Museum of the Moving Image Trip: Practical Effects

During our trip to the Museum of the Moving Image, I was most captivated by the exhibits on makeup and practical special effects. Today, computer graphics dominate the special effects industry. By using a computer, scenes can be filmed in distant worlds, actors can become bizarre creatures, and just about any stunt can be performed by digital lookalikes. However, it wasn’t always so linear. Special effects existed long before computer graphics, but they took a lot of creativity. A great example is the use of makeup. Today, makeup isn’t as thorough a process. Computer generated effects do most of the work of making a character’s face convincing. In the past, a lot of effort went into making masks and make-up that seemed lifelike while being filmed. One of the exhibits showed the make-up from the film “Little Big Man”. The film tells the story of the last surviving witness of Custer’s last stand. The main character, who is portrayed by Dustin Hoffman, appears as an elderly man and a young man. Rather than use two actors, Hoffman was transformed into his older self by using a special foam latex mask that fit so well that it could even blink!

The special effects section contained the Yoda puppet from The Empire Strikes Back. The puppet was extremely intricate and seemed to be alive when I watched the movie as a child. Even now, I still find the old Yoda very convincing. However, I can see his drawbacks. As a puppet, he must always stay on the ground, where the puppeteers are hidden. In the original trilogy, Yoda wasn’t very active. All he did was shuffle from place to place and speak. When Yoda was reinvented as a computer generated character, he became something of an acrobat and even had his own fight scene. That could never be done with a puppet. The other problem with make-up and puppets is that they’re not very expressive. A mask doesn’t have any facial muscles and the thicker it is, the less it moves with the wearer’s face. Puppets also have a limited range of expressions. It takes a lot of engineering to get a puppet to move realistically. On the other hand, computer graphics will never be physical objects. They’re harder for actors to interact with and they reflect light and cast shadows in a way that reminds you that they’re not actually there. I think that practical effects will always have a place in the world of film for this reason.