An Army of Roddenberries

As hinted by its cover sleeve, which features Gollum from Peter Jackson's recent Lord of the Rings trilogy, Rickitt's Special Effects: The History And Technique explores the movie industry's effects techniques up to mid-'naughts', and thus covers the ongoing digital era in special effects which began about twenty years ago.

The same computer technology that empowered digital effects in Hollywood can now empower do it yourself productions. I'd call it an "Army of Davids," but I think that title may have already been taken. Or as Jason Apuzzo of the Libertas film blog wrote a few months ago, "We live in an era in which there may be better - and cheaper - film equipment available at your local Apple Store or Fry's Electronics than is available at your film school (or at your Hollywood studio, frankly)."

That's where books such as Trish & Chris Meyers' After Effects In Production come into play. While their book has been on the marketplace for a few years, it demonstrating how Adobe's After Effects program can create professional-quality video graphics — because it has created professional-quality graphics for the Meyers' big name clients — making it an inspiration for anyone who wants to add a network TV polish to projects shot on a Diet Coke budget.

England's 18 Doughty Street Website is producing something like 20 or 30 hours of live television a week - for the Internet. There are fan-produced Star Trek and Star Wars homages shot on shoestring budgets (at least in contrast to what Hollywood spends on catering alone) on YouTube with effects that would have made Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas weep only a few decades ago.

As more and more amateur video makers and bloggers roll their own videos for sites such as YouTube and Google video, all of the above books serve two purposes. They're well worth reading to study the craftsmanship that's been built up over decades of experimentation in film, then television, and now digital video. They illustrate how high those craftsmen have raised the bar.

High, but it's not insurmountable; hopefully these books will inspire a whole new group of artists. Their efforts are more likely to show up on the Internet than in movie theaters, but at least they'll be out there. And who knows? Maybe in a decade or two, we'll be studying the pioneering craftsmen at the dawn of the YouTube era.