The most famous image from Méliès’ film wizardry is the iconic shot from 1902’s “A Trip to the Moon.” A spacecraft launches towards the Moon, which has a human face. Méliès composited the moving camera shot on top of the static camera wide shot to bring the illusion to life. Move the camera backward, and the subject would become smaller in the frame. The closer the camera moved toward the disembodied head, the bigger his head looked. By moving the camera forward and backward on a dolly track, the subject in the frame would appear to change size. Méliès accomplished this effect by combining multiple exposure compositing techniques with camera movement. A perfect example is his 1901 film “The Man with the Rubber Head.” In this story, Méliès puts a disembodied but still living duplicate of his head on a table and uses bellows to inflate the head with air, causing it to double and triple in size.

The artist used this visual trickery to pull off whimsical effects. This technique allowed Méliès to combine multiple exposures into one final image. This time, the parts that were initially black were transparent and vice versa. Then he rewound the film and reshot the scene, but using a different piece of glass in front of the camera. This method ensured those black parts of the frame never exposed light to the camera’s film. Méliès would use a simple but brilliant technique to composite different shots into the same scene.Įssentially, he filmed a scene while a piece of glass - that had parts of it painted black - sat in front of the camera. Starting in 1896, he directed over 500 films full of cinematic spectacle through visual effects. The most notable pioneer of early visual effects was George Méliès, a French actor, director and film magician. Special effects are “real” effects captured on set. From atmospheric effects like artificial rain, wind and fog, to the use of miniatures, puppets and animatronics, pyrotechnics and beyond. Special effects refer to practical - usually physical - effects that are typically captured in-camera. There’s a crucial difference between these two terms.

However, visual effects - or VFX for short - are often confused with another similar tool, special effects. Kong,” visual effects are an indispensable filmmaking tool.

Whether it’s giving the Marvel Cinematic Universe superheroes their wondrous powers, creating epic space battles in “Star Wars,” or bringing fully CGI creatures to life like the upcoming “Godzilla vs. Visual effects have come a long way since the era of Christopher Reeve’s Superman. “You will believe a man can fly.” They were right. The promotional material for 1978’s “Superman: The Movie” had a tagline that focused less on the actual story and how entranced the audience would be by the film’s groundbreaking visual effects. As giant blockbuster film franchises featuring fantastical worlds, powerful characters and thrilling adventures continue to dominate the box office, filmmakers rely on VFX more than ever to get viewers sucked into their stories.

Green screen motion capture suit