I found the motion effects really charming, because they were so amateur by our standards: running down the Eiffel tower (they just looked like they were running in place), the nausea at the end, the car chases with people bouncing up and down while scenery moved around them, the unspectacular, Keystone-coplike crashes. I wonder if that was considered well done in its time. I saw part of "Jaws" recently and was shocked to see how fake it all looked. And that was from the '70s. It makes me wonder whether motion effects that we consider really realistic today are going to be laughable in 20 years. Or do you think big-budget filmdom has pretty much mastered the special effect?
Does anyone have a guess on what the first film was to use the device of newspaper headlines?
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6 comments:
I think there have always been filmmakers who were ahead of their time on special effects. Some of the effects in The Wizard of Oz (1939) stand up even today. And even though I haven't seen it recently, I'll bet Star Wars (1977) holds up pretty well, also.
I'd be willing to bet that the best effects of today will always look good. There are movies today where the effects look bad, and they will be laughed at in the future.
I've always wondered what people mean when they say they are impressed by a movie's special effects. Often this is said about movies that I think look really fake, and that I don't think will stand the test of time.
I'll bet the first movie to use newspaper headlines was really early.
I find old special effects really charming. Like old Godzilla-type movies, where the monster is obviously either some guy in a rubber suit or a six-inch action figure crushing toy cars.
I think there will probably continue to be inovations in special effects. There were some new techniques used in the "Lord of the Rings" films and "King Kong," I think, that were improvements over the most recent methods. I'm guessing digital technology will keep getting better.
KC, do you know the answer to the newspaper headline question?
Besides just being bored by the tedium of recent action films, I think most of their special effects look stupid, and the CGI mostly looks cheesy. My guess is that they will age baddy. Or at least that is my wish.
The Eiffel tower scene was cool. I thought having the world spinning around behind them was a great way to show that they were getting dizzy.
Kc, it looks like you are on the spot to find the first headline used in film. No doubt that it was very early in the silent film days.
I'm looking! There's film trivia everywhere, but I have not yet found the headline answer!
The Birth of a Nation (1915), which holds a number of film firsts, is surely one of the earliest to have newspaper headlines.
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