the history of visual effects

[Apophis]

That list is goofy. First off, where's Star Trek II? The Genesis demonstration sequence was the first big thing that Pixar did. And BTTF? The original had next to no special effects in it (as said by Gale & Zemeckis). I think that list is actually "important Films that Happen to Have Special Effects in Them".

 

[Demiurge]

Yeah, the Genesis effect was the first use of fractals in computing to create an entirely computer generated sequence. That's a biggie.

Another big one was the stop motion effects in the old Sinbad movies - those are considered all time classics by most SFX historians, the old master Ray Harryhausen's finest moment often being considered the 1958 Skeleton fight in the 7th Voyage of Sinbad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiTSyZbIjAg

 

[sbk1234]

A few that would have been noteworthy mentions:

A Trip to the Moon (1903, I think)
Metropolis
The Last Starfighter (For one of the first uses of CGI special effects.)
as was already said, Lord of the Rings (Hello, Gollem!)
Superman (1978)
Forest Gump

Of course, there's no way a 5 minute clip can be anywhere near complete.
It's been an exciting 100 + years, hasn't it?

 

[Maurice]

Actually I just look it up and was surprised to find that most of the visuals in 2001 actually were accomplished in camera because the DP apparently wasn't a fan of bluescreen and optical compositing. So by the definition you're right... most of 2001 was actually special effects, not visual effects.

Most model work was still comped though, as far as I know (certainly Close Encounters was).

What do you mean "most of"? What shots are you talking about? There was a lot of front projection work in 2001, but that doesn't apply to the spaceship shots, starfields being matted in, the animation stand work done for the satellites, or the slit-scan work in the Stargate sequence.

You know that this "history" looks like to me? It looks like it's made up of whatever shots this person could get their hands on from their own DVD collection, rather than being anything vaguely comprehensive.

 

[Arrqh]

What do you mean "most of"? What shots are you talking about? There was a lot of front projection work in 2001, but that doesn't apply to the spaceship shots, starfields being matted in, the animation stand work done for the satellites, or the slit-scan work in the Stargate sequence.

I don't know any specific details as I didn't do any in-depth reading... certainly if anyone knows more about it I'd be quite curious to read more!

From what I understand about slit-scan, that's completely done in a single camera pass. So that would be a special effect. Where the starfields comped in optically? As I understand it, the models were all shot multi-pass but on a single camera/film print (which is a little dicey... you could make an argument for special/visual either way but thinking about it I guess I'd call that visual). All the front projection stuff would definitely be considered a special effect though. Like I said, I'm not too well versed in the specifics, so please correct me if I'm wrong!

 

[Maurice]

I don't know any specific details as I didn't do any in-depth reading... certainly if anyone knows more about it I'd be quite curious to read more!

...Like I said, I'm not too well versed in the specifics, so please correct me if I'm wrong!

Here's some info right from the horse's mouth.