Invisibility in Fiction - Special Effects

Special Effects

Strictly speaking, invisibility does not show up and so itself is not the subject of any special effects techniques, but the interaction of invisible subjects with the visible world does call for special effects, especially in the case of invisible people wearing visible clothing. Early films and television shows used wires and puppetry to simulate the existence of an invisible person, along with some scenes that used a matte process to delete certain elements in favor of the background. In The Invisible Man the initial shots swathed the actor's head in a black velvet hood and shot this against a black velvet background. Later, CGI techniques and green screens allowed for greater variety, such as showing rain drops on invisible man Chevy Chase in Memoirs of an Invisible Man.