Are Movies at the Pinnacle of Special Effects?

I was watching a DVD the other day and I heard a line from one of the special effects coordinators that I had heard many times before. He stated that it was an exciting time for special effects since, " We can do anything we want right now through special effects." I realized that this was one of the biggest clichés of the movie industry.

In the late 1950, when blue screen technology fist started to be used, many of the big wigs in Hollywood believed that they could do almost anything possible now with the new technology. They could make Superman fly, or place an actor into a foreign land without effort. These moviemakers believed that special effects could not get any better then they were then.

When stop motion photography came into being, many moviemakers believed that they could now do anything. They could bring a giant creature to life that could have never been imagined before for Hollywood. They believed that special effect were at their height.

When Star Wars first came out, who would have believed that special effects could progress any further then they were at that point? We saw things in Star Wars that could only be seen in our mind's eye. We could not imagine that Hollywood had the technology to do what we were seeing. We thought that special effects had progressed as far as it could go.

When I went to see Jurassic Park in the theaters, I was awestruck. I could not realize how far Hollywood had come, and wondered if there was anyway that they could outdo themselves after this one.

Today, as we see CGI in movies, we wonder if we have finally reached the pinnacle of special effects. Just when we believe that nothing could outdo a movie that we are buying on DVD, something new comes out that puts our jaws on the floor.

Moviemakers have to stop saying that they can do anything possible now with special effects or computer animation. Everyday, more and more technology comes out that allows moviemakers to do more then they ever expected. Everyday, new techniques come out that make it so that they can use technology in ways that they never though possible.