Visual Effects Special Effects Visual Effects Mechanical effects ex Explosions physical stunts etc Component of cinema that enables filmmakers to create worlds of the imagination and to overcome the limits of time budget and place OLD DEFINITION special photographic effects added to a film Composite elements created separately and combined together later Matte an opaque area that blocks light from the film strip preventing the image from being Counter matte masks the frame in an inverse manner to the matte Travelling mattes a background that has already been filmed overlapped with the foreground shown characters Male matte holdout matte a black silhouette of the foreground element with all other areas of the film frame being transparent Female matte cover matte an opaque frame in which the foreground figure in transparent Matte Extraction 4 channels 1 Red 2 Green 3 Blue 4 Alpha Channel specifies the pixel s degree of transparency Generates male and female mattes Mapping Z axis the depth in the image through which objects are arranged Z depth map gray scale values to visualize distance between objetcs White nearest to the camera Gray Black farther from the camera Glass Paintings Foreground miniatures used as set extensions o example Ben Hur s stadium was built as a one story building yet the several more stories were foreground miniatures Hollywood Era Location Effect Tools backlot filmmaking films are shot in indoor studio sets or outdoor studio properties Optical Printers photograph and combine the elements of a composited effects shot o DRAWBACK only works with dupe footage several generations away from the camera negative creates a copy of the copy loss of image quality overtime Rear screen projection back projection combines live action in the foreground with a background projected as a moving image upon a screen positioned behind the actors and set o Simulate outdoor sets o Miniature rear projection placing live actors in a miniature model Front Projection project the background image in front and on top of the actors and set o Uses a mirror to reflect the background back towards the camera Aerial Image Printing reflects an image i e matte painting onto a focal plane in space rather than onto a flat surface where it can be photographed by the camera Digital Era Jurassic Park first major film with digital effects Animatronic Model a motorized and moving model Digital Composites blended image layers by transforming combining pixels o REPLACED optical printers o Rendering the process of creating a synthetic digital image o Multi pass compositing creates a final rendered image from separate operations carried out upon different image layers Stereoscopic 3D Movies and THE EYE Monocular depth cues Do not depend on seeing with two eyes rather with only one Depth can be perceived in a movie without 3D effects Binocular Disparity Each eye has a different angle of view on the world o Stereoscopic Cinemas left AND right eye views binocular o Conventional Cinemas single eye view monocular Convergence both eyes make a movement towards each other to sight a near object Negative Parallax left eye image appears on the right right eye image appears on the left o Eyes must converge to fuse the image Positive Parallax the right and left eye images are not crossed Interocular Distance IO The separation between our eyes 65mm Each eye receives a slightly different angled view of solid objects STEREOGRAPHER consults with the director about the orchestration of binocular space creates a depth score thematic pattern in the 3D effects of the film highlighting characters and conflict