Special Effects

Here is an essay I wrote in the War of The Worlds (2005) forum at IMDB.com concerning a thread titled "Best Effects scene in history?"

You ALL have to remember that the best visual effects are the ones that you, the audience, don't realize are a visual effect. For that, a special mention MUST be made to the work Industrial Light and Magic did in Forrest Gump. Everything from the ping pong ball to the rain in Vietnam and of course the digital integration of archival footage. The work ILM did made Forest Gump a verb. (ex. "They'll need to Forest Gump that actor into the scene.")

Also, have you realized that the majority of the movies mentioned in this thread were the work of Industrial Light and Magic and that they weren't even around until Star Wars. Nor did they do anything other than Star Wars until Dragonslayer, which boasts some of the greatest Star Wars-era VFX of all time.

This is why I must give credit to Stanley Kubrick who was directly responsible for the visual effects of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which redefined what invisible visual effects were all about without motion control technology. 2001 sold the idea that VFX don't have to look fake. John Dykstra and the newly formed ILM took that idea a step further by making VFX dynamic with computer-controlled movement for Star Wars.

Also, the outstanding work displayed in Alien by director Ridley Scott who was apphaled at the shots that came back from the London effects shop and personally supervised and shot the visual effects from scratch to ensure his vision of realism was not tarnished. Much of that work did not use motion control or compositing in any way.

Looking at The Empire Strikes Back as not only my favorite Star Wars movie but also one of my favorite movies, period, the context of the visual effects enhancing Irvin Kirshner's storytelling as well as acknowledging that the effects don't scream "look at me! I'm a visual effect!" as does LOTR and The Matrix. The majority of the work on Empire was stop motion photography. That serves to remind me of the fantastic mine cart chase in Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom where EVERY SHOT except for close-ups of the actors, was stop motion photography of tiny little puppets on a tiny little stage. The tiny model train that careens over the cliff in Back To The Future Part III that looked so real.

And though I agree that the transformation scene in An American Werewolf in London is hands-down the best human turning into a werewolf scene of all time, I disagree that it is a visual effect and it is, rather, a mechanical effect. This qualifies it as a "special effect" but it removes it from the category of "visual effect". To clarify, in Jurassic Park, the shot of the velociraptor jumping up on the kitchen counter is a visual effect because it was composited into the shot. The shot of the raptor snarling was a puppet that was shot on location in camera and required no compositing and is therefore a mechanical effect.

All are special effects as acknowledged by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences when it had to come to that ruling when deciding who should get the Academy Award, ILM or Stan Winston? Both did.

But to place the transformation scene in AAWIL as an argument for great special effects when also mentioning "effects films" like Titanic and T2 would probably be the reason no one here has seen it. A COMPLETE fascination of special effects ranging from the visual (a Star Destroyer), the mechanical (the donut hole in the T-1000's head), and the make-up (Chewbacca) effects.

Keeping that in mind, I can have a list that includes AAWIL and John Carpenter's The Thing right beside Star Wars. I also really love that shot in Jaws when the shark eats the boyscout leader. That still freaks me out.