Describes how stunt performers, camera trickery, and computer graphics are used to create illusions of reality in movies.

Describes how stunt performers, camera trickery, and computer graphics are used to create illusions of reality in movies.

Throughout film history, one of the fundamental fantasies portrayed on screen has been the kind of physical action few of us could ever experience in real life. The image of an 'every man' engaged in hand-to-hand, mortal combat, defending his family or even the world population against an overwhelming and malevolent force, speaks to our most primal instincts and thus became a mainstay of movie entertainment. In order to translate these deep-seated fantasies to the screen, filmmakers have been developing special skills and crafts for over 100 years. It is these skills that make 'movie magic' and have allowed audiences to take part in the primal hopes and fears we all possess. Movie Stunts & Special Effects: A Comprehensive Guide to Planning and Execution is designed to inform filmmakers on how to plan for and utilize these crafts by engaging and empowering filmmakers to better communicate with stunts and effects practitioners, and thereby enabling them to more fully realize their vision. Director/Producer Andrew Lane surveys fights, use of weapons, cars and vehicles, falls, the use of pyrotechnics, atmospheric effects, bullet hits, wounds and blood, among many other categories. Factors such as cost, time to implement, safety accommodations, and assessing the competence of those employed to plan and execute stunts and special effects are numerous and very specific. Each topic in Movie Stunts & Special Effects is examined using narrative explanations and extensive interviews with world-renowned experts. Various stunts and special effects are explored in the context of how they are best captured by a camera and then editorially constituted in the final product.

John Richardson is an Oscar-winning special effects supervisor and designer, who has been involved in over 100 movies, including nine James Bond adventures, all eight Harry Potter films, Aliens, Superman, A Bridge Too Far, Straw Dogs, The Omen, Cliffhanger, Far and Away, Willow . . . and many, many more. In creating the magic that flows through these films – by creating huge explosions, beheading people, producing futuristic gadgets, making a man fly or breathing life into creatures that amaze and haunt us – Richardson has come to hold a unique place in cinema history. The son of pioneering FX technician Cliff Richardson, he learned his trade at the feet of a master of the craft. With over five decades of adventures under his belt, and a vast photographic collection of unseen pictures, Richardson now lifts the lid on his exciting and fascinating career of making movie magic.

Reveals the behind-the-scenes production secrets of the Hollywood films of the 1950s.

Designed to trick the eye and stimulate the imagination, special effects have changed the way we look at films and the worlds created in them. Computer-generated imagery (CGI), as seen in Hollywood blockbusters like Star Wars, Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, Independence Day, Men in Black, and The Matrix, is just the latest advance in the evolution of special effects. Even as special effects have been marveled at by millions, this is the first investigation of their broader cultural reception. Moving from an exploration of nineteenth-century popular science and magic to the Hollywood science fiction cinema of our time, Special Effects examines the history, advancements, and connoisseurship of special effects, asking what makes certain types of cinematic effects special, why this matters, and for whom. Michele Pierson shows how popular science magazines, genre filmzines, and computer lifestyle magazines have articulated an aesthetic criticism of this emerging art form and have helped shape how these hugely popular on-screen technological wonders have been viewed by moviegoers.

Traces the history and evolution of motion picture special effects from silent films' smoke and mirrors to computer-assisted effects, and dissects such components as optical illusions, models, animation, and makeup and sound effects.

ReAction! gives a scientist's and artist's response to the dark and bright sides of chemistry found in 140 films, most of them contemporary Hollywood feature films but also a few documentaries, shorts, silents, and international films. Even though there are some examples of screen chemistry between the actors and of behind-the-scenes special effects, this book is really about the chemistry when it is part of the narrative. It is about the dualities of Dr. Jekyll vs. inventor chemists, the invisible man vs. forensic chemists, chemical weapons vs. classroom chemistry, chemical companies that knowingly pollute the environment vs. altruistic research chemists trying to make the world a better place to live, and, finally, about people who choose to experiment with mind-altering drugs vs. the drug discovery process. Little did Jekyll know when he brought the Hyde formula to his lips that his personality split would provide the central metaphor that would come to describe chemistry in the movies. This book explores the two movie faces of this supposedly neutral science. Watching films with chemical eyes, Dr. Jekyll is recast as a chemist engaged in psychopharmaceutical research but who becomes addicted to his own formula. He is balanced by the often wacky inventor chemists who make their discoveries by trial-and-error.

Tom Cruise performed his own stunts for the film Mission Impossible: The Ghost Protocol, which included dangling 1,700 feet from the world’s tallest building! Students will explore the extreme amount of planning, equipment, training, and expertise that goes into the stunts performed in films as they dive into this action-packed title.