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If one film could be said to have established a new high-bench mark for special effects, it would be 1968's 2001: A Space Odyssey, directed by Stanley Kubrick, who assembled his own effects team ( Douglas Trumbull, Tom Howard, Con Pedersen and Wally Veevers ) rather than use an in-house effects unit.

In this film, the spaceship miniatures were highly detailed and carefully photographed for a realistic depth of field.

The shots of spaceships were combined through hand-drawn rotoscopes and careful motion-control work, ensuring that the elements were precisely combined in the camera – a surprising throwback to the silent era, but with spectacular results.

Backgrounds of the African vistas in the " Dawn of Man " sequence were combined with soundstage photography via the then-new front projection technique.

Scenes set in zero-gravity environments were staged with hidden wires, mirror shots, and large-scale rotating sets.

The finale, a voyage through hallucinogenic scenery, was created by Douglas Trumbull using a new technique termed slit-scan.