I.

Introduction

Special Effects or SFX, the use of specialized techniques to create images and scenes that would be impossible, dangerous, or prohibitively expensive to film using standard methods of cinematography.

From the moment moving pictures were invented in the last years of the 19th century, film-makers sought ways to exploit the medium’s unique photochemical and mechanical properties in order to dazzle and deceive the viewer.

Early experimenters quickly realized that film did not have to be shot continuously, and that during filming the camera could be stopped, some aspect of the scene changed, and then filming resumed. The result would be an apparently spontaneous and inexplicable on-screen event. This basic trick, known as “stop-action”, was used to create what is considered the first-ever special effects shot in the early short film The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots (1895). To create the illusion of a royal beheading, an actress knelt down before being replaced by a dummy whose head was chopped off.

The master of early film effects was the French magician George Méliès, who pioneered many of the basic techniques that would be used and improved upon over the next century. Méliès made hundreds of short films using methods such as double exposure (exposing the negative in the camera more than once in order to film multiple objects—such as the same person appearing twice in the same image), stop-action, forced perspective (the building of models and sets with an exaggerated perspective—allowing apparently huge scenes to be built within a small studio), painted environments, models, and special effects make-up. They included the first great special effects science fiction film, Voyage dans la Lune (1902; A Trip to the Moon).

“Special effects” became a term broadly used to describe any production technique that deviated from ordinary methods of live-action film-making. Several distinct areas of special effects production have developed over the years leading to a general consensus within the film production industry as to the terms that are used to describe each discipline.