FACING silver and digital screens of all sizes, we are transfixed as our eyes become locked on the images before us from superheroes performing Herculean feats of might, extinct dinosaurs being brought back to life to visions of distant planets and stars exploding within metres of us.
Once a stuff of imagination, these moments have become an everyday reality thanks to the near-relentless evolution of special effects in movies thanks to human creativity and the leaps being made in technology.
The breathtaking scenes and images seen in recent movies such as Dune: Part Two can be traced back to the birth of cinema, when filmmakers first began using practical effects once colour spilled over the black-and-white pictures of yore.
Rudimentary techniques from miniatures, matte paintings and camera tricks were used to evoke responses that were never experienced before, like everything Stanley Kubrick did in 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
His use of miniatures, front-projection techniques and camera tricks using forced perspective such as the centrifuge jogging sequence set a huge standard when it came to realism in science fiction.
