Outline of Third Term Paper

Outline of Third Term Paper – Fire in Films

I.                    Introduction

a.       Although special effects have become more advanced and realistic with the advent of the computer, the craft of special effects has been around since the early days of film.

b.      There are certain effects and elements that must be manipulated separately from the actors themselves.

c.       Special effect being discussed: fire

d.      Films being discussed: Gone with the Wind (1939) and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)

II.                 Body

a.       Gone with the Wind (1939) illustrates that special effects are not limited to miniatures or a computer with its “burning of Atlanta sequence”

                                                              i.      The fire was created and then controlled with a series of valves; any footage shot had to be perfect on the first take.

                                                            ii.      The special effects supervisor filmed footage of burning sets and then literally cut and pasted a collage of fire footage in with scenes of the actors.

                                                          iii.      In a lot of ways, this was more tedious and far more dangerous than if the scene had been created using miniatures or computers.

                                                          iv.      Because the flames were real, and scaled as they would be if the scene was real, the realism of the scene is heightened.

b.      Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2009) illustrates how far a digital special effects team can take the element of fire into a story and make it something unique.

                                                              i.      In the film, Professor Dumbledore casts a firestorm spell, and in fact can manipulate the fire in a way that is impossible to do with real fire on a real set.

                                                            ii.      Up until this point in time, the special effects artists did not have the ability to create the type of fire required for this scene, so the technology had to catch up to the concept.

                                                          iii.      The filmmakers also had to deal with the fact that they had never done photo realistic fire before.

                                                          iv.      According to the special effects team, rather than running a 3D simulation, they stacked a series of rectangular, two-dimensional slices of a 3D grid.

                                                            v.      The techniques used were in fact effective in creating a sense of magic in the already fantastical world.

III.               Conclusion

a.       Although both of these films use the element of fire in their stories, it’s used in very different ways and manipulated with different techniques.

b.      In many ways, the burning of Atlanta sequence in Gone with the Wind is more effective at creating a realistic environment than the cave scene in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.

The fact that Gone with the Wind is more affective at creating a realistic world is proof that using a computer to create  a film’s special effects does not guarantee its being as successful at realism as actually creating the special effect in reality.