Introduction

In 1894, « les frères Lumières » decide to organize, December 28 at “Le Salon Indien du Grand Café” in Paris, a public payable screening. This was the born of Cinema even though some, especially from the United States of America, still consider that Thomas Edison is the father of what will be known as the 7th art. Later, the cinema crossed many times; the silent films and the black and white cinema, then the first apparition of colors in cinema. However, the biggest upheaval happened with the advent of new technologies in the domain of cinema insofar as technical, synthetic innovations have given it a new dimension. In my project, I will especially focus on one of the greatest digital design and visual special effects companies of all time: Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) founded independently by George Lucas and owned by Lucasfilm Ltd. in May 1975. It was first created to realize the optical special effects for Star Wars, and then realized many other movies’ special effects like Terminator 2, Pirates of Caribbean, Jurassic Park, Transformers and Avatar etc … Therefore, I will spread over the techniques and new technologies used by ILM to realize these visual effects, and the evolution of these techniques over the time.