Thesubstitution splice[1][2] orstop trick[3] is a cinematicspecial effect in which filmmakers achieve an appearance, disappearance, or transformation[2] by altering one or more selected aspects of themise-en-scène between two shotswhile maintaining the same framing and other aspects of the scene in both shots. The effect is usually polished by carefulediting to establish a seamless cut and optimal moment of change.[4] It has also been referred to asstop motion substitution orstop-action.
The pioneering French filmmakerGeorges Méliès claimed to have accidentally developed the stop trick, as he wrote inLes Vues Cinématographiques in 1907[5][6] (translated from French):
An obstruction of the apparatus that I used in the beginning (a rudimentary apparatus in which the film would often tear or get stuck and refuse to advance) produced an unexpected effect, one day when I was prosaically filming the Place de L'Opéra; I had to stop for a minute to free the film and to get the machine going again. During this time passersby, omnibuses, cars, had all changed places, of course. When I later projected the film, reattached at the point of the rupture, I suddenly saw the Madeleine-Bastille bus changed into a hearse, and men changed into women. The trick-by-substitution, called the stop trick, had been invented and two days later I performed the first metamorphosis of men into women and the first sudden disappearances that had, at the beginning, such a great success.
According to the film scholar Jacques Deslandes, it is more likely that Méliès discovered the trick by carefully examining a print of theEdison Manufacturing Company's 1895 filmThe Execution of Mary Stuart, in which a primitive version of the trick appears. In any case, the substitution splice was both the first special effect Méliès perfected, and the most important in his body of work.[2]
Film historians such asRichard Abel and Elizabeth Ezra established that much of the effect was the result of Méliès's careful frame matching during the editing process, creating a seamlessmatch cut out of two separately staged shots.[4] Indeed, Méliès often used substitution splicing not as an obvious special effect, but as an inconspicuous editing technique, matching and combining shorttakes into one apparently seamless longer shot.[7] Substitution splicing could become even more seamless when the film wascolored by hand, as many of Méliès's films were; the addition of painted color acts as asleight of hand technique allowing the cuts to pass by unnoticed.[8]
The substitution splice was the most popular cinematic special effect intrick films and early film fantasies, especially those that evolved from the stage tradition of theféerie.[1]Segundo de Chomón is among the other filmmakers who used substitution splicing to create elaborate fantasy effects.[1]D.W. Griffith's 1909 filmThe Curtain Pole, starringMack Sennett, used substitution splices for comedic effect.[9] The transformations made possible by the substitution splice were so central to early fantasy films that, in France, such films were often described simply asscènes à transformation.[10]
This technique is different from thestop motion technique, in which the entire shot is created frame by frame.[11]