Alfred Hitchcock once said, "If it's a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on."
From the sight of Ben Hur, steering his horses in a chariot race in 1959, to Hans Solo revving up the Millennium Falcon into supra light speed for interstellar travel in 1977, to this summer's skyscraper-traversing "Spiderman 2," visual imagery has remained a driving force in cinematic storytelling. Nothing has dazzled the moviegoer's mind in the past century more than visual artistry projected on the silver screen.
As to how movies achieve such inexplicable visual effects, audiences are often baffled. Thursday at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo native Stan Szymanski shed light on the ambiguous nature of visual effects like a renegade magician reveals the tricks of his colleagues.
Szymanski is one of the head honchos at Sony Pictures Imageworks, where he has worked on a number of films as Senior Vice President of Digital Production.
"We worked on (films like) 'Contact,' 'Starship Troopers,' 'What Dreams May Come' and then that landmark piece of cinema - 'Anaconda,'" Szymanski joked. "Can't Jennifer Lopez act?"
Szymanski grew up in Lackawanna and later attended Buffalo State College. His deeply rooted passion for films goes back to his early childhood. He remembers reenacting the famous "Psycho" scene as a boy when he dressed up as an old woman and leapt out of the closet with a cleaver just to scare his older brother.
His fascination with movies still hold true today.
"My approach to movies is as an obsessed fan if nothing else," Szymanski said.
He began the lecture with a discourse on the history of visual effects, aided with clips relevant to the evolution of the art. Szymanski then broke down the components of some of the most famous visual effects in cinematic history including the conclusion of "The Birds" and the tricycle scene in "The Shining."
Spectator Sam Terramoun was delighted to have a chance to look behind the scenes.
"I've always loved special effects since I was young. I think that this is a way we can learn from people who already know. You can only grow by sharing knowledge."
The lecture was both informative and introspective as Szymanski covered a multitude of aspects of visual storytelling.
Mary Boom was both impressed and amazed regarding the breadth of content Szymanski recited in just over an hour.
"I don't know how he was breathing up there, he was just talking so fast. It was like he was a bagpipe."
Szymanski, speaking a mile a minute, intrigued the audience with a mix of personal anecdotes and insight on scenes famous for their visual effects. It also helped that the lecture was pleasingly void of the incomprehensible technical jargon that he is acquainted with. He kept it simple, educating and entertaining simultaneously.
With computer-animated movies like "Shrek" and "The Incredibles" popping up more frequently, the moviemaking industry is finding itself in a new epoch. Some even claim that this step is as monumental as the transformation from silent movies to sound. Szymanski, acknowledging this revolution, broke down the technological innovations involved in the making of the new Tom Hanks holiday release, "The Polar Express." Yet, as the technologies evolve with each passing generation of moviegoers, his team of visual artists works under the same credo:
"Our job is to not be noticed. We need you to believe Spiderman is flying through the air on a web. We need you to believe. Our job is to be invisible."
Photo: Courtesy of Matthew Messina, from the RMBERS' Instagram page
