In today's digital Hollywood, cameras capture scenes in bits, not frames—and computer wizards conjure up everything from impossible beasts to cliff-top battlegrounds. Film is dead. Long live the movies.
Today, many digital effects are so subtle that movie audiences often don't notice them — but it wasn't always so. We asked industry insiders to pinpoint the biggest breakthroughs in digital F/X history.
Choose your own adventure in tracking a motion picture from digital camera to home screen — without film.
The Popular Mechanics Show
We interview one of the moviemaking magicians at Industrial Light and Magic, Effects Supervisor Colum Slevin, and find out how digital production is fundamentally changing the way films are made.
How George Lucas' special effects house and new digital projection technology are manipulating images so fast your brain can’t tell the difference — and how Hollywood can.
Digital special effects create cool and convincing movie magic. But not every jaw-dropping effect comes out of a computer. Traditional FX tricks were behind some of last summer's wildest scenes.
The entertainment industry's real threat isn't piracy, it's backyard Spielbergs armed with digital moviemaking gear.
You can create a theater-quality experience in your own living room. Here are two setups that match your A/V needs to your budget.
Digital video cameras are changing fast. To shed some light, PM brought six popular camcorders into our lab for an uncompromising analysis.