CGI, or computer-generated imagery, changed not only the moviegoing experience but also the craft of making movies. The first use of CGI in a feature film was in 1973’s Westworld, to create the POV footage for the gunslinging robot. And then came Tron, in 1982, which took the technology to new levels, introducing the first moving and talking CGI character and also combining CGI with live action. Since then, the use of CGI has exploded, so to speak.
But what about the many movies that were made before the 1970s? Many of them feature stunning scenes with fantastic effects. How were those effects created without the help of digital magic? Let’s explore some film history.
Edison Manufacturing Company
The very first special effect was created for a short film from 1895, The Execution of Mary Stuart, produced by Thomas Edison. Yes, he’s
that
Thomas Edison. To portray the beheading of Mary, Queen of Scots, a blindfolded actress was led to the execution block. The executioner raised his ax, and then all of the actors froze in place while the actress playing Mary was quickly replaced with a mannequin. Action resumed, and the mannequin was beheaded. Afterward, a simple splice of the film made audiences believe they were watching a real person lose her head.
Star-Film
A few years later, in 1902, Georges Melies created La Voyage Dans La Lune (A Trip to the Moon), a movie short that is now a staple in every college-level history of film class. A rocket flies to the moon—a meringue pie with a man’s face in the middle. A rocket model makes a sploosh landing in the pie, and then the edit cuts to a full-size version of the rocket with people inside. Even early audiences could make the mental leap between the model rocket and the full-size one. In 1925, Willis O’Brien used stop-motion animation to create the illusion of living, breathing dinosaurs in The Lost World. He posed dinosaur models, shot one frame of film, repositioned the models slightly, shot another frame, and so on. The footage with the moving dinosaur models was later combined with footage of actors to create the finished scene. This movie is a clear precursor of the 1933 classic King Kong and the much later CGI Jurassic Park franchise.
Alexander Korda Films, London Film Productions
Another popular special-effects technique, blue screen, was first put to use in the 1940 film The Thief of Bagdad. This technique allows actors to be superimposed onto other backgrounds, whether exotic or fantastical. Each actor was filmed in front of a solid blue screen, and then, in post-production, everything blue was replaced with footage of a new background. Of course, the actor could not be wearing anything blue, or that part of their body would disappear and be replaced with the background scene as well. These days, a green screen is used more often than blue, simply because blue clothing is more popular. The nightly news is often produced with the same blue or green screen technique—a meteorologist stands in front of a solid screen and the appropriate maps and weather footage are added behind them.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
Of course, alternatives to blue screen backgrounds in movies included painted backgrounds. In the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz, for example, distant shots of the Emerald City were paintings on large glass panels. Speaking of The Wizard of Oz, to create the illusion of a whirling Kansas tornado, special effects gurus filmed a 35-foot wind sock moving back and forth, and they used fans to shoot dirt and debris into the air around it. The tornado scene was the most expensive special effect in that now-classic film. One of the most iconic special effects moments is the parting of the Red Sea in 1956’s The Ten Commandments. To create the parting sea, gelatin-thickened water was released into a giant water tank from opposite sides, and then the footage was played in reverse. Backsplash from a waterfall was edited in as well, along with matte paintings of rocks to join the different special effects elements together. Creating the scene took about six months, but the result is stunning.
Twentieth Century Fox
The 1966 movie Fantastic Voyage offered a twist on the standard outer space adventure by traveling to inner space instead. For plot reasons too complicated to explain, a submarine and its crew are miniaturized and injected into a man to dissolve a blood clot in his brain. Art Cruickshank created corpuscles by filling a large tank with water, minerals, and Vaseline. Translucent materials were hung on a soundstage to depict the interior of the heart and artery tunnels. Even in the CGI era, post-1973, some filmmakers prefer to manually fabricate their special effects. These creative efforts are called practical effects. In 1981’s American Werewolf in London, in the transformation scene, long hairs were pulled through urethane skin, and then the action was reversed to create the illusion that the werewolf’s hairs were growing.
Universal Pictures
In 1989’s Back to the Future Part II, clever special effects helped Marty and Doc land their flying DeLorean on a neighborhood street. For the flying part of the scene, a 3-foot miniature DeLorean was suspended on wires against a blue screen; for the driving and stopping part, a real car was used. The transition between the two was the tricky part: There’s a light pole in the foreground when the DeLorean lands, and editors used a split-screen at that pole to merge the flying and landing footage. Tricky, and no CGI was required. In 1996’s Independence Day, New York City was set on fire without use of CGI. The team built a model of the city, repositioned it vertically, then lit it on fire to create the effect of flames traveling sideways. Some moviegoers complain that CGI effects, while impressive, lack the warmth and realism of practical effects. Your mileage may vary, depending on the year of your birth and your personal tastes. The movie industry has room for both, and it is up to each talented filmmaker to decide which techniques best suit their vision.
