Horror Movie of Japan: Special Effects

Hello! Today, I will talk about “Special Effects” (特殊撮影Tokusyu satsuei) on horror movies. I had already talked importance of special effects just a little. Those need to make more frightening horror movie.

Well then, what are Special Effects? Special Effects are often stood for SFX, SPFX or simply FX. SFX is the technique to make amazing images with art and optical processing. In old times when moving pictures are taken, SFX was called “Trick photography”. After the 1980s, the techniques to process images after taking them appeared like computer graphics (often abbreviated as CG). They are called VFX (Visual Effects, 視覚効果) compared with SFX. In the cinema business world, there is a marked tendency to draw a sharp line between SFX and VFX, however VFX don’t generally be known well and the means of SFX and VFX are mixed. So, I will express SFX in my blog, including VFX.

It seems that SFX has already been used since the birth of movie. For example, Alfred Clark who is a British movie director used first SFX in 1895. He expressed the scene of queen’s decapitation with film’s replacement. This way is like this.

As a hangman heaves an ax to cut off her head, shooting camera is stopped.

The role of the queen replace dummy.

He cut off dummy’s head!

After those scene finished to take, two images (1 and 3) are connected.

This way was first effect that audience believed that impossible things seem to happen.

Also, SFX is used from early time in Japan. The oldest existing ghost movie is stored up in National Film Center, the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. It seems that the story of its film is “Sara yashiki” and it is taken in the mid-1910s. Its film was taken advantage of double exposures (to put some images in an image), dissolve (the thing that an image disappears as next image appears) and reversal motion (to reproduce an image conversely).

Double exposures

From last scene of ”Youkai Daisensou" (1968)　

About "dissolve" (0:40)

It seems that the earliest commentary about SFX in Japan was written at “the original form of moving picture (活動写真の正体)”, 22-25 April, 1908 . But anybody doesn’t know who wrote it. Its commentary divided SFX into 4 head. Next, in 1914, Yukiyoshi Shigeno divided that into 9 heads. Finally, Shihou Okamura stated about SFX and Norimasa Kaeriyama divided that into 10 heads in 1917. It is this.

1 Stop Picture（カメラの止め写し)

2 Reversal Motion（逆回転撮影）

3 Quick motion and Slow motion（遅廻転と早廻転または早動作と遅動作）

4 Double Exposures（二重写し/二重露光）

5 Double Print（二重焼き）

6 Mirror（鏡のトリック）

7 String（糸のトリック）

8 Dammy（人形〔ママ〕）

9 Smoke（煙のトリック）

10 Exterior with tools（道具建の外景〔書割による背景〕）

After that, in 1960s, Toho Company, Ltd. (Tōhō Kabushiki-kaisha) made a series “the transformed human series (henshin ningen sirizu)”. Those works are “Beautiful woman and liquid man (美女と液体人間, bizyo to ekitai ningen)”, “Electronic data transmission man (電送人間, densou ningen), “First Gas Man (ガス人間第一号, gasu ningen daiichigou) and “Matango (マタンゴ, matango). Those movies have interesting ideas and tax many good ingenious.