First Published in 1992. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Whether you are a working professional, a performance student or just interested in the techniques behind the effects, Secrets of Hollywood Special Effects provides the insights you've been looking for. This text is the comprehensive guide to special effects.Many different kinds of effects are covered, including chemicals, pyrotechnics, weapons, levitation and weather. Written by a recognized expert in the field, this book contains over 200 illustrations and diagrams providing in depth coverage of every detail. Case studies and a "behind the scenes" look at the 'The Fisher King' are included.

"Once a guarded cinematic secret, this definitive history reveals for the first time the art and craft of Hollywood's hand painted-backdrops, and pays homage to the scenic artists who brought them to the big screen." -- Slipcase.

As blockbusters employ ever greater numbers of dazzling visual effects and digital illusions, this book explores the material roots and stylistic practices of special effects and their makers. Gathering leading voices in cinema and new media studies, this comprehensive anthology moves beyond questions of spectacle to examine special effects from the earliest years of cinema, via experimental film and the Golden Age of Hollywood, to our contemporary transmedia landscape. Wide-ranging and accessible, this book illuminates and interrogates the vast array of techniques film has used throughout its history to conjure spectacular images, mediate bodies, map worlds and make meanings. Foreword by Scott Bukatman, with an Afterword by Lev Manovich.

Offers brief biographies, definitions of studio jargon, descriptions of special effects techniques, and descriptive lists of effects used in specific films.

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.

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

Creating Special Effects for TV and Video is a concise and practical introduction to the techniques used in television production. Now completely updated, this third edition covers a wide range of special effects in a simple and practical form, with clear illustrations and photographs that support the text. Creating Special Effects for TV and Video is a concise and practical introduction to the techniques used in television production. Now completely updated, this third edition covers a wide range of special effects in a simple and practical form, with clear illustrations and photographs that support the text. Bernard Wilkie now a freelance consultant, director and writer, spent 25 years creating special effects for BBC TV where he became manager of one of the largest and most specialised visual FX units in the world.

With the rise of digital effects in cinema the human performer is increasingly the only "real" element on screen. Making Believe sheds new light on screen performance by historicizing it within the context of visual and special effects cinema and technological change in filmmaking, through the silent, early sound, and current digital eras.