A practical effect is a special effect in which a prop appears to work in a situation where it obviously could not in real life (such as a ringing telephone on stage). They do not use trick photography or post-production techniques. This type of effect is normally found in live theatre.
In film, practical effect denotes an effect physically produced on-set, without computer-generated imagery or other post production techniques. Special effect is often synonymous with practical effect. In contrast, visual effects are created in post-production through photographic manipulation or computer generation.
Many of the staples of action movies are practical effects. Gunfire, bullet wounds, rain, wind, fire, and explosions can all be produced on a movie set by someone skilled in practical effects.
Christopher Nolan is a modern filmmaker noted for his preference of practical effects over computer-generated effects. Many of the effects used in his action films, including The Dark Knight and Inception, are practical.
Read more about Practical Effect: Practical Effect Techniques
Famous quotes containing the words practical and/or effect:
“Philosophy, certainly, is some account of truths the fragments and very insignificant parts of which man will practice in this workshop; truths infinite and in harmony with infinity, in respect to which the very objects and ends of the so-called practical philosopher will be mere propositions, like the rest.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Thinking is seeing.... Every human science is based on deduction, which is a slow process of seeing by which we work up from the effect to the cause; or, in a wider sense, all poetry like every work of art proceeds from a swift vision of things.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)