Stop Trick

A camera trick used a great deal before more sophisticated special effects were contrived. They stop the camera, change or add something to the shot, and start it again with everything else in the same positions. It's entirely possible this was the very first special effect, used in films made in the first years of cinema, like J. Stuart Blackton's Enchanted Drawing , in which a vaudeville artist draws a glass of wine, and then, magically pulls a real glass, full of real wine off the page. Yes, standards were lower back then.

Also known as "locking off".

Compare to Match Cut and Gilligan Cut.

Examples of Stop Trick include:

Advertising

• Parodied/Tributed in a Netflix instant streaming commercial. A girl from a stereotypical 1940's movie musical family manages to imagine a Wii Remote into her hand. Her arm's position between the two cuts is deliberately off, to provide a corny old-school look.

Film

• Accidentally developed by pioneering filmmaker George Méliès in 1896, making this Older Than Radio (and the Ur Special Effect as well). According to the story, Méliès was filming a street when the camera jammed, and had to stop filming to fix it. Watching the footage, he saw a streetcar suddenly turn into a hearse at the point the camera stopped. Used extensively in his groundbreaking A Trip to the Moon.
  • A century later, directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris used the same technique for The Smashing Pumpkins' video "Tonight, Tonight", which was an homage to Méliès' film.
  • The Apollo 17 episode of From the Earth To The Moon also pays homage to Méliès and his film Le Voyage Dans La Lune, showing the director implementing the effect to cause telescopes to magically turn into stools.
• This WAS the very first special effect in film. It was used in one of Edison's early films not long after the movie film was invented in the first place. The film depicted the execution of a historical queen. Many viewers thought the poor actress had actually been killed. (Dying for your art?)
• Featured near the end of Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood, when Taketori Washizu is shot through the throat.
• Used to hilarious effect in Anchorman. A disheveled Ron Burgundy goes into the men's room...and comes out clean cut with superhuman speed.
  • Tommy Boy utilizes the same trick for Richard's split-second wardrobe change in the airplane restroom.
  • Lili Von Shtupp does it as well in Blazing Saddles, when she changes into something "more comfortable".
• Used in the beginning of Secret Window to make it appear that Johnny Depp's character has driven through a parking lot with the camera on the hood and then backed away from said camera in the same shot.
• Watching Turkish Star Wars and drinking every time one of these happen will quickly lead to liver poisoning.
• Early black-and-white horror films such as The Wolf Man staged their transformation scenes like this, using progressive stages of makeup.
• This is how Morbius' protective shutters in Forbidden Planet open and close.
• Done in Oh, God! in the final courtroom scene, when God repeatedly makes a deck of cards appear and disappear.
• Hugo shows a film shoot that uses this trick, letting us see how the shot is changed as well as how it looks in the finished scene.
• Similarly done in the film version of Bewitched, where we see the trick done from 'behind the scenes'.
• In Aleksandr Ptushko's film Sadko (The Magic Voyage of Sinbad to MST3K fans), the elderly yet wily Trifon persuades Sadko to take him on his voyage by blowing on an egg in the palm of his hand and turning it into a bird. The effect is somewhat diminished by the use of a Stop Trick to achieve this change.

Live Action TV

• Used on every episode of The Monkees, generally accompanied by a 'pop' or 'boink' noise.
• Used a lot on Bewitched: Samantha would twitch her nose and "Fwing" something would change. Sometimes it would involve Samantha flinging up her arms instead of twitching. Elizabeth Montgomery would have to stand completely still with her arms sticking straight up while the set was adjusted. Not an easy task to say the least. Eventually, the producers came up with a special brace to aid her.
• Similarly seen on I Dream of Jeannie.
• And My Favorite Martian, particularly when Uncle Martin turned invisible or visible.
• Also possibly part of how they do the "Vamping Out" effects on Buffy and Angel.
  • Sort of, yeah. The vamping out involves taking two shots and having the first dissolve into the other; it's a teeny bit more sophisticated than a true Stop Trick where the scenes change within a split second and there's no transition between the two (a.k.a. a jump cut).
  • The first ever on-screen vamp out (Darla in the pilot) used a Stop Trick.
• The standard TARDIS materialisation method in Doctor Who did this, with a dissolve instead of a jump cut. The Raston Warrior Robot in "The Five Doctors" disappeared and reappeared this way.
• The original Star Trek series would do this whenever the Sufficiently Advanced Alien needed to make stuff disappear.
  • Also the method used for the transporters. The memoirs point out that it's very hard to get actors to stay still long enough to film the effect properly without multiple takes.
  • There is at least one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where the crew gets frozen by the weird physics of the week — but you can see them not quite succeeding in holding still.
  • The "Q flash" was used to cover up tiny movements that other actors made while John de Lancie moved into, or out of, camera view for Q's sudden appearances and disappearances while the cameras were stopped.
• Skits on Mystery Science Theater 3000 (particularly any of those involving Observer) employ this cut a lot (usually accompanied with a little popping noise). This is probably partly due to the show's low budget, but it's also probably an homage to Star Trek's use of the Stop Trick.
  • Used heavily in the Design for Dreaming short.
  • As well as Mr. B Natural.
• Used quite a bit to demonstrate Hiro's timestopping powers in Heroes.
• Used in Red Dwarf to allow Rimmer to obtain holographic items out of thin air and change clothes/hair.
  • Also used in the ad for Kryten's replacement, Hudzen, in the episode "The Last Day", when he demonstrates that he's "10x faster than any other droid" by "instantly" cooking a chicken (uncooked chicken + special FX beam + freeze = cooked chicken!)
  • In "Out of Time", when Starbug hits pockets of unreality, causing Starbug to disappear (so the crew are flying through space on chairs) and everyone's heads to become animal heads.
• Noticeable in the early Power Rangers series, mostly in the giant monster fights when the enemy exploded. In fact, it's still being used in Super Sentai (and various other Tokusatsu) today. As shown in unused scenes from some Kamen Rider shows, this is how they handle transformations: a shot is taken with the actor, then one with the costumed stuntman in the same position, and finally the two shots are combined as a simultanious fade out/fade in with a CGI Transformation Sequence covering up the transition.
• Used a lot on Sabrina the Teenage Witch, especially whenever someone would magically change their clothes. Particularly obvious in some of the first-season episodes.
• This is the miracle that allows Muppets to pick up objects when their hands are clearly incapable of it. "Secrets of the Muppets", an episode of The Jim Henson Hour, explained this technique at length (described as a "tape edit" effect). Gonzo denies that his hands are no more than useless pieces of fabric, and demonstrates by repeatedly picking up a telephone. Every time it rings, he places his hand on the receiver, the shot cuts to another angle, and he lifts the phone which is now attached to his hand. Once he realizes the audience has caught on, Gonzo flees the scene...with the phone still attached, so he gets yanked back. Kermit arrives and reminds him that you should never leave a room when your hand is still glued to the telephone.
• This gimmick is used over and over again in the Monty Python's Flying Circus "Confuse-A-Cat" sketch. It's better seen than described.
• Also used regularly in The Goodies, either to cut from the dummy that has just been thrown out of a window back to the actor lying on the ground, or (more convincingly) when the team walk into a wardrobe and immediately emerge from the other side wearing whatever outfit is suitable for that week's plot.
• Happens a lot in Lost in Space, always accompanied by a distinctive sound effect.
• This was used on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood pretty extensively, as when Lady Elaine used her boomerang to turn things upside down or Purple Panda travelling "The Purple Way".
• In Arrested Development, GOB makes use of this very ineptly to perform illusions in a Bluth Company video. Due to him paying no attention to what was happening behind him, the cuts are obvious.

Web Original

• Used in Adarah's Ultimate Utopia XXIII parody video, to make slaves appear. Strangely though, they do have access to more advanced special effects techniques.
• Quantum Leap, whenever hologram Al appeared or disappeared.
• http://www.youtube.com/user/Stalker2K7 Stalker2K7 uses this in his Zoo Tycoon 2 videos.
• This is how The Joker from the The Joker Blogs made a fork disappear.

Western Animation

• Ghosts in Filmations Ghostbusters would appear and disappear in this manner.
• Welcome To Pooh Corner and Dumbos Circus are two shows (which continued to be rerun until the channel's relaunch) from The (old) Disney Channel that regularly did this for various special effects.
• Spoofed on American Dad. After watching Bewitched, Stan decides to live like he was in The Sixties and asks that Francine greet him home from work with a martini. Trouble is, Stan can't hold down liquor very well. After drinking one, he starts having blackouts, and notices that things change every time he blinks, and is thus convinced that Francine is a witch.