Special effect

The illusions or tricks of the eye used in the film, television, theatre, video game, and simulator industries to simulate the imagined events in a story or virtual world are traditionally called special effects (often abbreviated as SFX, SPFX, or simply FX).

Special effects are traditionally divided into the categories of optical effects and mechanical effects. With the emergence of digital filmmaking a distinction between special effects and visual effects has grown, with the latter referring to digital post-production while "special effects" referring to mechanical and optical effects.

Mechanical effects (also called practical or physical effects) are usually accomplished during the live-action shooting. This includes the use of mechanized props, scenery, scale models, animatronics, pyrotechnics and atmospheric effects: creating physical wind, rain, fog, snow, clouds, etc. Making a car appear to drive by itself and blowing up a building are examples of mechanical effects. Mechanical effects are often incorporated into set design and makeup. For example, a set may be built with break-away doors or walls to enhance a fight scene, or prosthetic makeup can be used to make an actor look like a non-human creature.

Action Movie Kid

Action Movie Kid is an action web series created by Daniel Hashimoto. It contains his son, James, as the main character. Each clip is a short home movie of James playing, when something dramatic happens: explosions, death-defying feats, and other crazy stunts. All of the dangerous effects and stunts are added in post-production by Daniel Hashimoto, who is a Dreamworks Animation vis-dev artist and freelancer. He uses Adobe After Effects to make the short videos for YouTube.

The web series has 324,894 subscribers on YouTube and 59,758,084 views as of this update on Mar. 1, 2015.

Book Adaption

There will be a book adaption based on the web series in May 5, 2015. According to James in the book's trailer, he will fight a gooey monster and claims to be a bedtime story

Commercial Success Inspired by

In June 2014 The Escape Pod Ad Agency contacted Daniel Hashimoto to co-write and direct commercials for their client Toys"R"Us. In addition to writing and directing Hashimoto also did much of the VFX work along with Eric Miller Animation Studios.