Long before the modern days of Avatar, Lord of the Rings or even Star Wars for that matter, movies and television shows were being made by innovative directors without the big budgets now required to effectively showcase visual effects. This doesn’t mean the scripts they were putting on screen were devoid of the imagination that might require such illusion. As a means of coping, arguably the oldest visual effect in cinema history sprung out of a cheap camera trick: locking off. Locking off, though it probably was discovered as more of an accident than an innovation, actually played a crucially important role in the development of modern day cinema by altering viewer expectations to include even the seemingly ridiculous. Though it would not fall into the same category as say the believable effects of big, blockbuster movies, locking off provided an easy way for sitcoms and comedies, particularly those of the black and white era, to provide humor through magic and fantasy. In other words, locking off revolutionized the directors repertoire in a time when either technological or budgetary limitations would’ve otherwise siphoned creativity. So what is locking off exactly?Locking off occurs when the camera is stopped and something is simply added or removed to a frame before the camera is turned back on and filming resumes. For locking off to be most effective, a director must make sure that everything in the frame remains exactly the same, people included, except for the planned addition or subtraction. When the tape is played objects will simply vanish into thin air or appear out of nowhere. This technique was very popular in its time, prominently featured in both Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie, allowing each leading lady to use her supernatural powers to either create instant solutions or make pesky annoyances disappear.