The 1. 5 Worst Special Effects in Blockbuster Movies. Once upon a time, special effects were created with physical models and actual explosions. These days, many effects are created with the aid of computer- generated imagery (CGI). While both have their merits, one thing is for certain: with the amount of money that goes into creating blockbusters, the special effects better be masterful. While the latter is true for many big- budget films over the years, including The Lord of the Rings trilogy (budget: $2. To create movies of the quality we now expect, special effects houses have to use every trick in the book, from classic green-screen technologies to the creation of.Computer-generated imagery. CGI" is most commonly used to refer to 3D computer graphics used for creating scenes or special effects in films and. There's no program more defined by the people inside it, or by the spirit, energy, & imagination they embody than Tom Savini's Special Make-Up Effects Program. Inception is one of those movies that could have easily gotten away with doing every single special effect in CGI, because it's full of so many insane moments that we. Film Milestones in Visual and Special Effects : Title Screen : Film Title/Year and Description of Visual-Special Effects: Screenshots: Eadweard Muybridge's The Horse. The Matrix, which revolutionized the way effects were created, there are some noteworthy effects that fail to live up to the expectations we’ve created for big- budget filmmaking. Here’s our list of the 1. The Mummy Returns (2. No list of CG disasters is complete without The Mummy Returns, which ends with a fight between Brendan Fraser and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s face mapped on to the body of a scorpion, which kind of looks like a lobster centaur. To say that the Scorpion King looks weird is an understatement. The face is glossier and more plastic looking than all of The Real Housewives combined, and while the body is a little bit more realistic, it still looks too artificial compared to everything else onscreen. Even with this CG fail, The Mummy Returns ended up grossing $4. However, for $9. 8 million budget, one would think that more time and money would have been put into creating a convincing adversary for the finale. Robo. Cop (1. 98. Regarded by many critics as one of the best movies made in 1. Robo. Cop is a smart sci- fi thriller that uses over- the- top gore and violence to satirize American culture. The film was nominated for two Academy Awards, including Sound Effects Editing and Best Sound, taking home the editing prize. Robo. Cop was made on an estimated $1. Enforcement Droid (ED) 2. While the effects in Robo. Cop were mostly acceptable for the time (stop motion was soon replaced by CGI), the scene in which in which evil corporate heavy Dick Jones (Ronny Cox) falls to his death from a skyscraper is egregiously bad. A dummy was used to film the scene, but it would have been more realistic had the dummy not had arms the same length as the body. Freddy vs Jason (2. After fans of the A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 1. Freddy and Jason, New Line and Paramount tried to make a Freddy vs. Jason movie in 1. After 1. 5 years of on- and- off development and approximately $6 million spent on eighteen unused scripts from more than a dozen screenwriters, New Line finally produced Freddy vs. Jason in 2. 00. 3. After years of anticipation, many fans were disappointed by the horrible plot and shoddy effects throughout. Throughout the Nightmare on Elm Street film series, Freddy Krueger focuses on the respective person’s biggest fears to come up with inventive ways to kill them from within their own dreams. While there are many creative ways this serial killer has enticed his victims throughout the years, the “weed caterpillar” takes home the prize in stupidity. Character Mark Davis is a stoner, so Freddy waits for him to light up a joint before making his move, which is to take the form of a caterpillar with a bong. While not even remotely scary, the “weed caterpillar” is one of the most idiotic CGI monsters to appear onscreen. Ghostbusters II (1. After the success of the original Ghostbusters, producer/director Ivan Reitman and writers Dan Akroyd and Harold Ramis were pressured to make a sequel by Columbia Pictures. While initially hesitant, Reitman, Akroyd, and Ramis eventually signed on. It’s not nearly as well- liked as its predecessor, but Ghostbusters II grossed nearly $3. One of the most memorable scenes in the movie is when the four ghostbusters bring the Statue of Liberty to life by using positively charged “Psychomagnotheric Slime” and Howard Huntsberry’s “Higher and Higher.” While a lot of work went into this scene – including the use of miniatures, a large head sculpture for close- up shots, and some full- scale set pieces – the long shots make it obvious that the Statue is merely a man in a costume. Fun fact: Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis originally conceived the idea of the Statue of Liberty as a force of evil used by Vigo, but out of respect to Lady Liberty, they decided to make her a positive influence. Total Recall (1. 99. At $6. 5 million, Total Recall was one of the most expensive films ever made at the time of its release. 25 greatest CGI movie moments of. Greatest Visual-Special Effects (F/X) Milestones in Film History: From even its earliest days, films have used visual magic ("smoke and. Special effects (often abbreviated as SFX, SPFX, or simply FX) are illusions or visual tricks used in the film, television, theatre, video game, and simulator. Bad computer special effects are the worst. WatchMojo lists some of the poorest attempts at cgi in movie history. List Entries and Rank: #10. Agent Smith. You can tell that most of the money was put into the film’s visual effects. Total Recall was one of the last major Hollywood blockbusters to use large- scale miniature effects rather than computer- generated imagery. Five different companies were brought in to handle the effects, but the only CGI was used for X- ray skeletons of commuters and their concealed weapons. Total Recall was the given the Special Achievement Academy Award for visual effects. While most of the effects in the movie are inspiring and imaginative, that’s not the case in one particular scene. When Arnold ditches his fat woman disguise because it starts malfunctioning, he – or something that kind of resembles him – is revealed underneath. The head is clearly a model – and not a good one. The Fugitive (1. 99. The Fugitive is based on the 1. Roy Huggins. The film spent six weeks as the number one film, and it grossed nearly $3. The film was nominated for six Academy awards, and Tommy Lee Jones took home the award for Best Supporting Actor. The film did not receive a nomination for visual effects. Not to say there were none – the scene where a train crashes into a bus is remarkable, especially considering it was filmed in one take. The sequence cost $1 million and 1. The same awe- inspiring effects did not translate into the scene where Harrison Ford’s character jumps off a hydroelectric dam. Viewers have noted that the body taking the plunge down the waterfall looks like a dummy, and they are correct. In fact, there were six dummies and they cost $1. Escape From L. A. Albeit receiving mixed reviews, many fans revere Escape from L. A. Still, critics and viewers alike have noted that the film is missing the dark, post- apocalyptic atmosphere of the first Escape movie. Even the director, John Carpenter, thought the script for the second Escape film was hard to take seriously. The campiness is evident throughout the film, especially in the scene where Kurt Russell and Peter Fonda hang 1. While the scene is playful and humorous, the effects are downright cheesy. And perhaps that’s the point – viewers can tell that the film is making fun of itself. Considering the film was made in 1. Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull (2. Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull was a financial success, grossing over $7. Spielberg stated before production began that very few CG effects would be used to maintain consistency with the other films. However, significantly more CGI work was done during filming than initially anticipated because it proved to be more practical. There ended up being a total of about 4. CGI shots in the film, with an estimated 3. CG matte paintings. While there is an abundance of CGI in the film, which is evident when some of the Soviet villains are eaten alive by a swarm of red ants. The fourth film strayed from the old- fashioned adventure film of its three predecessors, and fans were justly disappointed. Air Force One (1. A box office success with decent reviews from critics, Air Force One was one of the most popular action films of the 9. Then sitting U. S. President Bill Clinton praised it, but also noted certain elements of the film’s version of Air Force One, such as the escape pod and the rear parachute ramp, did not reflect features of the actual plane. Clinton’s support aside, no viewer can support the ending crash scene. For a big- budget blockbuster, you would expect more for the CGI sequence. The plane bounces on the water a couple of times, and then takes the cheesiest nose dive in the ocean where it then proceeds to break in half. It looks like something you would see in an old video game, rather than a film with an $8. Deep Blue Sea (1. Deep Blue Sea was originally inspired by Australian screenwriter Duncan Kennedy, who witnessed firsthand the horrific effects of a shark attack when a victim washed up on a beach near his home. The event brought on a recurring nightmare for the screenwriter where he was stuck in a passageway with sharks that could read his mind. This undoubtedly inspired the plot of Deep Blue Sea, where sharks become smarter and more dangerous due to genetic alterations by scientists. While that all sounds terrifying, the actual film is not so much so. It’s campy, full of cheesy dialogue, though guessing which character will bite the dust next makes for a decent drinking game. The scene where Samuel L. Jackson’s character meets his demise is shocking simply for the fact that he is killed so early in the film, but it’s also amusing. Jackson is at the end of giving an uplifting, emotional speech, when an unconvincing CG shark dives behind and grabs him by the teeth. In the next sequence, viewers see the shark chopping away at a mannequin with Jackson’s likeness before it disappears underwater. Blade II (2. 00. 2)The Blade series was one of Marvel’s early forays into sequels. Blade II released on March 2. Blade series, making $8. United States and $1. Though financially successful, viewers have noted that many of the fight scenes feel video game cut scenes. This is most certainly the case when, early in the film, a band of vampire ninjas attack Blade in his industrial “bat cave.” As it progresses, Blade looks increasingly more computerized. It may not have been so bad if the film didn’t keep cutting from a close- up of Snipes’ un- computerized face to a wide shot of Gumby Snipes. However, that look may have been the intention of director Guillermo Del Toro, who wanted the film to have both a feeling of comic book and Japanese animation. How special effects transformed the movies. To create movies of the quality we now expect, special effects houses have to use every trick in the book, from classic green- screen technologies to the creation of full artificial intelligence systems. It's no wonder that names like Industrial Light and Magic are as important in Hollywood as any producer's or director's. While there's no question that you need advanced software techniques on your side to produce Hollywood effects, most of what's needed comes down to raw processing power. Many of the day- to- day tools used in the industry are mainstream applications available to enthusiasts and smaller studios. Companies such as Softimage and Autodesk lead the way with suites of titles designed to cover everything from green- screen imaging and compositing to character animation, lip synching and lighting. Custom code. These applications are fine for the basics, but the larger effects houses spend as much time on software engineering as they do on the artistic side, writing custom code to fix specific problems and bringing new effects to life. Sometimes these become products in their own right, as happened with Pixar's Render. Man, the engine behind not only the company's own films such as Ratatouille and WALL- E, but also most major Hollywood blockbusters, including Harry Potter and I Am Legend. Mental Ray is another common industry render engine, and it's used on all manner of Hollywood blockbusters. Essentially acting as an API, Mental Ray allows batch mode rendering within common software environments. This means that designers can render their output via their favourite software package, be it Maya, 3. DS Max, Softimage XSI or Side Effects Software's Houdini. The advantage of this is that designers and artists can use a common rendering file format – a '. The level of complexity involved here is closer to an engineering project than a standard artistic one, but it's wasted if the artistic side falls flat. Pixar is a great demonstration of the two working side by side. When Toy Story came out, the relatively primitive state of 3. D graphics didn't allow for the complex effects we're now used to seeing – cloth effects, convincing human animation and photorealistic backgrounds, for example. So the company focused on the type of effects it could pull off – rigid- body toys, where any weaknesses would simply contribute to the charm. Each subsequent release followed a similar pattern, introducing more realistic animation in A Bug's Life, mastering fur in Monsters Inc and coming up with the cartoon humans that made The Incredibles so much fun to watch. Every movie raised the stakes. Every movie was a hit. The state of the art The history of CGI in live- action films hasn't always been smooth. The earliest practical application of CGI is generally agreed to be the point- of- view sequences of Yul Brynner's robot gunslinger in the 1. Westworld. The producers employed 2. D computer- generated animation to simulate the robot's vision. For the 1. 97. 6 follow- up Futureworld, the producers went one stage further and introduced 3. D elements via rendered polygonal models, a technique which has now become standard. Not all the effects of the time were so complicated. In many cases, it was easier to cheat. The TV version of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (1. Guide, but in fact these were hand- drawn scenes created to mimic the style of contemporary computer animation. Other artists found that the technology available simply wasn't able to produce what they wanted. The Japanese anime film Golgo 1. It's therefore not surprising that the first truly legendary CGI- heavy film was, like Pixar's films, designed to play to the technology's weaknesses as well as its strengths. Tron, complete with real actors and the first fully computer- engineered 3. D scenes. The difficult part was integrating both of them. We used computer simulation, we used backlit techniques and we used conventional live action. The challenge was to make it all look cohesive. The latter marked the first use of natural human motion for a computer- sculpted character. Its liquid metal effects, particularly in conjunction with the then- revolutionary morphing technology that would soon take over every film and commercial in sight, was a particular eye- opener, giving us a villain that combined the best technology from both 1. It was Toy Story, though, that really cemented CGI's place in the industry. While producing the film, Pixar grew from just 1. Bill Reeves and animator John Lasseter. They were tasked with producing the software that would become Render. Man. As for Lasseter, it's tough to argue with his recent description of his field. Special effects - New World Encyclopedia. Special effects (abbreviated SPFX or SFX) are used by the film, television, and entertainment industries to realize scenes, such as space travel, that cannot be achieved by live action or normal means. They are also used when creating the effect by normal means is prohibitively expensive; for example, it would be extremely expensive to construct a sixteenth- century castle or to sink a twentieth- century ocean liner, but these can be simulated with special effects. With the advent of computer graphics imaging, special effects are also used to enhance previously- filmed elements, by adding, removing or enhancing objects within the scene. Someday, special effects may go beyond visual. Already, there are attractions that use special effects in a simulator environment. These rides include the use of moving chairs and added scents to enhance the experience. As people become more creative and wanting different experiences, multi- sensual items may become attainable in the average home. As it is now, people can buy a home theater that will literally shake their house using a sub- woofer. This adds to the experience of movies with such things as explosions or any loud scenes. Many different special effects techniques exist, ranging from traditional theater effects or elaborately staged as in the . Often several different techniques are used together in a single scene or shot to achieve the desired effect. Special effects are traditionally divided into two types. The first type is optical effects (also called visual or photographic effects), which rely on manipulation of a photographed image. Optical effects can be produced with either photographic (that is, optical printer) or visual (that is, CGI) technology. A good example of an optical effect would be a scene in Star Trek depicting the USS Enterprise flying through space. The second type is mechanical effects (also called practical or physical effects), which are accomplished during the live- action shooting. These include mechanized props, scenery, and pyrotechnics. Examples include the ejector seat of James Bond's Aston Martin, R2. D2 in the Star Wars films, or the zero- gravity effects employed in 2. A Space Odyssey. History of development. In 1. 89. 5, Alfred Clarke created what is commonly accepted as the first- ever special effect. While filming a reenactment of the beheading of Mary, Queen of Scots, Clarke instructed an actor to step up to the block in Mary's costume. As the executioner brought the axe above his head, Clarke stopped the camera, had all of the actors freeze, and had the person playing Mary step off the set. He placed a Mary dummy in the actor's place, restarted filming, and allowed the executioner to bring the axe down, severing the dummy's head. When he screened the film, he found that the . Melies, the stage manager at the Theatre Robert- Houdin, was inspired to develop a series of more than 5. Because of his ability to seemingly manipulate and transform reality with the cinematography, the prolific M. This video featured a combination of live action and animation, and also incorporated extensive miniature and matte painting work. During the 1. 92. Many techniques were modifications of illusions from the theater (such as Pepper's Ghost) and still photography (such as double exposure and matte compositing). Rear projection was a refinement of the use of painted backgrounds in the theater—only substituting moving pictures to create moving backgrounds. But several techniques soon developed that, like the . Animation, creating the illusion of motion, was accomplished with drawings (most notably by Winsor Mc. Cay in Gertie the Dinosaur) and with three- dimensional models (most notably by Willis O'Brien in The Lost World and King Kong). Also, the challenge of simulating spectacle in motion encouraged the development of the use of miniatures. Naval battles could be depicted with models in studio tanks, and airplanes could be flown (and crashed) without risk of life and limb. Most impressively, miniatures and matte paintings could be used to depict worlds that never existed, such as the massive city of Fritz Lang's film Metropolis. An important innovation in special- effects photography was the development of the optical printer. Essentially, an optical printer is a projector aiming into a camera lens, and it was developed to make copies of films for distribution. Until its refinement by Linwood Dunn, A. S. C., effects shots were accomplished as an in- camera effect, but Dunn expanded on the device, demonstrating that it could be used to combine images in novel ways and create new illusions. One early showcase for Dunn was Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, where such locations as Xanadu (and some of Gregg Toland's famous 'deep focus' shots) were essentially created by Dunn's optical printer. As the industry progressed, special effects techniques kept pace. The development of color photography required greater refinement of effects techniques. Also, color enabled the development of such travelling matte techniques as bluescreen and the sodium vapor process. Many films include landmark scenes in special- effects accomplishments: Forbidden Planet used matte paintings, animation, and miniature work to create spectacular alien worlds. In The Ten Commandments, Paramount's John P. Fulton, A. S. C., multiplied the crowds of extras in the Exodus scenes, depicted the massive constructions of Rameses, and split the Red Sea in a still- impressive combination of travelling mattes and water tanks. If one film could be said to have established the high- water mark for special effects, it would be 1. A Space Odyssey, directed by Stanley Kubrick. In this film, the spaceship miniatures were highly detailed and carefully photographed for a realistic depth of field. The shots of spaceships were combined through hand- drawn rotocscopes and careful motion- control work, ensuring that the elements were combined in the camera—a surprising throwback to the silent era, but with spectacular results. Backgrounds of the African vistas in the Dawn of Man sequence were created with the then- new front projection technique. The finale, a voyage through hallucinogenic scenery, was created by Douglas Trumbull using a new technique termed slit- scan. Even today, the effects scenes remain impressive, realistic, and awe- inspiring. The year, 1. 97. 7, was a watershed year in the special effects industry, because of two blockbuster films. George Lucas's film Star Wars ushered in an era of fantasy films with expensive and impressive special- effects. Effects supervisor John Dykstra and crew developed many improvements in existing effects technology. They developed a computer- controlled camera rig called the . Degradation of film images after compositing was minimized by other innovations: the Dykstraflex used Vista. Vision cameras that photographed widescreen images horizontally along stock, using far more of the film per frame, and thinner- emulsion filmstocks were used in the compositing process. That same year, Steven Spielberg's film Close Encounters of the Third Kind boasted a finale with impressive special effects by 2. Douglas Trumbull. In addition to developing his own motion- control system, Trumbull also developed techniques for creating intentional . Previously, studios were content to use the old techniques to achieve serviceable illusions. But a generation of technicians who weren't fooled by the old techniques now had the means (i. Lucas, after the success of Star Wars, founded an innovative effects house called Industrial Light and Magic, which has spearheaded most effects innovations over the last few decades. The single greatest recent innovation in special effects was the development of CGI, noted below. Although it had been used to striking effect in such films as Young Sherlock Holmes, its most impressive early use has come in films by James Cameron (The Abyss, Terminator 2: Judgment Day). In 1. 99. 3, Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park used CGI to create realistic dinosaurs—an indication that many of the older effects techniques would be changed radically if not rendered obsolete. Stop- motion animators working on the film were quickly retrained in the use of computer input devices. Digital compositing avoided the inherent graininess of optical compositing. Digital imagery enabled technicians to create detailed matte . Images could be created in a computer using the techniques of animated cartoons. It is now possible to create any image entirely inside a computer and have it look completely realistic to an audience. Special effects animation. Also known as effects animation, special effects animation is a specialization of the traditional animation and computer animation processes. Anything that moves in an animated film and is not a character (handled by character animators) is considered a special effect, and is left up to the special effects animators to create. Effects animation tasks can include animating cars, trains, rain, snow, fire, magic, shadows, or other non- character entities, objects, and phenomena. A classic case of this would be the lightsabres and laser- bolts in the original Star Wars, or the Monster from the ID from Forbidden Planet, both of which were created by rotoscopy. Sometimes, special processes are used to produce effects animation instead of drawing or rendering. Rain, for example, has been created in Walt Disney Feature Animation/Disney films since the late- 1. Among the most notable effects animators in history are A. C. Gamer from Termite Terrace/Warner Bros.; and Joshua Meador, Cy Young, Mark Dindal, and Randy Fullmer from the Walt Disney animation studio. Special effects animation is also common in live- action films to create certain images that cannot be traditionally filmed. In that respect, special effects animation is more commonplace than character animation, since special effects of many different types and varieties have been used in film for a century.
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