When great special effects innovations come along, they can convince audiences that what they're seeing on the screen is real, no matter how far-fetched it would seem in real life. "Star Wars" took you to another world, and "King Kong" took audiences to an incredible jungle island full of giant beasts, dinosaurs, and danger. It wasn't just the special effects that convinced audiences, it was how they were all brought together that convinced them that what they saw was believable. Not only did Kong seem real to moviegoers, but so did his home.
As One Hundred Years of Cinema explains, "What made 'Kong' so special was how it combined effects, under the direction of O'Brien, to create a larger feeling, more realistic world. To create the illusion of a dense jungle, O'Brien combined glass paintings, physical miniature models, and matte paintings to give Skull Island incredible depth. [It] put Kong in a realistic, three-dimensional world."
In creating the special effects for "King Kong," Willis O'Brien brought other important techniques together, including traveling matte shots and rear-screen projection. The camera also moved around "Kong," which brought more life to the creature (In "The Lost World," the camera stayed stationary during the stop motion scenes.)
It's also remarkable to think that Kong was an 18-inch miniature, but O'Brien was so skilled at moving him around that audiences believed he was a real creature. The Kong model had 100 moveable joints, and it was all the little movements and nuances that really brought the creature to life.
