"The youngest movie­go­ers today do not, of course, remem­ber a time before visu­al effects could be cre­at­ed dig­i­tal­ly. What may give us more pause is that, at this point in cin­e­ma his­to­ry, most of their par­ents don't remem­ber it either. Con­sid­er the fact that Steven Spiel­berg's Juras­sic Park, with its once impos­si­bly real­is­tic (and still whol­ly pass­able) CGI dinosaurs, came out 32 years ago."
"Even a seem­ing­ly sim­ple effect like the pen float­ing loose through the zero-grav­i­ty cab­in in 2001: A Space Odyssey required no small degree of inge­nu­ity. We might nat­u­ral­ly assume that film­mak­ers in 1968 would have accom­plished it with a cou­ple of pieces of Scotch tape and fish­ing line, but that would have result­ed in unac­cept­able tan­gling prob­lems, to say noth­ing of the trick­i­ness of ensur­ing, quite lit­er­al­ly, that the strings did­n't show."
Young moviegoers and many parents lack memories of pre-digital visual effects. Jurassic Park premiered 32 years ago, situating earlier visual-effects work in the realm of cinematic classics. Older classics make it difficult for young viewers to imagine how effects were achieved before computers. Practical effects often required elaborate, precise physical methods to avoid visible rigging or tangling. For example, a floating pen in 2001 was attached to a meticulously cleaned sheet of glass rather than suspended on tape or fishing line, reflecting considerable ingenuity and careful concealment.
Read at Open Culture
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]