Special effect

This includes the use of mechanised props, scenery, scale models, animatronics, pyrotechnics and atmospheric effects: creating physical wind, rain, fog, snow, clouds, making a car appear to drive by itself and blowing up a building, etc.

It gives filmmakers greater control, and allows many effects to be accomplished more safely and convincingly and—as technology improves—at lower costs.

As the executioner brought the axe above his head, Clark stopped the camera, had all of the actors freeze, and had the person playing Mary step off the set.

His most famous film, Le Voyage dans la lune (1902), a whimsical parody of Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon, featured a combination of live action and animation, and also incorporated extensive miniature and matte painting work.

Many techniques—such as the Schüfftan process—were modifications of illusions from the theatre (such as pepper's ghost) and still photography (such as double exposure and matte compositing).

Many studios established in-house "special effects" departments, which were responsible for nearly all optical and mechanical aspects of motion-picture trickery.

Fritz Lang's film Metropolis was an early special effects spectacular, with innovative use of miniatures, matte paintings, the Schüfftan process, and complex compositing.

Essentially, an optical printer is a projector aiming into a camera lens, and it was developed to make copies of films for distribution.

Many films became landmarks in special-effects accomplishments: Forbidden Planet used matte paintings, animation, and miniature work to create spectacular alien environments.

In The Ten Commandments, Paramount's John P. Fulton, A.S.C., multiplied the crowds of extras in the Exodus scenes with careful compositing, depicted the massive constructions of Rameses with models, and split the Red Sea in a still-impressive combination of travelling mattes and water tanks.

During the 1950s and 1960s numerous new special effects were developed which would dramatically increase the level of realism achievable in science fiction films.

Taking inspiration from King Kong (1933), Tsuburaya formulated many of the techniques that would become staples of the tokusatsu genre, such as so-called suitmation—the use of a human actor in a costume to play a giant monster—combined with the use of miniatures and scaled-down city sets.

Godzilla changed the landscape of Japanese cinema, science fiction and fantasy,[4] and kickstarted the kaiju genre in Japan called the "Monster Boom", which remained extremely popular for several decades, with characters such as the aforementioned Godzilla, Gamera and King Ghidorah leading the market.

Backgrounds of the African vistas in the "Dawn of Man" sequence were combined with soundstage photography via the then-new front projection technique.

The first was economic: during the industry's recession in the late 1960s and early 1970s, many studios closed down their in-house effects houses.

George Lucas's Star Wars ushered in an era of science-fiction films with expensive and impressive special effects.

That same year, Steven Spielberg's film Close Encounters of the Third Kind boasted a finale with impressive special effects by 2001 veteran Douglas Trumbull.

Digital imagery has enabled technicians to create detailed models, matte "paintings," and even fully realised characters with the malleability of computer software.

In 1993, stop-motion animators working on the realistic dinosaurs of Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park were retrained in the use of computer input devices.

Other landmark examples include a character made up of broken pieces of a stained-glass window in Young Sherlock Holmes, a shape-shifting character in Willow, a tentacle formed from water in The Abyss, the T-1000 Terminator in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, hordes and armies of robots and fantastic creatures in the Star Wars (prequel) and The Lord of the Rings trilogies, and the planet, Pandora, in Avatar.

Camera workers, stunt artists or doubles, directors and engineers collaborate to produce the proper effect as the action is recorded against a green screen.