A must for lovers of the seventh art.

Thanks to special effects in films, all sorts of images can be made that simply placing a camera in front of a scene could never produce. For example, we cannot film dinosaurs, or invisible men. So it is that for reasons of efficacy, budgeting, and security that we almost systematically resort to special effects. By contextualizing them in the history of technology, from the tricks of the old-timey theater to our own day, this book provides an exhaustive panorama of all those effects that intensify audience emotion, making us tremble and cry out in front of a picture on the silver screen.