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Researched by Scotty G.
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Research Summary
Special effects are visual illusions created by various techniques in motion pictures or video.
In the past, special effects started with models. For example, King Kong knocking down skyscrapers was all done using small models.
There are many types of special effects: water, smoke, rain, explosions, models, flying monsters, fireworks, and guns. Machines create fake waves, smoke and rain. Explosions are tiny bombs. Models are used in movies to simulate dangerous creatures, buildings, ships (like the Titanic) etc. Putting harnesses on the actor creates the illusion of flying.
There are many different jobs centered on special effects. There are directors, technicians, creators, actors, and cameramen.
Camera operators have a very important role in special effects. They are in control of what we see when the final film comes out. The director and operator’s imagination determines what we finally see as the viewer. We are wowed with the scariness of King Kong, how Peter Pan flies, how large the Titanic is and how fast a cowboy can draw his gun! Of course all of these are just visual illusions ? magic tricks.
Special effects provide tremendous salaries for the creators and the camera operators. However, sometimes they do have bad working conditions. Long hours, poor weather, testy actors, waiting in small places, and mistakes or delays can be costly, even deadly.
In order to learn all there is in special effects because it is so wide ranged, most people study in college. Beginning technicians earn $100-300 dollars a day, while advanced techs make double to triple that. Special effects assistants get about $60,000 a year! Even better CGI effects actors and, art directors can earn about $100,000 a year!
According to Forbes magazine the film industry spent over $600 million in special effects in 1997. Each year we spend more and more. The future of special effects for the 21st century are in computers like the movie, “Monsters, Inc.”
According to the Encyclopedia of Careers and Vocational Guidance (2000),“At
the turn of the century a French magician turned filmmaker names Georges
Melies invented motion picture special effects. To film futuristic space
flight in a trip to the moon, he made a model of a rocket and fired it
from a cannon in front of an illusionistic, painted backdrop. By the 1920s,
special effects, “or tricks”, had become a department of the major film
studios, and technicians were steadily inventing new techniques and illusions.
For a tornado scene in the Wizard of Oz, a miniature house was filmed falling
from the studio ceiling, and when the film was reversed it became Dorothy’s
house flying into the air”.
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