Forced Perspective: Hollywood’s Trusted Special Effect, From Silent Films to the 'Lord of the Rings' Trilogy

From the dawn of the medium to the modern-day, forced perspective has been used to create a magical, mind-boggling effect, tricking the eye into believing giants or Lilliputians could walk among us , that Elijah Wood is dwarfed by Sir Ian McKellen , or that Will Ferrell is surrounded by elves .

Forced perspective evolved during the 1920s and 1930s, as it was frequently employed by silent film comedians to make their death-defying stunts look more dangerous than they actually were. For example, the iconic scene of Harold Lloyd hanging from the clock-face in Safety Last! was achieved by constructing a fake wall atop a tall building and angling the camera so that the cars and people in the street below looked miles away.

Forced perspective showed no sign of waning as the years rolled on and talkies, then color films began to become the norm. In the 1950s there was a fleeting trend for Lilliputian-style characters in such films as Disney’s Darby O’Gill and the Little People . Whilst no amount of movie magic can atone for the amount of bad Irish accents and stereotypes on display throughout, nevertheless, Darby O’Gill contains some of the most sophisticated forced perspective shots ever put on film.

The notion of toying with the viewer’s understanding of the language of cinema and perspective for comedic effect was mined for all it was worth by Jim Abrahams, David and Jerry Zucker in their underrated 1984 comedy classic, Top Secret! In one scene, we appear to be watching from inside a train as it pulls out of the station before it is revealed that the train is not moving, but instead the station is driving off on wheels.

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