A cinematic journey through visual effects - Don Levy
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The filmmaker George MZ 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 have developed an arsenal of techniques to further their deceptions. Motion pictures are themselves an illusion of life produced by the sequential projection of still frames, and they astonish 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. GM Batista Deapa, a 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 to 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’ll enjoy.
The filmmaker George Manz was one of the first to realize that films had the power to capture dreams.
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How you feeling, Jake?
Hey guys, welcome to your new body, Jake.
Good, we're going to take this nice and easy, Jake. Well, if you want to sit up, that's fine.
Good, just take it nice and slow, Jake.
Good, okay. Well, no trunkle attacks here, that's good.
Are you feeling lightheaded or dizzy at all?
Are you wiggling your [Music] toes?
What's happening to me?
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No.
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Well, it's all over, nothing to worry about, not a thing.
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It seems to me that the worst is over.
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Thank you.
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