Before the turn of the 20th century, professional magician George Melies decided to bring a little magic to the movie screen. Regarded widely as the father of special effects, his accidental discovery of stop-motion technology would revolutionize the industry and inspire other filmmakers such as Ray Harryhausen and "Wallace and Gromit" creator, Nick Park. The scenes are painstakingly shot one frame at a time, with the inanimate models modified accordingly to give the illusion of movement once the film is pieced together. This technology yielded such results as "King Kong" from 1933 and "Clash of the Titans" in 1981.
The use of miniatures, or models of life-sized objects reduced to a small prop, originally appeared in the late 1920s. This allows the filmmaker to recreate the visuals on a smaller, more inexpensive and workable scale. This technology allowed a young George Lucas to animate the larger than life world of "Star Wars" in 1977, when the iconic first few moments of the film included a shot of the Imperial Star Destroyer, a ship so gigantic that it filled the entire screen. This colossal ship was actually a 91-centimeter long miniature.
"Star Wars" also was among the first movies to employ computer imagery in its special effects. But in 1982, Disney's "Tron" took the concept and ran with it. The movie itself took place primarily in a computer, with the early 1980s graphics to go with it. Over the next couple of decades, great advancement was made from these primitive beginnings, and gave cinema such classics as "Jurassic Park," "Titanic," as well as the Pixar chain of successful family movies such as "Toy Story" and "Finding Nemo."
As the first decade of the 21st century drew to a close, 3-D technology became all the rage for mainstream cinema. This technology actually began hundreds of years before James Cameron's juggernaut "Avatar" obliterated all box office records within months of its release. Stereoscopy is how your brain creates a three-dimensional effect from your eyes naturally seeing objects from slightly different perspectives. This is aided by the special glasses you wear as you watch the movie. The 3-D craze wasn't just limited to those movies with more eye-popping visuals such as "Tron Legacy," the sequel to the 1981 CGI-forerunner. Even movies such as "Never Say Never" cashed in on the technology to bring fans further into the world of Justin Bieber.