Introduction

My name is Joseph Pfaltzgraff, I am a senior majoring in computer engineering technology. I am taking this class since 20th century movie were actually the first movies I ever saw as a kid they left a big impact on my life. For example some of movies I watched consistently in my youth was Goldeneye, Robocop, the Original Star Wars series, the Karate Kids trilogy, and the Indiana Jones trilogy. As I continued to watch these movies I became more and more interested in how they were able to accomplish some of their practical effects. For instance I thought it was very clever in Raiders of the Lost Ark for the famous head melting scene they made layers of a gelatin mold over a mold of Ronald Lacey's character, Major Arnold Toht in a screaming position and having it exposed to a heat lamp thus each of the gelatin molds would melt leaving nothing but the mold within the frame of the shot. I always had an appreciation for these practical effects considering all the wonderment of these effects for movies now in days is gone with the overuse of CGI effects.