Movies always try to bring us into a different reality. To achieve that, filmmakers use specific computer software to create special effects. But wait, what about the time before computers? How did they make special effects back then? How did they edit movies without computers?
In the previous century, digital cameras were not invented yet, so filmmakers shot their movies on film cameras. It required hundreds of meters of film and big rooms to store it. Movies are often shot in 24 fps, which means 24 frames per second. Each frame is imprinted on a film tape so even one second of a movie takes a pretty long piece of tape. After shooting a movie, it still needed to be processed, which took a lot of work and time to process even a small piece of film.
After processing, the work was not yet done. It needed to be edited, but there were no computers a century ago, so there was no software to help. Instead, editors needed to literally cut the actual tape and then splice it together. Of course, they didn’t do that just with scissors. Instead, there were specific devices like Moviola that helped filmmakers to review a film and to cut film tape more precisely.
If editing sounds relatively easy, special effects may sound more complicated. Special effects were used since the early days of filmmaking and they obviously did that without computers. Movies like “A Trip to the Moon,” “The Wizard of Oz,” and “King Kong” let us see that they needed to come up with really creative solutions to achieve a scene that they wanted. Mostly, there were three techniques for special effects.
For example, stop motion was a great way to create special effects. The “King Kong” movie is a great example of this. Instead of building an actual Kong and putting him on a real Empire State Building, they used small models. They built miniature scenes, put models there, and filmed their every little movement. The process was pretty hard since they needed to build a good model, a realistic scene, and then shoot it for a long time, but it worked.
Another technique was for perspective. Looking at a scene, it’s easy to believe that a character actually stands on a clock, but actually, it’s just a perspective.
The last technique is shooting on the same film tape multiple times. For example, in “The Wizard of Oz,” they first covered one part of the frame with the background and shot the part with actors. Then they took the same film tape and now covered the part with the actors. They drew a picture with a background and shot it on the blank part of the film tape. As a result, they got the desired view.
These solutions may seem outdated, but they were very smart for that time. People needed to be really creative to shoot scenes like that with almost no resources, and they succeeded. Even regular people have devices that filmmakers back then didn’t even dream of. We have wonderful cameras on our phones, powerful computers, and software on which even a kid can make some special effects. Back then, people didn’t have that luxury, yet they still were able to make masterpieces even without tools.
This is why you should never say that you don’t have tools to make something. People a century ago didn’t, but you do. Instead of saying it, try to be more creative. Think about how you can achieve something with almost no instruments. You’ll be surprised what you’re able to do.
In conclusion, editing movies a century ago was a long process that required dozens of people to work hard on it. They did not have computers or software to help them. Making special effects was even harder, but they succeeded by being creative and innovative. Even though we have all the tools and technology today, we can learn from their creativity and resourcefulness.