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Art History Week

Directly On Film Effects


Motion pictures are a special visual effect themselves. The first motion pictures from kinetoscopes in 1890s of just people bowing or moving around spawned what we now know as movies and television. In the 1880s, French scientist Charles-Emile Reynaud created the Theatre Optique, which projected a series of images onto a screen. In 1892, he showed off his creation in front of an audience with three animated short films that were created by painting the scenes directly onto the film frames.


Here is “Pauvre Pierrot,” one of the aforementioned animated films and also what is considered to be the oldest surviving animated film.





Creating effects directly on the film by scratching off the emulsion and painting is a technique that continued to be used years later. It is commonly called drawn-on animation and can also be referred to as camera-less animation.


Here is a modern example of scratch film animation from my own gallery.




This technique can also be used for making lightning bolts on existing footage. Painting on films has been used to colorize many silent films.


Here is a short film “The Six Sisters,” showcasing a dance routine from 1903.





This short film “human” by MadeleiZoo also uses the scratch film technique and tissue paper to add color.





For more information on the hand-painting technique, this article is a comprehensive read.





In-Camera Effects



Now, we can’t talk about special effects without talking about the Father of Special Effects, George Melies, who discovered the use of jump cuts when his camera jammed. His first intentional use of this technique was with “The Vanishing Lady,” in which Melies, a magician, makes a woman disappear, appear as a skeleton, and then reappear.






This discovery led to him using stop-motion animation over and over again for films such as “The Astronomer’s Dream” and later in 1902, “A Voyage to the Moon.”






In 1900, miniatures and camera perspective were used to recreate a live-action train crash for the short film “A Railway Collision.”






These historical effects came together in “The Great Train Robbery” of 1903 which used the cross-cutting editing techniques, camera movement, multiple camera angles, and an early special effect of compositing two shots together. Watch the film below and see if you can find which shot!






Did you figure it out? It’s the train station interior with the train passing by the window!

I could spend forever talking about the techniques of early film. It must have been such an amazing time to be discovering film’s possibilities. However, the innovation with effects didn’t stop then and haven’t stopped even today.






Transformations, Matte Paintings, and Chroma Key



The 1900s saw the early years of film animation with the single-frame stop-motion techniques (“Humorous Phases of Funny Faces” - 1906), new camera techniques such as “trucking” (from Cabiria), and eventually, in 1914, the first on-screen transformation using a series of dissolves and stages of makeup. Unfortunately, “The Miser’s Reversion” is unavailable to be seen, but the techniques used were perfected in “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (1931) and “The Wolfman” (1941).


Here is a great video compilation showcasing the Lon Chaney Wolfman transformations.





Camera techniques were used for a long time. Double exposure, used in “The Invisible Man” in 1933, was another technique that made for astonishing results at the time.




(This is one of my favorite scenes of all time, by the way.)



The 1930s also saw experimentation with 3D filmmaking, such as in “Audioscopiks,” which was nominated for an Oscar. It is a documentary that explains perspective techniques and other optics.




It’s also mildly sexist and contains questionable visuals meant for children. Hooray, 1930s!



The 1930s were full of more animated innovation, with Disney’s use of the multiplane camera (“The Old Mill) and then ended with “The Wizard of Oz,” which used a stocking and a blowing fan as the twister, actual tornado footage, and the juxtaposition of matte paintings to make the characters look like they were somewhere else.

In 1940, there were 14 nominees for the Special Effects Academy Award. The winner, however, was “The Thief of Bagdad,” which was the first film to use chroma-key (blue screen at that time).






Blue was the chosen color because it was significantly different than the actors' skin tones, and it would be more easily removed to isolate the actors from the background. However, eventually blue was replaced by green because digital cameras are more sensitive to green. Not to mention, blue eyes and blue jeans were frequently lost in the process of blue screen.

Green screen became the predominant technique to combine animation and live-action. Multi-million dollar films achieve some incredible feats with this technology, but now that digital cameras, computers, and green screen gear are highly accessible to the general public, many low-budget films can also achieve amazing things.







Final Curtain?



Special effects history can be very detailed, like any art history. There are so many achievements and in our digital age of the internet and virtual reality, a lot more awesome effects lie ahead.

Unfortunately, this article is long enough that I could not touch on the achievements of makeup, but I hope the information here provides you with a decent understanding of the early years of special effects in motion pictures and how those early discoveries led us to where we are today.



Hello! I am hosting a screenwriting workshop between Screenwriters and CRLiterature starting on the 24th! Every other day will have a different activity, but I'm looking for dedicated critics to follow a prompt and critique the work that is posted to ensure that participants receive feedback. If you are interested in participating as a critic, please leave a comment! Yes, you can participate as both a writer and a critic. It would be great to get some filmmakers involved in the critiquing process!

Talk to you soon!
Hello, deviants! If you applied for film privileges and have heard nothing after quite some time, it may be because the application stopped functioning. However, it is back up and running now.

The official application is here.

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Autumn Film Challenge!

Journal Entry: Mon Sep 25, 2017, 2:15 AM
Happy Autumn, deviants! To celebrate the seasons, I've decided to initiate a new quarterly project: a film challenge. Every season will start a new challenge with a new theme related to the season. For those of you in the Upside Down (Southern Hemisphere), you will follow the theme, but not need to worry about the season. 

What do you need to do?
Create a short film that is between 1 and 3 minutes in length following the theme: LETTING GO (can be live-action or animation)
Ensure that you have permission to use all materials in the film (visuals, audio) and that it follows deviantART guidelines
Upload the film to the Film & Animation Gallery (Not a submitting member of the film community? Here's how to apply: :faq842:
Write in the description that the film is for the Autumn Film Challenge
Send Cinestress a note with a link to your entry so she can put it in a folder for judging

Deadline: December 21, 2017

Prizes:
ALL films created will receive:
A feature from Cinestress 

The BEST film will receive:
A 3-month premium membership from Cinestress 

To assist you along the way, there will be a series of blogs discussing how to get a short film made with extremely limited resources. The most important part of this challenge is to have fun!

Want to donate a prize or help judge films? Note Cinestress with what you want to offer!

Go forth and make movie magic!

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Please welcome Cinestress!

Journal Entry: Wed Jul 19, 2017, 1:30 PM



This is THE Unofficial deviantART Film gathering spot. Here you will find updates, information and contest listings for film/video/animations/video art technique tutorials, film and animation groups, and more! Even if you aren't an active part of the film community but you love art and film, this is the space to watch! Want film privileges? Check out the main page, we've got links to everything you could need! Still confused? Drop us a line!
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Please welcome Cinestress!


Greetings everyone! I am delighted to welcome the enthusiastic and talented Cinestress  to the Film and Animation team!

She is a certified animator and lover of horror and suspense, and has a lot of plans for the Film and Animation community!

Please give her a warm welcome!

She has written a little biography if you want to know more about her! :dummy:

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