caoutchouc ( the man with the rubber head ) the filmmaker painted a picture of a room onto a pane of glass and then shot film of a man's head moving towards the camera through this painted glass. With the aid of superimposition the final effect was a head that was growing in size while sitting on a table in a room . This type of glass shot was one of the earliest forms of special effects that begun in the silent era. Other techniques were later devised such as projecting a setting onto a screen and then having actors perform in front of it to make it look as though they were there. Then there is the travelling matte where an actor is photographed in front of a blue background which there after the image is cut out and put into the moving gap of the background footage. This technique of the travelling matte is still in use today.

Special effects are basically a mixture of mise-en-scene and cinematography in that it combines elements of both areas. However not all effects involve photographic trickery, many of the ones in the past have used miniatures such as the first King Kong film with Fay Wray or an unknown costumed actor rampaging through miniature movie sets such as in the Godzilla movies. The biggest thing today with technology however is the use of computer animation, a technique that is so precise that it is almost difficult to tell what is real and what is not, I mean can you imagine what the very first audience of The Lost World would have thought if they had seen today's version.

The idea behind computer animation is to have the actors perform in some setting and then add in computer animated sequences or characters afterwards that correspond with their actions. A good example of this is the scene in Jurassic Park where Sam Neill and the two children are running away from an approaching herd of small dinosaurs. After the three actors filmed that scene, the computer animated dinosaurs were created to match the eye movements of the characters.
Even though special effects have always been part of cinema, one of the biggest criticisms of this area is that movies are now too reliant on special effects. Many movies are applauded for their amazing special effects, but criticized for their lack of plot or story, which if you have seen Starship Troopers you would know is true.

For detailed information on special effects visit Nova-online

Technology Page
Last Updated October 24, 1999
Web Page by John Princiotto Murdoch University
All clip-art provided by clipart.com Graphics courtesy of www.filmsite.org and debbytraywick@ussvoyager.com