Special Effects
Start by asking students what special effects are.
Can they give some examples?
Explain that if a director asks an actor to dance the director doesn’t need to do anything special to record the actor dancing, so there is no need for special effects.
If the director asks the actor to fly on a broom, the director needs to do something special to film that – that is a special effect.
Now tell students that there are two kinds of special effects:
Practical effects are used during production (when the video is being made). Somebody has to build or make them. Some examples of practical effects are creature make-up or using water to make it seem like it’s raining.
Optical effects are added during post-production. Today they are often done with computers, but in the past they were often done by laying another piece of film on top of the original film.
Now tell students that one of the first directors to use special effects in film was Alice Guy-Blanché, who made movies at the end of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th Century.
Show the video in the student chapter Special Effects: La Fée au Choux or have students access it. Tell them that this is a silent film (made before the invention of sound movies.)
Stop the movie at 1 minute 10 seconds, where it says “Fin.”
If students have questions about the content of the film, explain that parents used to tell their children that they had been found under a cabbage leaf, where they were left by the “Cabbage Fairy.”
Ask:
What do you see?
What do you notice?
What might be a special effect?
Are they practical or optical effects?
The special effect in this film is the giant cabbages that make the woman look fairy-sized. It is a practical effect (the film-makers made giant cabbages on the set).
Now show the video in the student chapter Special Effects: Jason and the Argonauts or have students access it.
There is a shot of a a person being stabbed and a bloody sword at around 6, so you may want to pause the video at around 5:30. If you would prefer to show a video with less violence, you can show this one.
Ask:
What do you see?
What do you notice?
What might be a special effect?
Are they practical or optical effects?
How do you think they were done?
The special effects in this video are all stop-motion. This is an optical effect because it was filmed separately and then overlaid on the live-action film.
Ask students to name more examples of special effects, and then to identify whether they are optical or practical effects.
Note: A video that is entirely animated is not a special effect. “Special effect” always refers to effects that are used in live-action film.
Now show the video in the student chapter Special Effects: Casablanca or have students access it.
What do you see?
What do you notice?
What might be a special effect?
Most students will probably not notice any special effects or will identify ones that aren’t in the film. (Note that black and white film may be a director’s choice, but it’s not a special effect.)
Explain that directors sometimes also use special effects to make things that look real, instead of things that look fantastic.
Pause the video at 1 minute and ask students if they can see the special effect in this shot.
Students will probably still be stumped, though they may guess that it has something to do with the plane.
Tell them that because the scene was filmed in a studio, they couldn’t get a real plane far enough away to be the right size. (If you have delivered the Focal Point lesson, point out that if the plane were bigger the actors would not have been the focal point of the shot.)
Instead, the movie makers used a practical effect: They built a half-size plane out of cardboard, and hired little people actors to be the people standing in front of it – making it look like it was twice as far away as it really was.
Ask students to reflect: How many times might they have seen special effects in videos without realizing it?
Ask students if they have ever done a similar exercise, in class or elsewhere. If so, ask them to reflect on what has changed since the last time they did.
A special effect is when something special is needed to achieve an artistic outcome. For instance a director can simply film an actor dancing, but something special needs to be done to film an actor flying.
A practical effect is a special effect that is used during production, like creature makeup or puppets.
A special effect added in post-production, after the video has been filmed.
A focal point is the part of the image that our eyes are most drawn to.
