The term of special effects indicates the whole of the techniques used with the Cinéma to create the illusion of actions and to simulate objects, characters or phenomena which do not exist in reality or which could not be filmed at the time of turning. One also speaks about faking .

Principles

Popularized by the films Fantastic S and of Science fiction, the special effects call upon various processes related on the image and the sound: Synthesis of image 3D, Digital processing, Model S, animations image by image, Slowed down and accelerated, Make-up, Sound effects, etc They can be realized during the turning or after (in Postproduction), or by the combination of both.

The scenario writers use the special effects for various needs:

• to reproduce an atmosphere (rain, snowfall, fog, etc)
• to create a visual reality starting from elements imaginary (monsters, extraterrestrial, flying saucers, cosmic universe, etc)
• to preserve the integrity of the actors or decorations (explosions, accidents, violences, earthquake, etc)

The special effect must appear most real possible. Its goal is to be erased. Better: it needs reality to exist. A film which would not use that special effects would concern the “Merveilleux” where all is possible, as in the Cartoons for example, and would lose in realism near the spectators.

History

The first visual illusions go up with the magic lanterns and the Praxinoscope S, but it is with the birth of the cinema that truly developed the special effects. The French conjurer Georges Méliès, pioneer of the cinematograph, is the first to have tried out them, using in particular effects of trompe-l'oeil, stops of camera (one changes the position of the objects or the actors between two images) and of the overprintings (one rewinds the film and one turns over images over the first). The film success like the Voyage in the Moon (1902), the Kingdom of the Fairies (1903) or 20.000 miles under the seas (1907) will rest mainly on the use of these special effects.

At the same time, the Spaniard Segundo de Chomón used similar processes, as well as other techniques, as for example to film top while making believe that the camera is posed on the ground, thus allowing impossible acrobatics. In the United States, the burlesque scenario writer Charley Bowers used special effects enormously, in particular animations of objects Image by image.

In 1914, the invention of the rotoscope by the brothers Dave and max Fleischer, which makes it possible to transform a scene filmed into a cartoon, opened the way with novel methods of faking, like the final improvement and the cutting of images to remove certain elements or to add others of them.

The scenario writers of the German expressionnism quickly adopted the special effects, which gave their identity to films like Metropolis of Fritz Lang (1927) or Faust of F.W. Murnau (1926).

In 1933, the film King kong of Cooper and Schoedsack has recourse to two types of special effects: the Animation in volume and the overprinting for the broad plans, and the handling of a puppet for the closes-up. What makes of this film the pioneer of the Animatronique, a technique which consists in animating a creature robotized to give him an appearance of life, and which will be largely used thereafter, in particular for the Dinosaures of Jurassic Park in 1993.

In the invisible Man of James Whale, carried out the same year, it is the process of the “mask against mask” which is used to mask the actor and to restore the hidden parts of the decoration. This technique will give rise to that of the Incrustation, one of principal progress of the special effects.

Many techniques invented in years 1920-1930 are always used, as the use of cables (which one can now mask by Digital processing) to simulate displacement in the airs of a character or an object, the decorations painted (technical of the Matte painting) and the use of models.

Manual special effects

Many films and televised series are pressed on models to simulate buildings, vehicles and spaceships.

The most spectacular example is 2001, the odyssey of space , Stanley Kubrick, which will impose her model on a quantity of films and televised series, of Cosmos 1999 with the Star Wars . For better controlling the movement of the models and camera by computer, John Dykstra developed the process Dykstraflex at the time of the turning of the Star Wars . It will then create with George Lucas the studios ILM which will obtain special tools to be able to work on the special effects after turning of a film.

Another means of representing imaginary characters consists in using puppets. They are the trademark of specialists like Jim Henson and Frank OZ (creative of the Muppet Show ) which in particular gave life to the characters of Dark Crystal like with Yoda in the Retour of Jedi . The puppets, whose each movement was initially ordered manually (by means of wire, of cables or electrical motors), are now also controlled by computer.

Lastly, the Make-up and the creation of original costumes are generally associated with the special effects.

Numerical special effects

The beginning of the year 1980, the rise to power of the Computer S and their more accessible cost made it possible to the realizers to consider new productions starting from calculated images and of synthesized images. The first mixtures of filmed images and digital images were carried out in Tron (Steven Lisberger, 1982) and in The Last Starfighter (Nick Castle, 1984).

Little by little, the best quality of the software made it possible to carry out true numerical fakings, like the Morphing , used in particular for the transformation of End Raziel in Willow (Ron Howard, 1988), or animation in 3D, which makes it possible to personify the “Australian one”, the knife which obeys Louison (Dominique Pinon) in Delicatessen (Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro, 1991). At the end of the years 1980, the realizers start to directly integrate the effects visual and special into the beginning of the project, which gives place to films where the fantastic one becomes more realistic, like Superman , Abyss or Terminator .

The madness of numerical seizes gradually the productions in the years 1990. The specialized studios multiply, like the house Duboi ( Alien IV ), Buf Compagnie ( the City of the lost children , the visitors ), or Def2shoot ( Empire of the wolves , a ticket for space , the Kid ). A quantity of films abundantly use from now on the numerical special effects, some resting exclusively on them, like Jurassic Park or Matrix .

New processes make their appearance, like the 3D real-time, which makes it possible to replace the image of an actor by a numerical preparing (as in Immortel, AD vitam , of Enki Bilal), or the “Bullet time” (inspired of work of Eadweard Muybridge), which makes it possible to break up the movements of the actors, for example, to emphasize the combat of Asian inspiration in Matrix .

More recently, certain realizers seek to escape the numerical whole, like Peter Jackson in the trilogy of the Seigneur of the Rings , which mixes make-up, digital processing and analogical fakings.

See too

• Technical and cinematographic grammar

• Lexicon S.F.X, which details the majority of the special effects used with the cinema
• numerical special Effets
• Servaisgraphie, a process of faking
• Animatronique
• special FX, effects, televised series of smoke-producing fiction
• Machine
• EESA, Higher European School of Animation and numerical special effects

Simple: Special effects

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