Horrible Pain

So apparently a semi-popular thing to do on Youtube now is to morph your face into a monster.

I know how it’s done but the lizard part of my brain still finds these things terrifying.

I’ve seen movies that used the sudden face morph for a scare. Dead Birds and Lord of the Rings I know did this. I don’t remember if The Ring, or The Grudge, or Ju On did it, but I wouldn’t be surprised. It does seem such an effective scare, but the technology has only recently made it common in movies.

So I tried to think, what’s the earliest known incarnation of this?

Large Marge.

To expand upon a comment from an earlier post, there are three goals when making a special effect.

1) Convey what the effect represents.
This is the most important goal. If you create a model city, it needs to look enough like a city that the audience knows that it’s a city when they see it.

2) Look cool
Try to make it something interesting to look at. It helps keep the audience entertained. (Of course, I don’t recommend having a movie where the effects are the only thing that will entertain the audience.)

3) Look realistic
This is what people mean when they say they want effects that don’t look like effects. The effect should feel like a real part of the world of the movie. This is often the most difficult goal to meet.

Achieving goal 1 is crucial. Sometimes goals 2 and 3 will be at odds, and you may need to trade one for the other. The relative importance of those two will depend upon the tone of your movie. If you’re trying to make a retro-future pulp adventure you might emphasize 2 more than 3, while if you are making a complex psychological drama you’ll stick with 3 over 2.

In my own work, I’ve usually achieved goal 1 and sometimes 2, but rarely goal 3.