Modern Special Effects Methods

  • Chroma Key/Matte Effects (Forrest Gump)
  • Give chroma key explanation here.
  • Compositing (Matrix)
  • The history of compositing is optical. One of the reasons that Star Wars was such a revolutionary film is that the battle sequences used compositing. Industrial Light and Magic used special techniques to shoot individualå components and then combined them on film to make for the entire battle ground.
  • Today, this is done digitally, even with animation. The stampede scene in the Lion King was done by compositing multiple animated images on the computer.
  • Computer Animation/CG (Toy Story)
  • Stop Motion (King Kong, Nightmare Before Christmas)
  • In Nightmare, they used stop motion, but the cameras were controlled by a computer. The computer would move the cameras to create a different perspective of the stop motion, so not only would you see motion from the items on the screen, but you would also get a constant change in perspective.
  • This also started with some of the battle scenes in the sequels in the Star Wars saga.
  • Miniatures
  • In the field of special effects, a miniature effect is a special effect generated by the use of scale models. Scale models are often combined with high speed photography to make gravitational and other effects scale properly.
  • Another form of miniatures is done with stop motion.
  • Elements - fire-wind-rain-smoke-snow-pyrotechnics-rigging (Twister)
  • These types of effects can be compositing in using programs from Discreet like fire, combustion, flint, and inferno.
  • Forced Perspective (Honey.. )
  • There are also more subtle techniques such as shooting up or shooting down on a subject to create the effect that the subject dominates the picture or that they are being dominated.
  • In camera effects (day for night)
  • DEFINED: An in-camera effect is any special effect in a video or movie that is created solely by using techniques in and on the camera and/or its parts. A hitchcock zoom The Hitchcock zoom, also known as the contra-zoom or the Vertigo effect, is an unsettling in-camera special effect that appears to undermine normal visual perception in a way that is difficult to describe. This effect was used by Alfred Hitchcock in his film Vertigo.
  • In the Hitchcock zoom, the setting of a zoom lens is used to adjust the field of view at the same time as the camera moves towards or away from the subject in such a way as to keep the subject the same size in the frame throughout.
  • In camera effects are typically limited. However, using certain controls such as iris, white balance, and exposure settings, you can trick the optics to present images that look significantly different than they do in real life. A lot of horror movies use the day for night effect so that the night lighting is bright and even.
  • Can also use lenses, like a fisheye (skateboarding videos)
  • Optical effects
  • Optical effect are those film effects that are created entirely through an optical process using film, light, shadow, lenses and/or a chemical process.
  • Examples would be film titles, fades, dissolves, wipes, blow ups, skip frames, bluescreen, compositing, double exposures, zooms and pans.
  • All of these things can be done digitally today with computers.
  • Misc. Makeup/costuming (blood packs/latex/gas fire explosions)