Dedicated to the memory of:

Georges Méliès   1861 - 1937

The Grandfather of Visual Effects

This is the true story of how the world changed forever, all because a Frenchman did not want to make shoes for a living... Born in 1861, Méliès would have gone into his father's footwear business, but he spent a life-changing year working in London and going to every play and magic show he could find. Upon his return to Paris in 1885 he opened his own magic theater. Expanding into films in 1896, Méliès became the very first practitioner of the "trick photography" that would come to be known as special effects.

A stage magician by trade, he used the camera's ability to manipulate reality to create filmed versions of his stage illusions. In the process, he not only created a completely unique genre of films, he also developed many of the effects techniques that are the fundamental building blocks of the craft - and he did it all in camera, on the original negative.

The Man With the Rubber Head, 1902
Concept scetch for the gag.	Méliès inflates his own head in this frame from the film.
Sketch of the incline rig which creates the apparent size change of the head. This was done as a separate pass in camera on the original negative.

But first he had to design his own camera (because the Lumieres wouldn't sell him a Cinematograph) and build a film lab to process his film. A prodigiously imaginative creative force, between 1896 and 1912 he wrote, directed, starred in, designed the sets, costumes and mechanical rigs, edited and marketed 500 films. 150 of these survive, as charming and entertaining as they were at the turn of the century. He favored trick films, but also produced short adaptations of the classics, fairy tales, horror, religion, and occasionally, a little sex.

Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, 1902	After the Ball, The Tub, 1897
Bluebeard, 1901	The Fisherman's Nightmare, 1906

Méliès was the first European filmaker to use the trick of stop-action to replace items in the frame. His first such film was made in 1896, and was a version of his popular disappearing lady stage trick. Méliès upped the ante by having her not merely disappear, but turn into a skelton.
The stage trick revealed.	>> Watch her disappear!<<
Méliès was a great fan of disembodied head tricks in his magic act, and used them with great imagination in his films. He also loved giants, an illusion he could not create on stage.
The Four Troublesome Heads, 1898	The Giant Devil, 1901
As his success grew, Méliès built a glass-enclosed stage outside Paris in 1897. The stage was elevated above a pit to make room for the elaborate machinery. Huge warehouses were built to house sets, props and 20,000 costumes. Méliès regularly employed actors from the Comedie Français and the Paris Opera, in addition to a full-time staff. What he created was nothing less than the world's first motion picture studio.

A Trip To The Moon

In 1902, Méliès produced his most famous film, A Trip To The Moon. This delightful fantasy is still entertaining people today. Some of the effects are so well executed, it is difficult to tell just which technique was used.
Concept sketch for the man in the moon.	As seen in the film.
A Trip To The Moon unreels in 12 tableau, in Méliès' trademark style using elaborate props, painted backdrops, and lots of girls. It poked gentle fun at the solemn works of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. The effect was - and still is - magical.
The later years were not kind to Méliès. Changes in public tastes, the rise of the narrative film, and the growing vocabulary of editing left his single take prosceneum-style films in the past, and he was forced to sell his studio. His wife died in 1913, and World War I destroyed the remainder of his fortune. In 1925, nearly bankrupt, he married his mistress (hey, he was French) and for the next 7 years sold toys from her kiosk in the Gare Montparnasse. (This is roughly equivalent to finding Henry Ford working the Autopia at Disneyland.) Astonishingly, he was not at all embittered.
Then two things happened which made his last years into something of a Cinderella story. He was discovered at his kiosk by Leon Druhot, editor of the influential Ciné-Journal who publicized the shameful plight of this neglected giant of French film. Then, in 1929, a cache of his films was discovered and painstakingly restored. A gala was held, and overnight Méliès was a celebrity again. Three years later he was given a pension, and in 1932 an apartment in a chateau converted into a home for cinema veterans, where he was visited by virtually every Hollywood mogul. After making a radio broadcast in December 1937, he became ill and died a month later. He was 76.
Whenever you think of special effects, remember:
Méliès did it first.