Georges Méliès was a genius doing all of those mechanical effects in Le voyage dans la lune. Most of the effects in the short film by Méliès were either practical, physical and atmospheric effects. My favorite effect was the one where the moon occupies the whole frame and the spaceship lands on his left eye. I think this film recalls some practices of early photography. For example, in photography cameras were set up in a specific spot and was not move. The same way it was for film cameras, they were set up in front of the scenario that will record and was not able to move around. So, all of the performance had to be limited to a certain space where the frame of the film camera will take. Some of the similarities between the photographic camera and the film camera is that both can create optical effects using multiple exposures and they have to stay still. Some differences are of course, that photographic camera captures a fraction of time in a negative while a film camera captures motion and movement. It is amazing to see how the evolution of photographic and film cameras has changed.
