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RSSSpecial Effects
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Film and television special effects make the impossible seem real, and allow filmmakers to translate their visions into moving pictures. The history of special effects is as old as cinema itself, but in the past few years it has been revolutionized by the arrival of computer generated imagery (CGI).
The first special effects motion pictures were made by French director. On film, there is no way of telling the scales of different objects, so miniature models can be turned into huge objects on screen. Film can also be shot frame by frame moving models slightly between frames, creating the illusion of movement when the film is played back at full speed.
Exposing two images on the same frame of the film that can be use to combine action sequences shot at different times. Early film makers created those composite pictures by blocking out part of a scene so that a portion of film in each frame was not exposed. The film was then rewound a new sequence was shot on the unexposed portion of the film. This technique known as, matte, limited the action because the actors could not cross the boundary between the area exposed in the first sequence and the area exposed in the second sequence. The invention of the optical printer in the 1920’s made the task of combining separate elements much easier. Optical printers consist of a projector on which several films can be projected at any one time, and a cine camera, which shoots the composite picture on to a new piece of film in the camera.
The simplest way of blending moving action seamlessly with a separately shot background is rear projection-actors perform in front of a screen, on to which a background sequence is projected. The most recent revolution in special effects has been the arrival of CGI. Computers have been used “behind the scenes” since the 1970s, but their processing power was limited, and CGI could only create flat-looking artificial backgrounds. In the early 1990s, computers finally became powerful enough to create life like 3-D images.
Films such as gladiator use CGI to merge live action with a digital recreation of ancient Rome on a scale that would have been unimaginable for earlier directors.
CGI is often combined with animatronics-detailed models with electronic mechanisms that give them complex movements. Animatronics are frequently used for close-up shots and for scenes where a remote controlled model has to interact with its environment.
These models are capable of performing a wide range of movements which are complex and carry network of electric signals.
