set in
Vienna uses a
green screen as a backdrop, to allow a background to be added during
post-production. •
Special effects: Special effects (often abbreviated as SFX, SPFX, F/X or simply FX) are illusions or visual tricks used in the
theatre,
film,
television,
video game and
simulator industries to simulate the fictional events in a
story or
virtual world. With the emergence of digital film-making, a distinction between special effects and visual effects has grown, with the latter referring to digital
post-production while "special effects" refers to mechanical and optical effects. Mechanical effects (also called
practical or
physical effects) are usually accomplished during the live-action shooting. This includes the use of mechanized
props, scenery,
scale models,
animatronics,
pyrotechnics and atmospheric effects: creating physical wind, rain, fog, snow, clouds, making a car appear to drive by itself and blowing up a building, etc. Mechanical effects are also often incorporated into set design and makeup. For example,
prosthetic makeup can be used to make an actor look like a non-human creature. Optical effects (also called photographic effects) are techniques in which images or film frames are created photographically, either "in-camera" using
multiple exposures,
mattes, or the
Schüfftan process or in post-production using an
optical printer. An optical effect might place actors or sets against a different background. : A high-resolution uniquely identified active marker system with 3,600 × 3,600 resolution at 960 hertz providing real-time submillimeter positions|alt= •
Motion capture: Motion-capture (sometimes referred as mo-cap or mocap, for short) is the process of recording the
movement of objects or people. It is used in
military,
entertainment,
sports, medical applications, and for validation of computer vision and robotics. In
filmmaking and
video game development, it refers to recording actions of
human actors, and using that information to animate
digital character models in 2-D or 3-D
computer animation. When it includes face and fingers or captures subtle expressions, it is often referred to as performance capture. In many fields, motion capture is sometimes called motion tracking, but in filmmaking and games, motion tracking usually refers more to
match moving. •
Matte painting: A matte painting is a painted representation of a landscape, set, or distant location that allows filmmakers to create the illusion of an environment that is not present at the filming location. Historically, matte painters and film technicians have used various techniques to combine a matte-painted image with live-action footage. At its best, depending on the skill levels of the artists and technicians, the effect is "seamless" and creates environments that would otherwise be impossible or expensive to film. In the scenes the painting part is static and movements are integrated on it. •
Animation: Animation is a method in which
figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In
traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent
celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on
film. Today, most animations are made with
computer-generated imagery (CGI).
Computer animation can be very detailed
3D animation, while
2D computer animation can be used for stylistic reasons, low bandwidth or faster
real-time renderings. Other common animation methods apply a
stop-motion technique to two and three-dimensional objects like
paper cutouts,
puppets or
clay figures. Swift progression of consecutive images with minor differences is a common approach to achieving the stylistic look of animation. The illusion—as in motion pictures in general—is thought to rely on the
phi phenomenon and
beta movement, but the exact causes are still uncertain.
Analog mechanical animation media that rely on the rapid display of sequential images include the
phénakisticope,
zoetrope,
flip book,
praxinoscope and film.
Television and
video are popular electronic animation media that originally were analog and now operate
digitally. For display on the computer, techniques like
animated GIF and
Flash animation were developed. •
3D modeling: In
3D computer graphics, 3-D modeling is the process of developing a mathematical representation of any
surface of an object (either inanimate or living) in
three dimensions via
specialized software. The product is called a 3-D model. Someone who works with 3-D models may be referred to as a 3-D artist. It can be displayed as a two-dimensional image through a process called
3D rendering or used in a
computer simulation of physical phenomena. The model can also be physically created using
3D printing devices. •
Rigging: Skeletal animation or rigging is a technique in
computer animation in which a
character (or another articulated object) is represented in two parts: a surface representation used to draw the character (called the
mesh or
skin) and a hierarchical set of interconnected parts (called
bones, and collectively forming the
skeleton or
rig), a virtual
armature used to animate (
pose and
key-frame) the mesh. While this technique is often used to animate humans and other organic figures, it only serves to make the animation process more intuitive, and the same technique can be used to control the deformation of any object—such as a door, a spoon, a building, or a galaxy. When the animated object is more general than, for example, a humanoid character, the set of "bones" may not be hierarchical or interconnected but simply represent a higher-level description of the motion of the part of the mesh it is influencing. in a self-produced video.
Top panel: A frame in a full-motion video shot in the actor's living room.
Bottom panel: The corresponding frame in the final version in which the actor impersonates
Barack Obama "appearing" outside the White House's East Room. •
Rotoscoping: Rotoscoping is an
animation technique that
animators use to trace over motion picture footage,
frame by frame, to produce realistic action. Originally, animators projected photographed live-action movie images onto a
glass panel and traced over the image. This projection equipment is referred to as a
rotoscope, developed by Polish-American animator
Max Fleischer. This device was eventually replaced by computers, but the process is still called rotoscoping. In the visual effects industry,
rotoscoping is the technique of manually creating a
matte for an element on a live-action plate so it may be
composited over another background.
Chroma key is more often used for this, as it is faster and requires less work, however, rotoscope is still used on subjects that are not in front of a green (or blue) screen, due to practical or economic reasons. •
Match Moving: In visual effects, match-moving is a technique that allows the insertion of computer graphics into
live-action footage with correct position, scale, orientation, and motion relative to the photographed objects in the shot. The term is used loosely to describe several different methods of extracting camera
motion information from a
motion picture. Sometimes referred to as motion-tracking or camera-solving, match moving is related to
rotoscoping and
photogrammetry. Match moving is sometimes confused with
motion capture, which records the motion of objects, often human actors, rather than the camera. Typically, motion capture requires special cameras and sensors and a controlled environment (although recent developments such as the
Kinect camera and
Apple's Face ID have begun to change this). Match moving is also distinct from
motion control photography, which uses mechanical hardware to execute multiple identical camera moves. Match moving, by contrast, is typically a software-based technology applied after the fact to normal footage recorded in uncontrolled environments with an ordinary camera. Match moving is primarily used to track the movement of a camera through a shot so that an identical virtual camera move can be reproduced in a
3D animation program. When new CGI elements are composited back into the original live-action shot, they will appear in a perfectly matched perspective. •
Compositing: Compositing is the combining of visual elements from separate sources into single images, often to create the illusion that all those elements are parts of the same scene.
Live-action shoots for compositing is variously called "
chroma key", "blue screen", "green screen" and other names. Today, most, though not all, compositing is achieved through
digital image manipulation. Pre-
digital compositing techniques, however, go back as far as the trick films of
Georges Méliès in the late 19th century, and some are still in use. •
Splash of color: The term splash of color is the use of a colored item on an otherwise monochrome film image. ==Production pipeline==