Top 80 Special Effects Quotes

I went to the library – and this was before the Internet – and I searched for a career that was creative, would not fall into a routine, involved problem solving and making things. It also had to be dynamic. I came up with special effects.

There are so many sequels where everything between the special effects is just boring.

Whether it’s the experiments on ‘MythBusters’ or my earlier work in special effects for movies, I’ve regularly had to do things that were never done before, from designing complex motion-control rigs to figuring out how to animate chocolate.

To try and raise a budget for a film that is strictly for adults and both strong and graphic in content is not easy, especially when there is pressure to spend serious money on good special effects.

Actors have seven tracks going in their minds: They’ve got all the research they’ve done for the part, then they have whatever the director asked them to do, then they’ve got what the departments like special effects need them to do.

With ‘Tron,’ we had so many crew members around and a stage full of special effects people that know exactly what has to be done in the situations. You’re on a stage in sets the whole time.

I grew up loving films and making stupid movies with a good friend of mine, who now actually has a career in a really prominent special effects house, so he’s still doing it. We just started messing around with a camera.

I never wanted to be in the show business. I wanted to do special effects.

It’s a fallacy, long rebuffed by science, that humans use only about 10% of their brainpower. But it is true about most summer movies. Pouring their wizardry into special effects and well-choreographed fights, warm-weather action films rarely challenge the viewer with grand notions or beautifully baffling imagery.

The Apple has the fewest bells and whistles. It has simple sound and few graphics special effects. In a way, that is a weakness because markets for the other machines are getting bigger.

The action movies changed radically when it became possible to Velcro your muscles on. It was the beginning of a new era. The visual took over. The special effects became more important than the single person. That was the beginning of the end.

When I was a kid, I loved action, war, horror, monster movies… Anything with special effects. I was fascinated with how’d they do that.

I accept the Old Testament as more of an action movie: blood, car chases, evacuations, a lot of special effects, seas dividing, mass murder, adultery. The children of God are running amok, wayward. Maybe that’s why they’re so relatable.

I’d like to act in a film without special effects.

That was fun to play. There were some nice special effects coupled with some really nice moments with child and wife. I also was able to age to about 100 years in ‘Brief Candle.’

Magic is really performing special effects live.

I think when you take away all, like, the premieres and press stuff and all the special effects, then you just come down to the fact that it’s all about acting, and I think that has been the best bit for me.

Asylum was good exposure for me and it is still shown quite often on television. I remember the special effects people had fun making a little doll that looked like me – which is not so easy – and it had to move along the floor.

Truthfully, I don’t know how those special effects people do it.

Most of the time, I leave the camera on the obvious special effects, like the rubber bodies, so that it become obvious they’re not real.

What I would like to do is a thriller. I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time, but one that was not at all dependent on special effects. Just purely psychological, but will scare the hell out of you. That’s what I would like to do. I have not found it yet.

I think a lot of the time these days people are so concerned about having the right camera and the right film and the right lenses and all the special effects that go along with it, even the computer, that they’re missing the key element.

Special effects are becoming more and more affordable and looking more and more like the real thing.

Special effects movies have taken over the universe. That and scary movies.

Before I start, I search the internet for hours looking for inspiration – I look at horror movies, special effects, everything. Then, I take a bunch of screenshots, and pile them together in Photoshop to create a story for myself. I plan it out in my head, but I don’t ever practice beforehand.

I like doing as many special effects in camera, as much as possible.

Movies, particularly the big hit movies, are all just special effects. But on television, the writers are in control of the shows, and they control the scripts.

The main prank that we play with props is for people’s birthdays. The special effects people will put a little explosive in the cake so it blows up in their face – that’s always fun to play on a guest star, or one of the trainees or someone who’s new.

Special effects are characters. Special effects are essential elements. Just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

I saw a segment of Douglas Trumbull’s special effects for ‘Blade Runner’ on the KNBC-TV news. I recognized it immediately. It was my own interior world. They caught it perfectly.

I was certain when I was about 10 years old that I was going to be a special effects artist or a make-up man. I loved that stuff and pursued it for quite some time, actually.

You are always hoping that movie audiences are interested in characters and interested in story values rather than just mindless special effects. But you never know.

I didn’t see Dr. No for a year, but I liked it when I saw it. It was a fun movie. I don’t like the Bond movies now. I hate special effects.

I love the power of words – no music or special effects – and I want to demonstrate that power.

I’m frustrated with Hollywood and television and the movies because they see science fiction as an excuse for eye candy, for lots of great special effects.

Magic is like special effects live, and I love to perform, so it sounded like doing magic tricks were a good way to entertain people.

When I used to work in special effects at the model shop, I couldn’t imagine having a better job. We made spaceships and miniature cities and I was working on robots. Then the ‘MythBusters’ opportunity came along.

Whenever I see pointless use of special effects, I reach for something else.

I always wanted to tell stories. Well, at least, I always came back to the notion of storytelling when the glitz and glamour of being a special effects designer or a fighter pilot or a DEA agent wore off.

You know, the reward for ‘Captain America’ is amazing. It’s always fun to see a giant spectacle film and see the fun stuff – the special effects.

In this era of digital special effects, I think it’s good to work with our hands and our hearts, to use water and clay, to dry it in the air from the sun. This brings you back to the element of life.

When you’re in something as successful as ‘Transformers,’ you can’t use it as a sales piece for your ability as an actress because it’s all about the special effects.

When you watch the films that I’m inspired by – from the ’60s and ’70s – it’s not about the special effects: it’s about the story; it’s about characters and relationships.

Photoshop makes things look beautiful just as you have special effects in movies. It’s just a part of life.

I think when you make a genre or horror movie, you need a budget. When you skimp on blood and special effects and all that, it automatically looks cheesy. But a movie like ‘The Room’ is psychologically bad, which goes a lot deeper than just technically bad.

I have a DVD of ‘Lois & Clark,’ and I don’t know how the special effects hold up, because all the technology’s gotten so much better. But the writer – the woman that wrote ‘Lois & Clark’ – I think those stories were good.

It’s funny, because even though on a drama like ‘Picket Fences’ those long monologues would stress me out, doing special effects where there’s a green screen and there’s nobody there to to react to and you have to recite all this dialogue, it’s so much more difficult.

Cinema is still a very young art form with extraordinary techniques and very impressive special effects but sometimes it seems the soul has been taken out of things.

When I was younger, I was hopefully going to do animation and special effects.

The daily work on special effects is fairly mundane.

I think audiences have hit the wall with CGI and special effects. They have seen so many over-the-top events that they can’t suspend disbelief.

I spent four months in Prague in these blue rooms reacting to nothing and you basically place your faith in the hands of the director and the special effects co-coordinator and you keep your fingers crossed and hope that the creatures look really scary.

People often tell me how much they love the digital skies that we obviously painted for ‘War Horse.’ Well, there’s not a single sky that we put in through special effects. The skies you see in the movie are the skies that we experienced – but it was definitely challenging at times.