ᏚᎢᎪᎡ ᏔᎪᎡᏚ ᴛʀɪʟᴏɢʏ

And this SFX glut has, equally, made its way to television; just think of some of those epic Game of Thrones and Walking Dead battle scenes.

“The line between TV and movies is eroding,” visual effects producer Luke Groves explained to Vulture. “That’s now the way of the world.”

Explaining the process that goes into making such spellbinding special effects, London-based visual effects expert John Rafique - who’s worked on Top Gear, 2005 horror The Descent, and Ricky Gervais’ upcoming Netflix comedy series After Life - tells BBC Three: “Something the public might not realise is the amount of planning, research, and testing that goes into even the shortest special effects sequence.

“What eventually turns out to be a two second shot in a film can take a whole crew of SFX men and women a week to make.”

Looking ahead to how special effects could change in the years to come, John adds: “I kind of think the future is always to make the most unreal, dramatic effect as possible.

“Our advances tend to be in the slow process of refining our equipment to do that more and more efficiently. It's the advances in the other areas on set that changes the look of things on screen: new cameras, new VFX software, and new post-production techniques.”

And a viral Instagram account is now lifting the curtain on the special effects process that goes into making movies so magical.

The account, with more than 400,000 followers, gives a fascinating breakdown of what iconic movie moments look like before and after the visual effects teams have done their stuff.

Here are some of the most jaw-dropping transformations.