Chapter 1

The War of the Worlds (1953)



This
film was the winner of the Best Achievement in Special Effects Academy
Award, by producer George Pal, for its vivid depiction of the invasion
of the Earth by Martians. This was the first visual effects-laden "popcorn"
film, featuring vibrant color special effects, and the destruction of
various cities and landmarks, including the famous Los Angeles Courthouse
Building.

[This film would inspire such films as Independence
Day (1996) and Steven Spielberg's remake War of the Worlds (2005).]

The
Ten Commandments (1956)

The film won the Best
Achievement in Special Effects Academy Award. It was Cecil B. DeMille's
remake of his own 1923 silent film, with one of the most miraculous visual
effects scenes in film history (and the most expensive special effects to
date) -- the parting of the Red Sea. The scene, prefaced by Moses' (Charlton
Heston) statement: "The Lord of Hosts will do battle for us. Behold his
mighty hand," involved the use of miniatures, pyrotechnics, traveling matte
paintings, rear-projection, and a 32-foot high dam or water tank churning out the waterfall.
Other special effects scenes included the various plagues, the Burning Bush,
etc.; in the massive Exodus sequence, compositing was used to multiply the number of extras in the crowd.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)



The Star Gate and Star
Child sequence and other special effects helped this revolutionary and pioneering film win the Academy
Award for Best Achievement in Special Visual Effects. Stanley Kubrick's
film featured the most realistic footage of space ever created - and it's
still not dated by the passage of time. Miniature models of spacecraft, computer-guided
pre-motion control cameras, rear-projection (for the film's many video displays and computer monitors), full-sized props or models (such as the 30-ton rotating "ferris wheel" set of the spaceship), and other early
techniques (such as a primitive type of "Go-Motion") were used.

In the film's opening "Dawn of Man" sequence of prehistoric apes learning to use tools on the African savannah, retroreflective matting (front projection) was used to display second-unit background scenic shots projected from the front onto a reflective surface combined with soundstage photography of actors in the foreground - a technique now replaced by computer-processed blue-screen techniques.

Near the film's end in the Star Gate sequence, astronaut David Bowman (Keir Dullea) traveled through
the stargate corridor in a dazzling sequence (using a slit-scan photographic technique) -
a sound and light hallucinatory journey or whirling lights and colors in which he was hurled through and
into another dimension - where he was reborn as a Star Child; other effects were achieved by applying different colored filters to aerial landscape footage and a close-up of an eye, and filming interacting chemicals.



The Andromeda Strain (1971)

This film contained possibly the first use of 3D rendering (the rotating
structure of the underground laboratory). It was
another early feature film to use advanced computerized visual effects
for its time, with work by Douglas Trumbull
(2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)), James Shourt, and Albert Whitlock
(The Birds (1963)).

Created in 1996-2007 © by Tim Dirks. All rights reserved.

THE BEGINNING......

VISUAL EFFECTS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN EYE-CANDY FOR MOST OF US WHO LIKE HOLLYWOOD MOVIES. HAVE YOU EVER THOUGHT WHAT LED TO THIS POINT. FOR THAT, I (PRATIK) PRESENT TO THE TIMELINE OF VISUAL EFFECTS IN HOLLYWOOD MOVIES. SO SIT BACK N RELAX AND DON'T FORGET TO ADD COMMENTS.