Research and Examples

Visual effects are used for making the inanimate and the fake, come to life. In recent years; films such as James Cameron's "Avatar" and Disney's "Tron Legacy" are the biggest blockbusters that have excelled at turning fiction into reality.

A scene from the film "Tron: Legacy" without effects

The same scene with Effects

Visual effects can create almost any background you can imagine. As shown in the pictures above from "Tron Legacy", with the use of a blue screen and effects software (Tron used Cinema 4D); The effects editor has been able to create a futuristic looking arena for this character to battle in.

Recently I visited Harry Potter Studios, which is a tour of the studios where all eight films were made. It contains props, sets and costumes that were used in the film, and one of the things it contained was a section dedicated to the use of visual effects in the film:

A small paragraph located on site to give tourists a brief insight into Visual Effects

One of the most interesting things I found during my time there was an unknown fact about the Great Hall, and that is; the ceiling isn't real. The ceiling you see in the film is a giant grand archway made out of curved wooden beams:

However, that would have been very costly to make, so instead; They built a small scale version of the ceiling recorded that, then matte painted it into the final footage.

The small scale great Hall ceiling.

During the eighth film, (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt. 2), there is a scene where Harry, Ron & Hermione enter Gringotts Bank through a cave on a high-speed mine cart, which bobs and weaves through crevasses in an underground cave. Here is the clip:

As there are no places like this; it would be very costly to be able to build a mine cart able to follow a track that is suspended hundreds of feet above the ground that rotates 360 degrees with people on it. Enter Green Screen:

Here is the same mine-cart that is in the clip which is now on display

in front of a green screen in the studios.

The footage was recorded in front of a green screen and a matte painter created a background for the visual effects editor to to replace the green with.

The tour of the studios really helped me understand more of just how much time and effort actually goes into making films like Harry Potter look as real as they do.