one of the first special effects was The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots (1895) . inventor and movie maker thomas edison substituted a dummy for the actress. in a shot sequence,mary knelt down and put her head on the block as the executioner raised a largeaxe. when the axecame down,mary is head apparently rolled off the chopping block. actually it was the dummy is head. when the audiences saw the scene, they gasped in horror. since then, filmmakers have used tricks like this to make people see things that did not happen in real life. moviemakers today still sometimes use old techniques such as small models for large objects. one of the most famous special effects in movie history was the title character in king kong, made in 1993 . the huge gorilla on top of the empire state building was actually only 18 inches(45 centimeters) high. the movie contained many revolutionary technical innovation for its time. another classic was the the ten commandments (1923) . this early cecil B. demille epic used primitive special effects techniques. the parting of the red sea was accomplished by filming water as it poured down two sides of a u-shaped tank, and then running the film backwards to make the water appear to divide. in the remake of the movie in 1956,this same scene was one of the most exciting visual effects in film history and the most expensive to date