The BBC "Special Effects" exhibition, which opens at the Science Museum in London today, shows how the bangs, the blood and the smoke are simulated for the television screen. It is an exhibition of which Sam Peckinpah would be proud.
There is a knife that leaves a trail of blood when drawn across the skin, a dagger for " knife-in-the-back " effects and a disintegrating blood sack to give a realistic impression of someone being shot. Bricks (for throwing or bashing on heads) are made of polystyrene, a piece of wood from foamed polyurethane a rat is animated by electricity.
Those wounded French soldiers lying around the battlefield in War and Peace are disguised special effects assistants providing background smoke from secreted canisters. Dr Who's adversaries in outer space are not fiendish monsters but are "made from various plastic sheet and foam materials, painted and sprayed". At least Dr Who (actor Jon Pertwee) is real flesh and blood. I think.
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