Visual effects (sometimes abbreviated VFX ) is the process by which imagery is created or manipulated outside the context of a live-action shot in filmmaking and video production . The integration of live-action footage and other live-action footage or CGI elements to create realistic imagery is called VFX.
19-460: Adobe After Effects is a digital visual effects , motion graphics , and compositing application developed by Adobe Inc. ; it is used for animation and in the post-production process of film making , video games and television production . Among other things, After Effects can be used for keying , tracking , compositing , and animation . It also functions as a very basic non-linear editor , audio editor, and media transcoder . In 2019,
38-501: A long time to complete. Scripts can also use some functionality not directly exposed through the graphical user interface. After Effects Extensions offer the ability to extend After Effects functionality through modern web development technologies like HTML5, and Node.js, without the need for C++. After Effects Extensions make use of Adobe's Common Extensibility Platform or CEP Panels, which means they can be built to interact with other Adobe CC apps. While not dedicated to compositing,
57-470: A movie's story and appeal. Although most visual effects work is completed during post-production , it usually must be carefully planned and choreographed in pre-production and production . While special effects such as explosions and car chases are made on set , visual effects are primarily executed in post-production with the use of multiple tools and technologies such as graphic design, modeling, animation and similar software. A visual effects supervisor
76-455: A reenactment of the beheading of Mary, Queen of Scots , Clark instructed an actor to step up to the block in Mary's costume. As the executioner brought the axe above his head, Clark stopped the camera, had all the actors freeze, and had the person playing Mary step off the set. He placed a Mary dummy in the actor's place, restarted filming, and allowed the executioner to bring the axe down, severing
95-667: A street scene in Paris. When he screened the film, he found that the "stop trick" had caused a truck to turn into a hearse, pedestrians to change direction, and men to turn into women. Méliès, the director of the Théâtre Robert-Houdin , was inspired to develop a series of more than 500 short films, between 1896 and 1913, in the process developing or inventing such techniques as multiple exposures , time-lapse photography , dissolves , and hand-painted color. Because of his ability to seemingly manipulate and transform reality with
114-549: Is a cinematic special effect in which filmmakers achieve an appearance, disappearance, or transformation by altering one or more selected aspects of the mise-en-scène between two shots while maintaining the same framing and other aspects of the scene in both shots. The effect is usually polished by careful editing to establish a seamless cut and optimal moment of change. It has also been referred to as stop motion substitution or stop-action . The pioneering French filmmaker Georges Méliès claimed to have accidentally developed
133-518: Is usually involved with the production from an early stage to work closely with production and the film's director to design, guide and lead the teams required to achieve the desired effects. Many studios specialize in visual effects; among them are Digital Domain , DreamWorks , DNEG , Framestore , Weta Digital , Industrial Light & Magic , Pixomondo , Moving Picture Company and Sony Pictures Imageworks & Jellyfish Pictures . Stop trick The substitution splice or stop trick
152-654: The cinematograph , the prolific Méliès is sometimes referred to as the "Cinemagician." His most famous film, Le Voyage dans la lune (1902), a whimsical parody of Jules Verne 's From the Earth to the Moon , featured a combination of live action and animation , and also incorporated extensive miniature and matte painting work. thumb VFX today is heavily used in almost all movies produced. Other than films, television series and web series are also known to utilize VFX. àÁ' Bold text' Visual effects are often integral to
171-447: The dummy's head. Techniques like these would dominate the production of special effects for a century. It was not only the first use of trickery in cinema, it was also the first type of photographic trickery that was only possible in a motion picture, and referred to as the " stop trick ". Georges Méliès , an early motion picture pioneer, accidentally discovered the same "stop trick." According to Méliès, his camera jammed while filming
190-691: The film was colored by hand , as many of Méliès's films were; the addition of painted color acts as a sleight of hand technique allowing the cuts to pass by unnoticed. The substitution splice was the most popular cinematic special effect in trick films and early film fantasies, especially those that evolved from the stage tradition of the féerie . Segundo de Chomón is among the other filmmakers who used substitution splicing to create elaborate fantasy effects. D.W. Griffith 's 1909 film The Curtain Pole , starring Mack Sennett , used substitution splices for comedic effect. The transformations made possible by
209-523: The first sudden disappearances that had, at the beginning, such a great success. According to the film scholar Jacques Deslandes, it is more likely that Méliès discovered the trick by carefully examining a print of the Edison Manufacturing Company 's 1895 film The Execution of Mary Stuart , in which a primitive version of the trick appears. In any case, the substitution splice was both the first special effect Méliès perfected, and
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#1732798058566228-642: The functionality of After Effects, allowing for more advanced features such as particle systems , physics engines , 3D effects, and the ability to bridge the gap between After Effects and another application. After Effects Scripts are a series of commands written in both JavaScript and the ExtendScript language. After Effects Scripts, unlike plug-ins, can only access the core functionality of After Effects. Scripts are often developed to automate repetitive tasks, to simplify complex After Effects features, or to perform complex calculations that would otherwise take
247-438: The independent filmmaker with the introduction of affordable and relatively easy-to-use animation and compositing software. In 1857, Oscar Rejlander created the world's first "special effects" image by combining different sections of 32 negatives into a single image, making a montaged combination print . In 1895, Alfred Clark created what is commonly accepted as the first-ever motion picture special effect. While filming
266-484: The machine going again. During this time passersby, omnibuses, cars, had all changed places, of course. When I later projected the film, reattached at the point of the rupture, I suddenly saw the Madeleine-Bastille bus changed into a hearse, and men changed into women. The trick-by-substitution, called the stop trick, had been invented and two days later I performed the first metamorphosis of men into women and
285-547: The most important in his body of work. Film historians such as Richard Abel and Elizabeth Ezra established that much of the effect was the result of Méliès's careful frame matching during the editing process, creating a seamless match cut out of two separately staged shots. Indeed, Méliès often used substitution splicing not as an obvious special effect, but as an inconspicuous editing technique, matching and combining short takes into one apparently seamless longer shot. Substitution splicing could become even more seamless when
304-563: The open source software Blender contains a limited node-based compositing feature which, among other things is capable of basic keying and blurring effects. Visual effects VFX involves the integration of live-action footage (which may include in-camera special effects) and generated-imagery (digital or optics, animals or creatures) which look realistic, but would be dangerous, expensive, impractical, time-consuming or impossible to capture on film. Visual effects using computer-generated imagery (CGI) have more recently become accessible to
323-547: The program won an Academy Award for scientific and technical achievement. After Effects was originally created by David Herbstman, David Simons, Daniel Wilk, David M. Cotter, and Russell Belfer at the Company of Science and Art in Providence, Rhode Island . The first two versions of the software, 1.0 (January 1993) and 1.1, were released there by the company. CoSA, whose CEO was William J. O'Farrell. CoSA with After Effects
342-534: The stop trick, as he wrote in Les Vues Cinématographiques in 1907 (translated from French): An obstruction of the apparatus that I used in the beginning (a rudimentary apparatus in which the film would often tear or get stuck and refuse to advance) produced an unexpected effect, one day when I was prosaically filming the Place de L'Opéra; I had to stop for a minute to free the film and to get
361-463: Was acquired by Aldus Corporation in July 1993, which in turn was acquired by Adobe in 1994. Adobe acquired PageMaker as well. Adobe's first new release of After Effects was version 3.0. After Effects functionality can be extended through a variety of third-party integrations, the most common integrations are: plug-ins, scripts, and extensions. Plug-ins are predominantly written in C or C++ and extend
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