Special Effects and Their Impact On An Audience

Abstract

Since the dawn of the film industry, filmmakers have innovated and found new ways to tell stories. Whether being through the development of new types of narratives and genre, or a movement that revolves around a global event, the industry has continued to move forward creating distinct film periods throughout history. One factor that has gained strong influence over the past 50 years is the field of special effects. Effects, once being additions to the story that helped immerse the audience or create a different sense of atmosphere, have become an incredible force that some stories cannot be told without. Through diving through well-known classics such as Star Wars, and Alien, and taking a closer look at the development of effects throughout the decades leading up to films like Avatar, which rely entirely on special effects to communicate every facet of the story to its audience, we will observe how special effects can radically improve a narrative and its effects on an audience in ways impossible to the standard practical effects motion picture.