HISTORY OF VFX

Jaydeep Jadhav
2021-B-04112003
Mid Term Assessment
 CONTENT-

18th Century invention in cinema

First Special Effects shot
Work of Georges Méliès
First movie and edited movie (what do you think about them)
18th Century invention in cinema-
 1831–1848: Early stroboscopic animation

On 21 January 1831, Michael Faraday introduced an experiment with a rotating cardboard disc with
concentric series of apertures that represented cogwheels of different sizes and different amounts of cogs.
When looking at a mirror through the holes of one series of apertures, that "wheel" seemed to stand still
while the others would appear to move around with different velocities or in opposite directions.
In January 1833, Joseph Plateau, who had been working on similar experiments for years, published a
letter about his recently discovered slotted disc inspired by Faraday's input. The illustrated example of a
pirouetting dancer demonstrated that if drawings of successive phases of a scene or object in motion
replaced the apertures in Faraday's experiment, they would give the impression of fluent motion when
viewed in the mirror through the slots. Plateau's Fantascope became better known as the Phénakisticope
and its principle would form the basis for many later motion picture technologies (including
cinematography).[2] The possibilities of the Fantascope were limited to the short loops of images that
could be drawn or printed on a cardboard circle, but Plateau suggested in a letter to Faraday that the
principle might find modified applications in, for instance, phantasmagoria
 1849–1870: Photography in motion-

When photography was introduced in 1839, long exposure times seemed to prohibit a combination with
stroboscopic animation. In 1849, Joseph Plateau published about improvements for his Fantascope,
including a suggestion by Charles Wheatstone to combine it with his invention of the stereoscope and
with inspiration from Wheatstone's early stereoscopic photography. Plateau proposed a stop motion
technique avant la lettre with stereoscopic recordings of plaster models in different positions.[9] He
never executed the elaborate plan, probably because he had turned blind by this time. Stereoscopic
photography became very popular in the early 1850s with David Brewster and Jules Duboscq's new
portable viewer with lenses.
Stereoscopy inspired hope that photography could also be augmented with colour and motion for a more
complete illusion of reality, and several pioneers started to experiment with these goals in mind.
Antoine Claudet claimed in March 1851 to have exhibited a self portrait that showed 12 sides of his face
at the French Industrial Exposition of 1844.[10] These were probably not meant as a representation of
different phases of a motion, but as an overview of different camera angles. However, Claudet got
interested in animating stereoscopic photography and in November 1851 he claimed to have created a
stereo viewer that showed people in motion.[11] It could show a motion of two phases repetitively and
Claudet worked on a camera that would record stereoscopic pairs for four different poses (patented in
1853).[12] Although Claudet was not satisfied with the stereoscopic effect in this device, he believed the
illusion of motion was successful.
 1874: Janssen's photographic revolver-

Jules Janssen developed a large photographic revolver that was used to document the stages of the
transit of Venus in 1874 at different geographic points, in an early form of time-lapse photography.
Several discs with images have been preserved, but research concluded that all of the known discs
contained test recordings of a model in front of a circular light source (or brightly lit surface). The
photographs were most likely never intended to be presented as motion pictures, but much later
images of one disc were transferred and animated into a very short stop motion film.[26] In 1875 and
1876, Janssen suggested that the revolver could also be used to document animal locomotion,
especially birds, since they would be hard to photograph by other means.
 1876–1878: Donisthorpe's early film concepts-

On 9 November 1876, Wordsworth Donisthorpe, filed a patent application for "an apparatus for taking and
exhibiting photographs" that would "facilitate the taking of a succession of photographic pictures at equal
intervals of time, in order to record the changes taking place in or the movements of the object being
photographed, and also by means of succession of pictures so taken of any moving object to give to the eye a
presentation of the object in continuous movement as it appeared when being photographed". The camera
would have a mechanism to move photographic plates one by one past a lens and shutter to be exposed for the
necessary time and then dropped or carried into a receiver. The recorded images would be printed at equal
distances apart on a strip of paper. The strip was to be wound between cylinders and carried past the eye of the
observer, with a stroboscopic device to expose each picture momentarily.
Such photographic strips only became commercially available several years later and Donisthorpe seems to have been
unable to produce motion pictures at this stage.Thomas Edison demonstrated his phonograph on 29 November 1877.
An article in Scientific American concluded: "It is already possible, by ingenious optical contrivances, to throw
stereoscopic photographs of people on screens in full view of an audience. Add the talking phonograph to counterfeit
their voices and it would be difficult to carry the illusion of real presence much further". Donisthorpe announced in
the 24 January 1878 edition of Nature that he would advance that conception: "By combining the phonograph with
the Kinesigraph I will undertake not only to produce a talking picture of Mr. Gladstone which, with motionless lips and
unchanged expression shall positively recite his latest anti-Turkish speech in his own voice and tone. Not only this, but
the life size photograph itself shall move and gesticulate precisely as he did when making the speech, the words and
gestures corresponding as in real life."[28] A Dr. Phipson repeated this idea in a French photography magazine, but
renamed the device "Kinétiscope" to reflect the viewing purpose rather than the recording option. This was picked up
in the United States and discussed in an interview with Edison later in the year.
1878–1881: Muybridge and the horse in motion-

In June 1878, Eadweard Muybridge made several sequential series of photographs of Leland Stanford's
horses in motion with a line of cameras along the race track. Results were soon after published as The
Horse in Motion and the achievement received worldwide praise (as well as astonishment about the
relatively "ungraceful" positions of the legs of the horses). By January 1879 at the latest, people placed
Muybridge's sequential pictures in zoetropes to watch them in motion.[29] These were probably the
very first viewings of photographic motion pictures that were recorded in real-time. The quality of the
small pictures was limited and the figures were mostly seen as silhouettes, in some cases furthered by
retouching of the pictures to get rid of photographic irregularities. From 1879 to 1893 Muybridge gave
lectures in which he projected silhouettes of his pictures with a device he eventually called the
Zoopraxiscope. It used slightly anamorphic pictures traced from his photographs and painted onto
glass discs, in an early type of rotoscoping. One disc had anamorphic chronophotographs of the
skeleton of a horse posed in the different positions of a stride, as recorded in 1881. Muybridge
continued his locomotion studies of different animals and of people until 1886.
1882–1890s: Marey and chronophotography-
Flying pelican captured by Marey around 1882. He created a method of recording several phases of
movement superimposed into one photograph.
Main article: ChronophotographyMany others would follow Muybridge's example and started making
sequential photograph series, a method dubbed "Chronophotographie" by French scientist Étienne-Jules
Marey.Marey had already been researching and graphically recording animal locomotion for years. His
book The animal machine, terrestrial and aerial locomotion (French edition 1873, English edition 1874)
had inspired Leland Stanford to look for a way to correctly visualize the strides of horses. In 1882, Étienne-
Jules Marey started using his chronophotographic gun for scientific study of animal locomotion. It was
capable of taking 12 consecutive frames a second.Prompted by the much publicized successes of
Muybridge's photographic sequences and other chronophotographic achievements, inventors in the late
19th century began to realize that the making and showing of photographic 'moving pictures' of a more
useful or even indefinite length was a practical possibility. Many people working in the field followed the
international developments closely through information in periodicals, patent filings, personal contact with
colleagues or by getting their hands on new equipment.
1886–1895: Anschütz' Electrotachyscope-
Between 1886 and 1894 Ottomar Anschütz developed several versions of his "elektrische
Schnellseher", or Electrotachyscope. His first machine had 24 chronophotographic 9x12 centimeter
glass plate images on a rotating disk, illuminated from behind by synchronized stroboscopic flashes
from a Geissler tube. In very successful presentations between 1887 and 1890, four to seven
spectators at a time would watch the images on a 12.5 centimeter wide milk-glass screen in a
window in a wall of a small darkened room. In 1890, Anschütz introduced a long cylindrical
automated version with six small screens. In 1891, Siemens & Halske started manufacture of circa
152 copies of Anschütz' coin-operated peep-box Electrotachyscope-automat, that was successfully
distributed internationally. On 25 November 1894, Anschütz introduced his patented projector with
two intermittently rotating large disks and continuous light to project images on a 6 by 8 meter
screen for 300-seat audiences.
 1884-1900: paper and gelatin films-

Anschütz' successful presentations and projections of cinematography were technologically based on

rotating discs or drums and the repeating loops never contained more than 24 images.
Although Simon Stampfer had already suggested rolls of paper or canvas as a means to present
stroboscopic animation in 1833, the idea never caught on. Donisthorpe's 1876 patent had suggested
the uses of paper film rolls, but had not resulted in any satisfying recordings or presentations.
In 1884, George Eastman patented his ideas for photographic film.[33] The first rolls of Eastman film
used gelatin with a paper backing as a flexible support for a light-sensitive layer of chemicals.
Several motion picture pioneers discovered the possibilities to record and present their
chronophotographic work on rolls of film. Émile Reynaud seems to have been the first to present
motion pictures through the projection of long strips of transparent images.
 First Special Effects shot-

In 1857, Oscar Rejlander created the world's first "special effects" image by combining different
sections of 32 negatives into a single image, making a montaged combination print. In 1895, Alfred
Clark created what is commonly accepted as the first-ever motion picture special effect. While
filming a reenactment of the beheading of Mary, Queen of Scots, Clark instructed an actor to step up
to the block in Mary's costume. As the executioner brought the axe above his head, Clark stopped
the camera, had all of the actors freeze, and had the person playing Mary step off the set. He placed
a Mary dummy in the actor's place, restarted filming, and allowed the executioner to bring the axe
down, severing the dummy's head. Techniques like these would dominate the production of special
effects for a century.
It wasn't only the first use of trickery in cinema, it was also the first type of photographic
trickery that was only possible in a motion picture, and referred to as the "stop trick". Georges
Méliès, an early motion picture pioneer, accidentally discovered the same "stop trick."
According to Méliès, his camera jammed while filming a street scene in Paris. When he screened
the film, he found that the "stop trick" had caused a truck to turn into a hearse, pedestrians to
change direction, and men to turn into women. Méliès, the stage manager at the Theatre
Robert-Houdin, was inspired to develop a series of more than 500 short films, between 1914, in
the process developing or inventing such techniques as multiple exposures, time-lapse
photography, dissolves, and hand painted color. Because of his ability to seemingly manipulate
and transform reality with the cinematograph, the prolific Méliès is sometimes referred to as
the "Cinemagician." His most famous film, Le Voyage dans la lune (1902), a whimsical parody of
Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon, featured a combination of live action and animation,
and also incorporated extensive miniature and matte painting work.
From 1910 to 1920, the main innovations in special effects were the improvements on the matte
shot by Norman Dawn. With the original matte shot, pieces of cardboard were placed to block the
exposure of the film, which would be exposed later. Dawn combined this technique with the "glass
shot." Rather than using cardboard to block certain areas of the film exposure, Dawn simply
painted certain areas black to prevent any light from exposing the film. From the partially exposed
film, a single frame is then projected onto an easel, where the matte is then drawn. By creating the
matte from an image directly from the film, it became incredibly easy to paint an image with
proper respect to scale and perspective (the main flaw of the glass shot). Dawn's technique became
the textbook for matte shots due to the natural images it created.
During the 1920s and 1930s, special effects techniques
were improved and refined by the motion picture
industry. Many techniques—such as the Schüfftan
process—were modifications of illusions from the theater
(such as pepper's ghost) and still photography (such as
double exposure and matte compositing). Rear projection
was a refinement of the use of painted backgrounds in the
theater, substituting moving pictures to create moving
backgrounds. Lifecasting of faces was imported from
traditional maskmaking. Along with makeup advances,
fantastic masks could be created which fit the actor
perfectly. As material science advanced, horror film
maskmaking followed closely.
The development of color photography required greater refinement of effects techniques. Color
enabled the development of such travelling matte techniques as bluescreen and the sodium vapour
process. Many films became landmarks in special-effects accomplishments: Forbidden Planet used
matte paintings, animation, and miniature work to create spectacular alien environments. In The Ten
Commandments, Paramount's John P. Fulton, A.S.C., multiplied the crowds of extras in the Exodus
scenes with careful compositing, depicted the massive constructions of Rameses with models, and
split the Red Sea in a still-impressive combination of travelling mattes and water tanks. Ray
Harryhausen extended the art of stop-motion animation with his special techniques of compositing to
create spectacular fantasy adventures such as Jason and the Argonauts (whose climax, a sword battle
with seven animated skeletons, is considered a landmark in special effects).