Seeing is Believing

Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1985 U.K.) is not filled with mind blowing special effects, but like a lot of movies what effects it does use is meant to enhance the viewer’s experience. One key special effect that was used in this film was the use of miniatures. The key to working with miniatures is to work them in with real footage and blend the two so that it all seems as real as possible. Brazil uses these miniatures to both “enhance the realism of the fantastic narrative” AND to separate the “real” world from the fantasy world.


There are places in the movie where miniature footage and real footage were used together to enhance and enlarge the overall set. When you see the outside of Sam Lowrey’s apartment complex, the buildings far away and the surrounding area is filled with miniature footage that help create the illusion that the apartments are very high up and close together. Another scene were the miniatures are used as “real” landscape is when Sam and Jill are driving out of the city and on both sides of the road are a vast long line of billboards and outside of the billboards is a desolate landscape. This is another use of the miniatures to help as part of the set and scenery to make this “real” world look more real to the viewer.
In opposition to the use of subtle effects that help create the “real” world in which the narrative takes place, there was the use of a miniature to create the illusion of Sam flying. In this instance the special effect is used specifically to give us a feeling of Sam’s dreams. The fact that he is flying in addition to the pink and purple sky with clouds swirling as he flies through them tells us that this is not reality. This is proven to us to be a dream when he wakes up and the world is a dreary shade of grey again and Sam has no wings to fly. In this case the special effect is used as a means to separate fantasy from reality. Gunning accuses early trick films of using a story to “simply provide a frame upon which to string a demonstration of the magical possibilities of the cinema.” (Cornea pg. 250)In today’s day and age we are familiar with what cinema can do. When we see a movie we should go into it with a slight suspension of disbelief. Even though we are familiar with special effects, if they don’t look “real” to us we feel cheated. I except to see some sort of camera trick or special effect in almost any movie I see, but if it blends into the story and is not just purely a spectacle, the audience is more willing to accept it as a “real” part of the film.


I don’t think that the use of special effects comment in any way about how the movie feels about technology, at least not specifically. The movie itself sets up an opinion of technology that shows it as unreliable. The miniatures when used are just a way to symbolically show what is happening in Sam’s mind or to enhance the realism of the scene. It is true that in these scenes there is a separation between the reality of the film and the dream world of the main character. It is also true that Sam is battling some form of bureaucracy mixed with technology, but I see the special effects as a means to an end. It’s function in any film is to show what cannot be captured in real life at all or would cost too much money. I see film experience much the same way as Baudrillard sees Disneyland. After viewing a film your perceptions on what is real may change. Much like Disneyland the images are “neither true nor false” (Baudrillard pg.175) but merely a distraction from what is real. Special effects are used to make us see things we want to believe are real, if not just for that time we are in the theater. Special effects when used correctly are part of the story and are sometimes needed to help us believe the story is or could be “real”.



Christine Cornea, “Science Fiction Cinema: Between Fantasy and Reality” , (Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ 2007) page 250
Jean Baudrillard, “Simulacra and simulations” Course Reader, page 259 of reader, page 175 of original text.