The work of the special effects artist for the cinema could be considered as the creation (or re-creation) of subjects, through the remains of his artworks; it could be seen as his past, and at the same time his present, represented by the result of man’s reproduction of lifeless raw materials, as forever told by history, literature, and again by cinema.
They have always strived portray, represent, re-create within the history of mankind; the classic example is the creature of Victor Frankenstein, and before that the legend of Prometheus, and others besides.
The remains of matter are the proof of creation by the cinema operator, but they also represent shapes, images, emotions, like Frankenstein’s creature is the proof and the living result of its creator’s emotions, the expression of his strength and weakness.
Our creator’s laboratory is a place of the cinematic creation, but it is also the “museum” of its efforts, the representation of horror and obsession, as Victor Frankenstein’s laboratory is the place of continuous trials and errors, incompleteness, horrors, violations of human nature, everyday with the anxiety to re-create the “spectacle” of life.
For a “spectacle” operator, it is the effort of creating subjects who may receive eternal, who appear real, who almost step out from the films, as they step out from the photographer’s negatives, and who remain in the memory, even if closed inside drawers, hung on the wall, covered in cobwebs …
