Writing a story full of adventure and emotion has been around for centuries, but the introduction of special effects is rather new. Sure Shakespeare had his cannon in the Globe theater, and the use of cloth for water in Asian productions. However such additions were not highly valued, so little effort was put into the production of such objects because it was the story that was important. They were never meant to be in limelight for all to admire, just spice up the show a little. With the invention of the high functioning motion picture camera, along with knowledge of controlled pyrotechnics, lighting effects, and computers anything is possible.
In the early days, camera effects were rather simple, but very inventive. It may seem silly and outright lazy to an audience toady, but in the 1930s and 1940s the usage of rear projection to simulate background footage through a car or train window was a huge leap forwards. Although the major drawback of this effect is the obvious difference in resolution between the inside of the vehicle and the supposed background.
By the time of the 1970s special effects began to take off in both their frequency of usage and the desire to improve them. Now when special effects are brought up many minds jump to Star Wars. The effective use of miniatures, and very early computer generated images (CGI)
wowed audiences around the globe in 1977. The famous lightsaber made kids feel like knights of the future. Which is what drove the sales of millions of lightsabers. The "vast" space battles made viewers believe that those were real life spaceships, which shoot lasers that result in spectacular explosions. In reality this was done with optical allusions by way of the use of miniatures and primitive computers. In the Empire strikes back, a crude animation of the behemoth AT-AT made me appreciate how hard it was to do any type of scene back then.
More on this later gang
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