Top 5 Most Iconic Old School Visual Effects

With so much CGI in movies today, it's easy to forget where all the 'special effects' in film making once began.
Back in a time before chroma keying, rotoscoping, motion tracking, e.t.c were invented, filmmakers were forced to think of other ways to trick the viewer into believing the unreal was real.
Here are what we consider to be the top 5 most iconic old school visual effects.
From these following movies:
Ella Cinders (1926)
Safety Last (1923)
Modern Times (1936)
The Ten Commandments (1923)
Steamboat Bill Jr (1923)

Happy viewing! :)

[johnhein]

Buster Keaton's special effects is that he was a real talented mad lad!

[johandickricker]

The thing with Harold Lloyd on the clock was still really dangerous because there were no safety nets and if he fell down he could have easily bounced off the mattress and went over the side of the building anyway. Him and many of his silent era contemporaries did lots of dangerous stunts. Lloyd himself was missing a few fingers from a firecracker stunt in one of his early films. He wore a white glove in the rest of his movies that concealed this from the audience.

[SirJohn]

One of my favorite visual effects of the black and white era was using red/ green lighting for transformations. Like if a character was becoming something else they'd put red makeup on them but use red lighting to blend in, when it was time to change they'd shift to green lighting so all the makeup is revealed IN REAL TIME!

The Octopus transformation is the best example of this and I know that The Twilight Zone also used this for revealing the devil's true form, great stuff.

[klunkymunkey]

I had no idea that special features were around in 1923.

[Naraic]

That Jelly scene in Bruce Almighty was alot more meta than I ever realised. Its too much of a coincidence not to be linked 😂😂

[jaytamayo]

So that's how they did it before. Searching for how The 10 Comm (50's) did the dividing of water. The last one is probably where Jackie Chan got that idea used in one of his movies.

[NickyGi]

0:34 This photo is fake, the building was not like that in the movie, there were upper flours and also they did a wide shot that showed the whole building from the bottom and above.

[TheCarlAlfred]

Hi! May I ask whats the title of the BGM on which is playing? Thanks in advance.

[jackmorrison]

But as the animation of Lloyd's clock stunt shows the set was built on a platform. The platform had to be on the edge of the rooftop to allow the camera on the pedestal above HL only to capture the prop wall set/clock and the street scene below. This meant HL with only one good hand was on a 15 foot high prop wall with a few mattresses below him BUT NO SAFETY RAILINGS around the edges. If he falls and bounces he goes over the roof edge to his death. As film critic Roger Ebert wrote (he was no Lloyd fan) : "Harold Lloyd was in mortal danger".

[FintanOMalley]

You stole this video from "Old Movies Scenes Old Filming Techniques Old Stunts Special Effects Charlie Chaplin Plug my bum up" by Antique Meme Dealer. Which was a video uploaded 5 months before this video, its even the same length you just changed the order of the effects, that is such a scummy thing to do.

[Juggernautytnothing]

That's special effects not visual effects.

[kingpanthom]

Pathetic video, so much big font thats too with background white color. breaking the continuity