Miniatures

Miniatures have been used in films for decades throughout the film industry.  Miniatures, for those who don't know, are like miniature figurines.  Just like models, they are fabricated in order to get specific shots, and were originally used for special effects.
One of the first films to ever use miniatures was A Trip to the Moon which is short film by George Melies from 1902.  The miniatures were used to show how a group of men were able to travel through space in a space ship and eventually land on the moon.  Without the use of miniature models, they would not have been able to show that they were going to the moon, let alone outer space.

Though miniatures are not as widely recognized as they used to be, due to the fact that CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) is so popular today, there are still many films that use miniature models.  Examples of this would be in the Lord of the Rings films by Peter Jackson as well as the Harry Potter films by Chris Columbus.  These films used miniatures of certain building structures in order to get close detail and usually add in other details and backgrounds after to give it a completed and finished look to it.

The use of miniatures through the years has changed greatly, with many more films deciding to use CGI instead of miniatures, however they are still looked at as being a very important part of special effects because it is one of the things that lead into the use of CGI and other techniques.

Many other films that use special effects:
-Blade Runner
-Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
-The Abyss
-Back to the Future II
-Independence Day
-Titanic
-The Dark Knight
-Inception
-The Impossible