History of VFX

The short film 'The Execution of Mary Queen of Scotts' showed the first visual effects in film, it was produced by Thomas Edison and directed by Alfred Clark in 1895, the next step in Visual Effects was seen by George Méliès, he was a film maker and pioneer of visual effects and is probably best known for his film “A Trip to the Moon” Méliès was responsible for the invention and construction of many of the visual effects in his films. The film 'Metropolis' is one of, if not the first feature length science fiction film ever made. The visual effects were designed and overseen by Eugen Schufftan, a prolific cinematographer and visual effects artist. The Theif of Bagdad showed the first major use of blue screen, Larry Butler is credited with the development of the process and won an Oscar for the visual effects in The Thief of Bagdad.

In 1953 Byron Haskin directed “War of The Worlds” based on H.G. Wells novel of the same name. A large team of VFX artists worked on many miniatures and matte paintings for the production, similar techniques were used in Cecil B. DeMilles, it required giant sets and a huge amount of VFX that were created by a very large team. Don Chaffey’s version of Jason & the Argonauts is one of the most important landmarks in VFX history because of the stop motion animation created by Ray Harryhausen. The film of 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)  is a masterpiece of visual effects. One of the VFX supervisors was Douglass Trumbull, a legend in the industry. Michael Crichtons 1973 WestWorld was the first feature film to use digital image processing and effects which were coordinated by Brent Sellstrom.

George Lucas founded ILM (Industrial Light & Magic) to create the visual effects for Star Wars. It was the first time computer generated images were made for film. The next landmark we saw was Tron (1982) and was the first feature film to feature extensive use of 3D CGI. Four leading computer graphics companies of the time were employed by Disney to create the CGI for the film. Roger Rabbit relied on post-production techniques and created ways of combining traditional animation and CGI to allow the characters to live in the real world. Ken Ralston supervised the VFX on this film. The Abyss showed a landmark in VFX in it’s representation of a fluid tentacle, it took 6 months to create a minute of CGI. Cameron employed Dream Quest Images, Fantasy II Film Effects and Industrial Light & Magic amongst others to create the VFX for The Abyss. The first full digital composite in a feature film was demonstrated in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade (1989). As this film was written and produced by George Lucas so ILM was responsible for the VFX. Terminator 2 showed a ground-breaking leap forward in the use of CGI in movies and brought us one of the first full CGI main characters. Once again Cameron employed Fantasy II Film Effects and ILM to create the visual effects for this film.

Jurassic Park was a landmark visual effects, it used animatronic effects to new levels and contributed to develop many of the CGI techniques that are used today in character modelling and rigging. Industrial Light & Magic were responsible for the majority of visual effects in the original release of this film. We then saw the the first entirely computer generated feature film in Pixar's Toy Story. The Matrix demonstrated the first time that CG frame interpolation was used in a feature film. Frame interpolation was the responsible for the “Bullet Time” effect. Manex Visual Effects and Animal Logic share the visual effects for The Matrix.  Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring set a new landmark for VFX for both its physical and CGI elements, but the real groundbreaker was the creation of 'Massive Prime', the crowd simulation software with artificial intelligence, which enabled the creation of the enormous battle scenes. Weta Digital and Digital Domain created the VFX in this film. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was the first feature film to use complete CG backgrounds with a live action cast. A number of VFX companies contributed to the production of the film, they included ILM, The Orphanage, Hybride, Stan Winston Digital and Café FX. The most recent Landmark in VFX we have seen in recent years is Avatar, it was the first feature film to be developed using 'Performance Capture' which allows for the virtual world and virtual actors' performance to be captured. This was a production that employed many of the major visual effects companies worldwide including Weta Digital, Framestore, Giant Studios, ILM, Hydralux, Prime Focus and more.