The Production Guide
SFX
by Martin Willey

The Beta Cloud Space cloud effects were made by adding condensed milk into a water tank and filming from beneath. The first water cloud effect was probably by US SFX pioneer "Buddy" Gillespie to create the atomic explosions in The Beginning or the End (1947); Wally Veevers also used a cloud tank for the atomic explosion in the first UK colour science fiction film Satellite in the Sky (1956). The Ten Commandments (1956) poured grey paint into water to create the stormy clouds over the parting of the red sea (with some smoke shots). It was also used by Doug Trumbull and Scott Squires on Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), using tempera paint and a base layer of salt water; so effective was the technique that it was widely used in many 1980s films (often literally in the same fish tank) including Raiders of The Lost Ark and Poltergeist.

New Adam, New Eve Originally the SFX crew intended to use stop motion for the cave animals, but time and expense forced them to use the lizards. The film One Million B.C. (1940) memorably enlarged lizards, crocodiles and other animals to portray dinosaurs, providing stock footage for many B-movies of the 1950s and 1960s. Two notable films to make the same approach were Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959) and The Lost World (1960), both of which were widely derided. The Thunderbirds episode "Attack of the Alligators" had "giant" alligators with the puppet characters. Since the 1960s, giant lizards are generally used for comedic purposes only.