Practical Effects
Special effects produced physically on set rather than added in post-production with computer graphics.
In depth
These include animatronics, prosthetics, pyrotechnics, and miniatures. Audiences often find them more 'grounded' and realistic than CGI because they interact with real light and physics.
Example
“The rotating hallway fight scene in 'Inception' which was filmed in a real rotating set, not a green screen.”
Origin and history
Practical effects defined cinema for its first century: from Georges Méliès' early hand-painted miniatures and double exposures, through Stanley Kubrick's '2001' centrifuge, to Stan Winston's animatronic dinosaurs in 'Jurassic Park.' The rise of CGI in the 1990s caused a temporary retreat from practical work, but a backlash beginning in the 2010s — driven by films like 'Mad Max: Fury Road' and Christopher Nolan's blockbusters — returned practical craft to the center of mainstream filmmaking.
Why filmmakers use it
Practical effects interact with real on-set light, which means actors and cameras respond to them naturally. The audience reads physical reality differently from synthetic reality, even when the difference is small. The trade-off is cost, time, and risk: practical effects fail loudly and are expensive to redo. The most successful modern productions blend practical and digital, using CGI to extend or clean up real photography rather than replace it.
More examples in cinema
- 'Mad Max: Fury Road' staged the majority of its vehicle stunts physically in the Namibian desert with augmented digital cleanup.
- Christopher Nolan's 'Tenet' inverted real plane crashes and physical fight choreography to minimize digital intervention.
Common confusion
'Practical effects' is sometimes used as a synonym for 'no CGI,' but in modern productions the two are nearly always combined. Most blockbuster shots have a practical foundation with digital enhancement, even when the result reads as fully practical.