Special Effects Quotes & Sayings

What it is is that comedy is underrepresented in every actor's life, because it's so bloody difficult to write. Anyone can write; and then you leave it to special effects to make it look good. But comedy, you've got to do some writing. — Michael Caine

Filmmakers began to experiment with special effects almost as soon as motion pictures were invented. The history of special effects is the history of motion pictures. — Ben Burtt

However, James and Aamir did not discuss their astounding box office grosses or formulas for success.Instead, they exchanged notes on the process of film-making; how ideas, even seemingly crazy ones that require developing a unique camera, as James did for Avatar, become a reality; how stories and not special effects are the heartbeat of movies. — Anupama Chopra

I only storyboard scenes that require special effects, where it is necessary to communicate through pictures. — John Boorman

Even with the most stupid video games, kids learn more about learning than they ever did before, because they want to learn codes and moves before other kids figure them out. They're motivated to seek out someone or search the Net for help. A student who makes a video game has to solve mathematical problems to make special effects happen on the screen. — Seymour Papert

Whenever I see pointless use of special effects, I reach for something else. — Ken Stott

I think "MythBusters" is a step up from special effects because we not only have to make things look like they work, they actually do have to work. It's more challenging and even transcendental. — Jamie Hyneman

This, I realize, is what life is like for most Thais. They are not in control of their fates. A terrifying thought, yes, but also a liberating one. For if nothing you do matters, then life suddenly feels a lot less heavy. It's just one big game. And as any ten-year-old will tell you, the best games are the ones where everyone gets to play. And where you can play again and again, for free. Lots of cool special effects are nice, too. — Eric Weiner

I had no special effects, no monsters running around, nothing blew up; those things are all things I've done so many times that they lose their allure after a while. — Stephen Hopkins

I believe-and human psychologists, particularly psychoanalysts should test this-that present-day civilized man suffers from insufficient discharge of his aggressive drive. It is more than probable that the evil effects of the human aggressive drives, explained by Sigmund Freud as the results of a special death wish, simply derive from the fact that in prehistoric times intra-specific selection bred into man a measure of aggression drive for which in the social order today he finds no adequate outlet. — Konrad Lorenz

There is something really so iconic about the original Predator, and it is exciting. It's not just special effects. It's not like you bring a puppet in, these are characters and so we were involved in developing the look and the attitude of all the characters. — Gregory Nicotero

Success comes from having a fulfilling experience and being inside the moment of that experience. Success does not come in retrospect or as a recollection or even as an evaluation from others. lt's not something that you can physically hold onto or repeat at will. Only when you acknowledge the special moments can you truly feel the effects of your most wonderful achievements. — Tommy Tune

Take away the robots and the special effects, and Star Wars is just the simple story of a group of friends planning a terrorist attack. — Dana Gould

In the 40 years since 'The Amityville Horror', dramatizations of those supposedly-real events have gotten loose enough - special-effects laden enough, star-power re-packaged enough - that the audience no longer trusts the dramatization's loyalty to the core story. — Stephen Graham Jones

When I was in architecture school, rather than giving us drafting boards and t-squares and lead pencils and stuff they gave us all the same tools that places like Digital Domain and ILM used to make features films or special effects. They gave us all these digital tools like Alias and Mya and Soft Image and all these kind of high-end computers, so I came out of architecture school knowing how to use all that stuff. And I started making short films at night. — Joseph Kosinski

'Macbeth' is one of the best operas ever, and doing it was a great experience. I added some things to the opera based from my experience on the movie - such as some of the special effects and bits of film - to make it new and interesting. It was a very good work and a very good experience. — Dario Argento

I always wanted to tell stories. Well, at least, I always came back to the notion of storytelling when the glitz and glamour of being a special effects designer or a fighter pilot or a DEA agent wore off. — Cullen Bunn

Acting is primarily is where I want to go. But seeing how the visual effects guys work, and the special effects guys and the art department guys, how they work and seeing their visions is really interesting. I don't think those guys get the recognition they deserve. — James Phelps

CGI is done after the film is done. It's through the computer. Most of the film is not computer-generated special effects. Most of it is that creature that is in the room with you. — Sanaa Lathan

The creation of the island, or the impression of the island, as it changes in the mind of the character also came in to play ... there was another very important collaborator, Rob Legato, on special visual effects. And then ultimately there's Thelma Schoonmaker, who keeps me focused during the editing of the picture. — Martin Scorsese

I really love the independent movies and I just think that sometimes when they throw a lot of money into it and a lot of special effects and a lot of stunts that you lose the connection, the human connection and I personally love movies that are about the human connection. — Jane Seymour

I was one of the few people who thought Star Wars was going to work, and I hadn't even seen any special effects. — Harrison Ford

Think about science fiction movies with lots of special effects: If you notice that special effects are special effects, they will fail. — Stephen M. Kosslyn

I feel like a pink worm in the core of this green room, as though I have eaten my way in and should be working on becoming a butterfly, or something. I'm not real awake, here, at the moment. I hear somebody coughing. I hear my heart beating and the high-pitched sound which is my nervous system doing its thing. Oh, God, let today be a normal day. Let me be normally befuddled, normally nervous; get me to the church on time, in time. Let me not startle anyone, especially myself. Let me get through our wedding day as best I can, with no special effects. Deliver Clare from unpleasant scenes. Amen. — Audrey Niffenegger

To me I don't deal with stress well at all, and it is stressful enough for me to deal with my own one character. So if I had to deal with all the characters and the special effects, and the editing and make the writing tweaks and do everything the director does, that would drive me to an early grave, and I just can't do it. — Doug Jones

People want things to be real. If you give them an excuse, they'll believe you. — Robin Sloan

That's the thing with sci-fi and action roles. You have to play the danger as real. If you don't, you end up with egg on your face. You have to commit. You can't think about how stupid it might look without the special effects. — Victoria Pratt

The theater itself is a lie. Its deaths are mere special effects. Its tales never happened. Even the histories are distorted for dramatic effect. The theater is unnatural, a place of imagination. But the theater tells the audience something true: that the world requires judgments. — Virginia Postrel

So, when the special effects are at the service of the story and draw you into it, that is really the magic. — Bill Sienkiewicz

Cinema is still a very young art form with extraordinary techniques and very impressive special effects but sometimes it seems the soul has been taken out of things. — Catherine Deneuve

Besides the mistakes that are pointed out, I love the way readers become involved with the characters. When readers start asking about character motivations instead of concentrating on the special effects, it means you're connecting with them on a personal level. — Alan Dean Foster

I spent four months in Prague in these blue rooms reacting to nothing and you basically place your faith in the hands of the director and the special effects co-coordinator and you keep your fingers crossed and hope that the creatures look really scary. — Edward Burns

I like to work in films, but I'd love to work in the technical side of film. I'd love to work with, say, Greg Nicotero [The Walking Dead] in kind of, like, special makeup effects. I'd probably say, "Good with clay and latex." Although I don't know what kind of job that'd get me. — Simon Pegg

Particularly in the final season [of Fringe], when we were shooting seven-day episodes with a reduced budget and big special effects, the team was so polished, by then, that we were able to do it and, I think, with incredible results. — John Noble

The capacity for loving strangers, whether one thinks of them as fictional beings or stars one will never meet, is a profound reflection on the new consciousness whereby every individual leads his or life while aware of all the billions of other people on Earth. Perhaps it is a fantasy or a fallacy that we can feel for so many strangers. Perhaps it is a mask for selfishness. But no matter the modern stress on special effects, there isn't a sight in movies as momentous as shots of a face as its mind is being changed. And only movies have allowed that. — Edward Jay Epstein

Theater for me is about enduring human truth. Special effects can be part of that, but when they obscure what is the reason we come to theater - to see reflections of our confounded humanity - the theater has lost its way. — Neil Patrick Harris

I think a lot of the time these days people are so concerned about having the right camera and the right film and the right lenses and all the special effects that go along with it, even the computer, that they're missing the key element. — Herb Ritts

I return one last time to the places of death all around us, the places of slaughter to which, in a huge communal effort, we close our hearts. Each day a fresh holocaust, yet, as far as I can see, our moral being is untouched. We do not feel tainted. We can do anything, it seems, and come away clean.
We point to the Germans and Poles and Ukrainians who did and did not know of the atrocities around them. We like to think they were inwardly marked by the after-effects of that special form of ignorance. We like to think that in their nightmares the ones whose suffering they had refused to enter came back to haunt them. We like to think they woke up haggard in the mornings and died of gnawing cancers. But probably it was not so. The evidence points in the opposite direction: that we can do anything and get away with it; that there is no punishment. — J.M. Coetzee

Since the 1920s, virtually all continuing medical and public health education is funded by pharmaceutical companies. In fact, today, the FDA can't even tell health scientists the truth about vaccine contaminants and their likely effects. The agency is bound and gagged by proprietary laws and non-disclosure agreements forced upon them by the pharmaceutical industry. Let us not forget that the pharmaceutical industry, as a special interest group, is the number one contributor to politicians on Capital Hill. — Leonard Horowitz

You are always hoping that movie audiences are interested in characters and interested in story values rather than just mindless special effects. But you never know. — Clint Eastwood

With 'Tron,' we had so many crew members around and a stage full of special effects people that know exactly what has to be done in the situations. You're on a stage in sets the whole time. — Garrett Hedlund

I was certain when I was about 10 years old that I was going to be a special effects artist or a make-up man. I loved that stuff and pursued it for quite some time, actually. — Michael Carbonaro

I'm not afraid of special effects, but I see them very much as a means to an end. — Daniel Barber

MGM produced an occasional nonstar feature, although these were rare and usually had some obvious hook to draw audiences. A good example of this type of feature was The Fire Brigade, a 1926 project scheduled for a twenty-eight-day shoot and budgeted at $249,556. The picture starred May McAvoy, a "featured player" at MGM, and was directed by William Nigh. The second-class status of the project was obvious from the budget, with only $60,000 going for director, cast, story, and continuity. But the attractions in The Fire Brigade were spectacle, special effects, and fiery destruction rather than star and director. The budget allowed $25,000 for photographic effects and another $66,000 for sets, a relatively high figure since many of the sets for the picture had to be not only built and "dressed" but destroyed as well. — Thomas Schatz

There are a number of times when we have found, there's a number of old-school special effects in here that are fantastic, but there are definitely some times that we went digital and you're not going to tell the difference, I don't think. I think it just serves the storytelling because that's just the era that we live in. — Kimberly Peirce

When I was a child, I thought I was going to be a paleontologist because I loved dinosaurs. I loved monster movies and sci-fi, and then 'Star Wars' came out, and I was completely out of my mind with that, with 'Close Encounters,' and then I thought maybe I was going to go into special effects makeup, which I thought was awesome. — Dee Bradley Baker

The main prank that we play with props is for people's birthdays. The special effects people will put a little explosive in the cake so it blows up in their face - that's always fun to play on a guest star, or one of the trainees or someone who's new. — Catherine Bell

The Apple has the fewest bells and whistles. It has simple sound and few graphics special effects. In a way, that is a weakness because markets for the other machines are getting bigger. — Bill Budge

Movies, particularly the big hit movies, are all just special effects. But on television, the writers are in control of the shows, and they control the scripts. — Larry Cohen

I had a great time working on 'The Gates,' and that was my first real experience doing supernatural television, working with the special effects and everything that goes into making a supernatural show. — Skyler Samuels

I think that in big-budget movies there's a lot of other stuff going on besides acting, like special effects. — Rachel Weisz

I don't like to put too much effort into things. I find that once you get involved with special effects it is no longer about what is happening in front of the camera and I really want to concentrate on what is happening in front of the camera, like the man apparently peeing on the surface of the screen. — Steve McQueen

The action movies changed radically when it became possible to Velcro your muscles on. It was the beginning of a new era. The visual took over. The special effects became more important than the single person. That was the beginning of the end. — Sylvester Stallone

Somehow human authority is never enough; we must have special effects. — Barbara Ehrenreich

I think we tried to make a film [Moon] that was about human beings as opposed to going from one special effects set piece to the next one, which is what a lot of science fiction films these days do. — Duncan Jones

I'd like to act in a film without special effects. — Richard C. Armitage

Naively, special relativity would therefore tell us that those particles should be able to travel forwards and backwards in time as well. But so far as we know, neither particles nor anything else we are aware of can actually travel backwards in time. What happens instead is that oppositely charged antiparticles replace the reverse-time-traveling particles. Antiparticles reproduce the effects the reverse-time-traveling particles would have so that even without them, quantum field theory's predictions are compatible with special relativity. — Lisa Randall

Minus the adverts of TV, the special effects of movies, and the trash of the Internet, live theatre is a personal means to connect with viewers. Lining up eye candy, using graphic words, and teasing or enacting bedroom antics is a lowbrow way to go about it. — Tom Jalio

To try and raise a budget for a film that is strictly for adults and both strong and graphic in content is not easy, especially when there is pressure to spend serious money on good special effects. — Dario Argento

I don't think you need to watch Arrow and Flash to appreciate what it is Legends has to offer. The beauty of this show - and they do this on Flash, and they did this on Arrow - is that we do spend time on character. We do spend time on backstory. We do take a moment in between the sci-fi special effects to tell you who these people are, so that when something happens to them, you actually care. — Wentworth Miller

A small town called Phoenixville in Pennsylvania is invaded by aliens. Or maybe alien singular, it's hard to tell. Because this hostile visitor is an amorphous mass of goo that must be jelly 'cos jam don't shake like that. It doesn't do too much leaping (unless you count the jerk-edit special effects), but it's very good at sliding across the floor, killing puny humans by absorbing them. Steve McQueen is Steve is the boy who leads a group of teens who foil its evil plan to turn Earth into a giant trifle. — Garry Mulholland

Looking more deeply at the emergence of ISIS or the chaos that exists in Syria, Yemen and Libya would clearly raise crucial doubts about reliance on military intervention and drone warfare as adequate counterterrorist responses and would call attention to the detrimental effects of US "special relationships" with Israel and Saudi Arabia. — Richard A. Falk

If there's a movie of Neuromancer, what I really want the special effects guys to do is make you see, from Case's point of view, the little acid giggies: the little lines and trails coming off of things. — William Gibson

Jesus discouraged the accumulation of wealth, worried about its effects on those who had it, and took special pleasure in helping the poor, dedicating his efforts to them. He must have shaken his head at the large gaps between rich and poor throughout ancient Palestine in the first century. — Jay Parini

This was because of a special American commitment to the seeming magic of money creation and its presumptively wondrous economic effects. T — John Kenneth Galbraith

Our president may lie, but he will lie effectively and spectacularly, with all the epic stagecraft and lighting and special effects available to the White House publicity apparatus. He is never a hack, never a half-assed, off-the-cuff, squirming, my-dog-ate-my-homework sort of liar. Or at least he wasn't until George W. Bush came around.

'They hate our freedoms' was possibly the dumbest, most insulting piece of bullshit ever to escape the lips of an American president. As an explanation for the appalling tragedy of 9/11... it was insufficient even as a calculated effort to snow an uneducated public. — Matt Taibbi

Really successful designs can be created without software produced "special effects." Identities do not NEED bevels, gradations, 3-D imagery, Web 2.Oh-Oh and other oh so "special" treatments to be great design solutions for clients. — Jeff Fisher

I want to play a fireman and a spy. I want to learn special effects. — Jackie Chan

Life is replete with comedy, drama, horror, suspense, tragedy, romance, mystery, fantasy and a good dose of fiction. While at times the plot may seem to be lacking, the special effects alone are well worth the price of admission. — Derek R. Audette

The urge to impose a single classification on SF ignores the generic hybridity of many novels: incorporation of the Gothic in The Island of Dr Moreau, of Shakespeare's The Tempest in Forbidden Planet, and so on. The rise of film coincides with the emergence of science fiction. The relation between SF fiction and film has included an ongoing fascination with spectacle and extraordinary special effects like those pioneered in Georges Melies's A Trip to the Moon (1902) and The Impossible Voyage (1904). — David Seed

If you make action movies, the critics will savage you, and then your movies are outdated the following week with the new wave of special effects. — Adam McKay

I helped develop Disney's) special effects department at that time, which helped very much when we worked on "20000 Leagues under the Sea" — John Hench

Once you consider the premise that Episodes I through III are not live-action movies with extensive special effects, but rather animated features with a few living actors rotoscoped in, many of the more common critical objections to the movies simply wither away. — David Brin

I am definitely going to watch the Emmys this year! My makeup team is nominated for "Best Special Effects." — Joan Rivers

The most frequent fallacy by far today, the fallacy that emerges again and again in nearly every conversation that touches on economic affairs, the error of a thousand political speeches, the central sophism of the "new" economics, is to concentrate on the short-run effects of policies on special groups and to ignore or belittle the long-run effects on the community as a whole. — Henry Hazlitt

That was fun to play. There were some nice special effects coupled with some really nice moments with child and wife. I also was able to age to about 100 years in 'Brief Candle.' — Richard Dean Anderson

In every big-budget science fiction movie there's the moment when a spaceship as large as New York suddenly goes to light speed. A twanging noise like a wooden ruler being plucked over the edge of a desk, a dazzling refraction of light, and suddenly the stars have all been stretched out thin and it's gone. This was exactly like that, except that instead of a gleaming twelve-mile-long spaceship, it was an off-white twenty-year-old motor scooter. And you didn't have the special rainbow effects. And it probably wasn't going at more than two hundred miles an hour. And instead of a pulsing whine sliding up the octaves, it just went putputputputput ...
VROOOOSH.
But it was exactly like that anyway. — Neil Gaiman

I'm of a generation of director that came up understanding special effects. — Jon Favreau

I never wanted to be in the show business. I wanted to do special effects. — Emraan Hashmi

I try to express in my films things that no other art can approach. In my monster films for example, I use special effects in the same way one would use a special film stock, a special camera, and so on. Monster films permit me to use all of these elements at the same time. They are the most visual kind of film. — Ishiro Honda

Asylum was good exposure for me and it is still shown quite often on television. I remember the special effects people had fun making a little doll that looked like me - which is not so easy - and it had to move along the floor. — Herbert Lom

I feel that contemporary music, with very few exceptions, is missing the voice. You see an award show, you see a hundred extras on set dancing and special effects, and you don't see that solo voice that was the trademark of Adele. It's no accident that it was her album that ended up selling 27 million copies worldwide. — Clive Davis

This sucks on so many levels." Dialogue from "Jason X" Rare for a movie to so frankly describe itself. "Jason X" sucks on the levels of storytelling, character development, suspense, special effects, originality, punctuation, neatness and aptness of thought. — Roger Ebert

I even had breasts that had mechanisms that could make them droop. It was a shock in the beginning. Talk about special effects! — Michelle Pfeiffer

All the green-screen stuff - all the special effects stuff - I shot right there in my house, in the basement in my theater room ... — Vickie Winans

Pearl Harbor is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how on December 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle. Its centerpiece is 40 minutes of redundant special effects, surrounded by a love story of stunning banality. The film has been directed without grace, vision, or originality, and although you may walk out quoting lines of dialog, it will not be because you admire them. — Roger Ebert

Yes " Morrison said dryly. "I'm sure it would have helped with flying the car, if any of us had been calm and rational enough to think of taking a drum out and performing some theme music for your Jame's Bond meets Harry Potter special effects. But since we weren't, now I'm going to drum till you stop looking like something the cat dragged in. Don't argue with me. — C.E. Murphy

Special effects movies have taken over the universe. That and scary movies. — Jami Gertz

I was there when Sam Raimi showed Stan Lee the first cut of the first Spider-Man movie. I was on a couch next to Stan, watching how special effects had finally caught up to his imagination. It was insane. And I'm thinking, "He had to wait until he was 80 years old for that to happen." When they announced Powers and Jessica Jones, I thought, "Oh, that's nice!" — Brian Michael Bendis

Special effects are characters. Special effects are essential elements. Just because you can't see them doesn't mean they aren't there. — Laurence Fishburne

But in the former, those movie sets that you've been on like that, even if they're huge movies and most of its being spent in special effects afterwards, I think that's the way that we're going. — Eric Fellner

To know about the movie [jack the giant Slayer], wow. It's an adventure, there are so many special effects flying around. It's going to be really fun, definitely. I think there's something there for the whole family. There is something you can really enjoy, and I think it's going to be a really fun, family film. I'm really excited. — Eleanor Tomlinson

Three years after starting, by physically doing everything from raising the finance to special effects, we'd finally cobbled together our low budget film. — Yahoo Serious

Usually, when special effects get in the way, it's because the story isn't strong enough. If you don't start with a strong screenplay, it's easy to fall back on special effects, thinking it's going to carry you. But it never works. It's just tiresome. — Ridley Scott

I've actually usually been wary of taking on science fiction as an actor because it's really tough to do. It's really difficult to execute. There's often lots of prosthetics, green screen and special effects, and it can get very technical. — Grant Bowler

Today, everything has to be made by committee, and has to have special effects, but there's always room for good films. — Robert Duvall

I don't do special effects. I do characters. I do creatures. — Stan Winston

At that point, I thought probably special effects, something like that, and indeed, the early days when I was working with my dad, after I left school, I only went to less than one year of college, and then I was transferring, and then I delayed my transfer, and I did a movie, and then another movie, and then I never finished college. — Brian Henson

Post-human intelligence will develop hypercomputers with the processing power to simulate living things - even entire worlds. Perhaps advanced beings could use hypercomputers to surpass the best 'special effects' in movies or computer games so vastly that they could simulate a world, fully, as complex as the one we perceive ourselves to be in. — Martin Rees

The intimate conversations have its moments, because you have to sell the characters, because there is so much going on. It's so easy to get lost in the special effects and forget about the performances. The dialogue scenes have been great. It's been great working with Bryan and the writers to find where we're going and what's the story. Yeah, it's been really, really interesting. — Eleanor Tomlinson