Look, up on the movie screen. Is it a bird, or a plane? If it's flying through the air or through outer space, the scene was likely created using a bit of movie trickery known as the blue-screen process. This special-effects technique allows a filmmaker to place objects and actors in difficult-to-film situations with ease. It has been steadily refined over the years and is now ubiquitous in big-budget juggernauts. The 2002 film Star Wars: Episode II―Attack of the Clones, for example, uses a version of the blue-screen process in nearly every shot. But the basic concepts behind this mainstay of the movie industry go back to the 1920s.
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