Substitution splice

File:The Execution of Mary Stuart, 1895.ogv

The earliest known use of the effect, in the 1895 film The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots

Complete 30 second Mutoscope reel of Sherlock Holmes Baffled. Sherlock Holmes enters a parlour to find it being burgled. When confronted, the villain disappears. Holmes attempts to ignore the event by lighting a cigar, but upon the thief's reappearance tries to reclaim the sack of stolen goods, using a pistol stored in his dressing gown pocket. After Holmes collects his property, the bag vanishes from his hand into the grasp of the thief, who promptly disappears through a window. At this point the film ends abruptly with Holmes looking "baffled".

Sherlock Holmes Baffled, an early silent film employing the effect for comic purposes

The substitution splice<ref name=Moen>Template:Citation</ref><ref name=Williams/> or stop trick<ref>Template:Citation</ref> is a cinematic special effect in which filmmakers achieve an appearance, disappearance, or transformation<ref name=Williams>Template:Citation</ref> by altering one or more selected aspects of the mise-en-scène between two shots while maintaining the same framing and other aspects of the scene in both shots. The effect is usually polished by careful editing to establish a seamless cut and optimal moment of change.<ref name=Lim/> It has also been referred to as stop motion substitution or stop-action.

The pioneering French filmmaker Georges Méliès claimed to have accidentally developed the stop trick, as he wrote in Les Vues Cinématographiques in 1907<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> (translated from French): Template:Blockquote

According to the film scholar Jacques Deslandes, it is more likely that Méliès discovered the trick by carefully examining a print of the Edison Manufacturing Company's 1895 film The Execution of Mary Stuart, in which a primitive version of the trick appears. In any case, the substitution splice was both the first special effect Méliès perfected, and the most important in his body of work.<ref name=Williams/>

Film historians such as Richard Abel and Elizabeth Ezra established that much of the effect was the result of Méliès's careful frame matching during the editing process, creating a seamless match cut out of two separately staged shots.<ref name=Lim>Template:Citation</ref> Indeed, Méliès often used substitution splicing not as an obvious special effect, but as an inconspicuous editing technique, matching and combining short takes into one apparently seamless longer shot.<ref>Template:Citation</ref> Substitution splicing could become even more seamless when the film was colored by hand, as many of Méliès's films were; the addition of painted color acts as a sleight of hand technique allowing the cuts to pass by unnoticed.<ref name=Yumibe>Template:Citation</ref>

The substitution splice was the most popular cinematic special effect in trick films and early film fantasies, especially those that evolved from the stage tradition of the féerie.<ref name=Moen/> Segundo de Chomón is among the other filmmakers who used substitution splicing to create elaborate fantasy effects.<ref name=Moen/> D.W. Griffith's 1909 film The Curtain Pole, starring Mack Sennett, used substitution splices for comedic effect.<ref>Template:Citation</ref> The transformations made possible by the substitution splice were so central to early fantasy films that, in France, such films were often described simply as scènes à transformation.<ref>Template:Citation</ref>

This technique is different from the stop motion technique, in which the entire shot is created frame by frame.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>