A cinematic journey through visual effects Don Levy

the filmmaker George Milius was first a

magician

now movies proved to be the ultimate

medium for magic with complete control

of everything the audience can see movie

makers had developed an arsenal of

techniques to further their deceptions

motion pictures are themselves in the

illusion of life produced by the

sequential projection of still friends

and they astonished the Lumiere brothers

early audiences even today’s

sophisticated moviegoers still lose

themselves to the screen and filmmakers

leverage this separation from reality to

great effect now imagine if people have

been having fun with this for over 400

years

Giambattista della Porta I’m Neapolitan

scholar in the 16th century examined and

studied the natural world and saw how it

could be manipulated playing with the

world and our perception of it really is

the essence of visual effects so digging

deeper into this with the Science and

Technology Council of the Academy of

Motion Picture Arts and Sciences reveals

some truth behind the trickery visual

effects are based on the principles of

all illusions assumption things are as

we know them

presumption things will behave as we

expect and context in reality our

knowledge of the world as we know it

such as scale now a fourth factor really

becomes an obsession which is never

betray the illusion and that last point

has made visual effects a constant quest

for perfection so from the hand-cranked

jump cut

early days of cinema to last Sunday’s

Oscar winner what follows are some steps

and a few repeats in the evolution of

visual effects I hope you enjoy the

filmmaker George yes it was one of the

first to realize that films had the

power to capture dreams

are you feeling Jake hey guys welcome to

your new buddy Jake well if you want to

sit up that’s fine

good just take a nice no Jake okay we

know truncal ataxia that’s good what’s

happening to me

it’s all over don’t worry about a thing

it seems to me that the worst is over

thank you

you