Fred Topel of Hollywood.com has written an excellent portrait of Spielberg's special effects, as summarized in his VES acceptance speech and post-interview entitled "Steven Spielberg: An FX Master and His Vision for Visual Effects"

Digital Ego Removal: Where many big shot moguls take all the glory, Spielberg shared the credit for bringing dreams to life with all the artists of the Visual Effects Society.

""You all know that we have a lot of dreams, the directors and writers who put all the stuff together, but you also know that they become sometimes a dream that doesn't quite have a picture frame around it. It's just an idea--'Wouldn't it be cool if we could do something like this?' And you've got to give yourselves credit, because you're the ones that fill in the colors and bring our dreams into focus by showing us what can be done. It is an amazing collaboration that filmmakers with this group, a collaboration that has resulted in some of the most amazing motion picture images the world has ever seen. I cannot wait to see what all of you are going to think about and do--not in the next 20 years; next year.""

Trick Photography: Even with no training, Spielberg figured out how to make movie magic as a kid.

""It's really interesting how this all begins, because I did my first special effect shot in a little movie I was making when I was 13 years old, 14 years old. I wanted to do a movie about UFOs. I remember taking this black poster board and taking a pin and just stabbing holes in this black poster board all day long for thousands of holes. And then taking a big [light] and I took a little 8mm movie camera and I shot the poster board. Then I took the camera, rewound the film, then I put this little plastic spaceship and hung it from two strings that I painted black so they didn't show up. And I just shot the spaceship doing nothing but standing in the center of the frame. Two and a half weeks later, because in those days it took two and a half weeks to get your damn film processed and sent back to your house. I would put it on the 8mm projector, I would run it on a wall with all the curtains closed and I got to, for the first time in my life, see a special effect that I did in my own bedroom on a Saturday. I was just kind of thinking, 'Well, that's a start.'""

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