For this task, I had looked into traditional based techniques from how they developed and evolved in the VFX history. Here is my YouTube video:
The Historical Development of VFX
Visual Effects started in the 19th century with visual magics, starting from traditional based techniques, 100 years later in its history, VFX has resorted to digital-based techniques in the modern era. VFX has achieved plenty of milestones over the 2 centuries. The first motion picture to use visual effects was Four Heads Are Better Than One (1889)(aka Un Homme De Tetes in French) directed by George Melies used matte creations to use visual trickery against the audience. George Melies also went on to create a motion picture that used stop motion animation, The Astronomers Dream (1889). This motion picture also used visual trickery. George Melies is known as the ‘master of illusion’ in the VFX industry. Moving on I will talk about matte paintings.
Matte paintings
Evolving the visual trickery, films and motion pictures would see the start of the matte painting technique to faking the realism of shots. In the 1900’s-1910s, the glass shot technique helped create matte paintings. This technique would go to be refined by Norman Dawn. Matte paintings are also budget efficient. You can create realistic buildings by replicating them and implement them into a scene. The matte painting concept would continue to be one of the most utilised VFX techniques in VFX as of today.
Matte paintings had faced problems of its own, the technique would go own to be evolved. The travelling matte technique would come into play by Frank Williams with the film, Sunrise (1927) directed by F.W. Murnau. The black matting process would be used as a black background, as for its characters they would be the white silhouettes by creating high contrasts.
One of the most famous matte painters, Peter Ellenshaw created an incredible amount of (traditional) matte paintings. Matte paintings have been used for decades and have evolved from traditional to digital. It has had quite an impact over the years.
From Bluescreen to Greenscreen
In 1925, there was an alternative to the black glass shot. The travelling matte process created by C. Dodge Dunning. The background would be done in blue and the subjects would be as yellow. This process would be used for the film, King Kong. A major issue with bluescreening was that it only worked for the black and white film. Whereas the colour film, it did not work. They needed a new technique for the colour film which was produced by Larry Butler in 1940 for the film, the Thief of Bagdad. The process for blue-screening is the three-strip techno-colour process. This removes the blue background but keeping the foreground plate. Using negatives of the background plate by merging them into one. All this is done on an optical printer.
The next evolution to bluescreen is the yellow screen. The yellow screen was an evolution from the blue screen. This would have improvements for the matte painting and screening process.
The evolution from bluescreen to green screen has seen developments and evolution throughout the decades.
Franchise evolution of tradition to digital
Films such as Godzilla, Apes, Tron and the Star Wars franchise used traditional techniques in the original movies and then evolved into digital techniques in their recent movies. These movies have been around for a long time and have evolved. Although they can still use traditional techniques in the modern era of film.
For example, the apes franchise uses motion tracking, and the motion tracking technique has been developed throughout its history.
Rotoscoping has been around since 1915 created by an animator, Max Fleischer most known works are Betty Boop and Popeye the Sailor. The influence rotoscoping has had over the years has been useful to the digital modern era for VFX (during the early 90s).
Conclusion
With such impressive milestones regarding the most utilised skill and techniques, the techniques I have mentioned still have ways of being used in the digital era. Green screening is a method used for rendered backgrounds, rotoscoping is used to trace a real-life person or moving object and matte paintings can be used to create realistically impossible backgrounds from real life to use visual trickery.
As techniques still evolve and improve to this day, how will these techniques evolve and where are they going to in the future? For example, the screening technique is now starting to evolve into the volume technique which is used in the Mandalorian. The volume uses real-time composition and will seem to be the case for upcoming TV shows and movies in the future.