Films by season & age - Heads of Dept: Visual FX (Ages 15-18)

Seasons are a great way to explore different ideas through watching a group of films. Why not try watching all the films in a season and make some time for discussion. Topics and discussion points are included.

At FilmClub, we plan to offer our members a regular look at the different skills involved in making movies. That way, we hope that you’ll not only build up a real understanding of just how an idea for a story ends up on-screen – but also that you might find an area of the movie industry that you might want to one day work in yourself. We’re starting things off with Visual Effects – the art of creating all those things that you might think would be impossible to put up on-screen. In many films, it’s one of the most vital roles in the whole production – the Visual Effects department being responsible for the movie’s most spectacular moments, the sights that take the audience’s breath away. But it’s also a role about which you might not know too much – in which case, don’t worry. It’s often one of the jobs on a film set that’s a mystery to most of those who aren’t actually doing it! In order to help put that situation right, we’ve collected what we think are some of the best examples of the work of a Visual Effects department. We’re starting right back in the earliest days of movie history, when jaws dropped around the world at what appeared to be a lunar landing in 1902’s A Voyage To The Moon. From there, we embark on our own journey of discovery through the most incredible advances of a century of visual effects, right up to the recent action hit Beowulf – a movie made entirely using “motion capture” computer technology. So if you want to witness the Biblical parting of the Red Sea, or a bullet fly through the air in such hyper slow-motion that the hero can swerve around it or limbo underneath it, or the Statue of Liberty disappear beneath a wall of ice and snow, or a bike race conducted at the speed of light inside an out-of-control computer game.... well, then you’ve come to the right place. And if you like what you see, then we hope you’ll give some thought to what it might be like to become a Visual Effects maestro yourself.

TALKING POINTS

What spectacular or amazing sights would you like to see in a movie that have never (so far!) appeared on the big screen? How satisfying do you think it is for a member of a VIsual Effects unit to see their work up on screen and know the audience are being blown away by it? In the context of the times that they were made, which of the films in this season do you think most dazzled movie-goers? Which do you think is the most spectacular now?