Movies and Meaning- Pearson New International Edition

by Stephen Prince

  303

  Visual Effects

  CITIZEN KANE (RKO, 1941)

  Many shots in Citizen Kane are optically printed composites. These often create extended depth-of-field effects, complementing the deep-focus cinematography of Gregg Toland.

  In this regard, the film’s famous deep-focus style is a joint product of cinematography and visual effects. In this shot, Raymond the butler (Paul Stewart) opens a door and sees Kane (Orson Welles) standing in another doorway at the end of a long corridor. Actor Stewart and the doorway next to him are the live action elements. Welles, backlit and silhouetted, is matted into the shot, and the intervening hallway with Kane’s reflection on the tiled floor is a matte painting. Frame enlargement.

  Less frequently used, front projection systems projected the background image in front of and on top of the actors and set. 3M’s invention in 1949 of Scotchlite, a highly reflective surface used in road signs, helped make front projection viable for motion pictures. Projection screens made of Scotchlite reflect light in a straight path directly back to its source and with almost no loss in brightness. In a front projection system, the camera faces the actors and set, and a Scotchlite screen is behind them. Set at a ninety degree angle to the camera’s line of sight is a projector which throws its image onto a two-way, beam-splitting mirror positioned at a 45, degree angle in front of the camera. The mirror reflects the projector’s footage onto the Scotchlite screen and, from there, back to the camera. Because the mirror is two-way, the camera can see through it to film the scene. The bright set lighting on the actors washes out the projector footage covering them, and the camera photographs them normally.

  2001: A Space Odyssey was the first major film to use front projection. The opening sequence, showing the dawn of the apes in Africa, was shot on an indoor set in London. The background landscapes were front projections of high-resolution photographs taken in Africa, and the illusion is perfect. A viewer watching the film cannot tell that the shots are in-camera composites. Other films to use front projection include Where Eagles Dare, Superman, The Fugitive, Moonraker, Outland , and Cliffhanger.

  304

  Visual Effects

  TO CATCH A THIEF (PARAMOUNT, 1955)

  Back projection in the Hollywood era was a standard method of depicting driving scenes.

  Actors Cary Grant and Grace Kelly play characters driving along the French Riviera. In reality, they are in a partial model of an automobile shot in a studio in front of rear projected imagery. Frame enlargement.

  Composite shots achieved with rear or front projection offered an alternative to optical printing because the effects were achieved in-camera, but rear projection, too, left visual artifacts in a scene. Because the rear projections used dupe footage, generational differences in image quality were often visible between the live action components and the back projections. Differences in lighting and color and the grain structure of the film stocks often prevailed as well. But in general back projection provided a very serviceable illusion of being on location and was widely used until, in the 1960s, shooting on location became a predominant practice.

  Already well-established in the teens and 1920s as a vital effects tool, matte painting flourished during the studio era. Each of the major studios had a matte painting department and used optical printers to composite painted and live action images. A common misperception about visual effects is that they are found mainly in 305

  Visual Effects

  KING KONG (RKO,

  1933); THE 7TH VOYAGE

  OF SINBAD (COLUMBIA,

  1958)

  Variations on basic rear pro-

  jection include miniature

  back projection, used in King

  Kong to insert live actors into

  miniature sets. Actor Bruce

  Cabot, as a projected im-

  age lower frame left, plays a

  character hiding in a cave,

  where he is menaced by

  Kong. Visual effects artist Ray

  Harryhausen specialized in

  stop-motion animation and

  devised a system combining

  the live action element as a

  rear projection, composited

  with animated puppets.

  Here, Kerwin Matthews as

  Sinbad, back projected,

  battles a skeleton brought to

  life by an evil wizard. Frame

  enlargement.

  genres like science fiction and fantasy to provide spectacle. In fact, however, the great majority of feature films, irrespective of genre, make use of visual effects. Thus in Hollywood movies during the studio era, matte paintings and other effects might be found in Westerns, musicals, horror films, war films, dramas, and comedies.

  Gone With the Wind , for example, is a visual effects-intensive film. Producer David O. Selznick said, “I could not even hope to put the picture on the screen properly without an even more extensive use of special effects than had ever before been attempted in the business.” The film’s epic historical landscapes were composites, formed from split-screen effects used to double the size of crowds, front and rear projection, miniature projection, and especially matte painting. Clarence Slifer, who worked with 306

  Visual Effects

  2001: A SPACE ODYSSSEY (MGM, 1968)

  Front projection throws a background image overtop of performers and set. Set lights prevent the camera from seeing the projection on the actors, and a highly reflective screen behind them returns the projected image to the camera. The African landscapes in the first sequence of Kubrick’s film are high-resolution photographs front projected onto actors in ape suits and a minimal set. Frame enlargement.

  Jack Cosgrove, the head of Selznick’s special effects department, estimated that approximately 100 matte paintings were used in the film. The paintings are blended subliminally with live action and miniatures and were used to create set extensions, fill out landscapes, add skies above sets and actors, and provide dramatic vistas.

  Slifer had designed an aerial optical printer that enabled him to achieve new effects with matte painting. With aerial image printing , an image (such as a matte painting) is projected to a focal plane in space (rather than onto a surface) where it can be photographed by the process camera in the optical printer. That footage can be combined with live action footage and other optical elements. Cosgrove and Slifer used aerial printing throughout the film to add smoke or fire effects to matte paintings. In a shot showing the Atlanta train station, smoke pours from a locomotive parked in front of the station. Footage of smoke against a clear background was placed in the projector head of the optical printer. Another projector threw an aerial image of the painting behind the smoke footage. The printer then photographed both. By photographing the painting in this manner, the smoke seemed to naturally cover the painted train station roof as it would in a real 3D world.

  Aerial imaging was also used in the famous pull-back of Scarlet and Gerald

  O’Hara against a dramatic sunset in the scene where he tells her that he will leave Tara to her after his death and that land is the only thing that endures. The pull-back by the camera shows the characters as silhouettes standing next to a tree with Tara visible in the distance. The shot composites live action footage of the characters (stand-ins doubling for stars Vivien Leigh and Thomas Mitchell) with two matte paintings, depicting the sky and a distant view of Tara (projected into the composite as an aerial image). The tree in the foreground is a miniature model. The complexity of the shot is apparent in the less than perfect registration—the pull-back (which appears to be a crane shot but was, instead, created in the optical printer as a visual effects move on the paintings) occasions some jiggle among the image elements.

  307

  Visual Effects

  GONE WITH THE

  WIND (SELZNICK

  INTERNATIONAL,

  1939)

  Wounded Civil War

  soldiers pour into

  the Atla
nta train sta-

  tion. The station is a

  studio set. The sta-

  tion roof is a matte

  painting projected

  as an aerial image

  behind footage of

  smoke against a

  clear background.

  Composited in this

  way on the optical

  printer, the smoke

  looks quite real, cov-

  ering the painting as

  actual smoke would

  do a real roof. Frame

  enlargement.

  TORN CURTAIN (UNIVERSAL, 1966)

  Actor Paul Newman walks into a matte painting and then a series of them in a bravura sequence lasting two minutes on screen. In the sequence, director Alfred Hitchcock and Albert Whitlock create a series of virtual environments for the actor, and they dare the audience to notice. Few viewers do. Frame enlargement.

  308

  Visual Effects

  Alfred Hitchcock was very fond of matte paintings and worked often with the

  great matte artist Albert Whitlock, who produced extraordinary painted environments for numerous Hitchcock films including some very famous shots in The Birds (1963). One of Whitlock’s greatest achievements is a bravura, two-minute sequence in Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain (1966), where the main character, Michael Armstrong (Paul Newman), walks through an East German art museum. Because it was the Cold War, Hitchcock couldn’t shoot on location, so he had Whitlock create the museum’s exterior and interior as a series of six matte paintings into which the character is composited. Although the term “virtual environment” is identified today mainly with digitally created images, virtual environments have always been a part of cinema, achieved with visual effects. The art museum sequence in Torn Curtain gives viewers an entirely convincing series of virtual environments.

  MOTION CONTROL

  Camera movement provides filmmakers with a very important tool for blending and joining the optical elements in an effects shot. Nodal tripods were used to create limited camera moves when matte paintings were filmed on glass in front of a live action set or location. But for much of the studio era, when matte paintings were created in the studio and composited on an optical printer with live action, the traditional practice was to lock the camera down and composite the shot without camera movement on any of its elements.

  The pull-back from Scarlett and her father in Gone With the Wind was a simulated camera move. To introduce camera movement into effects shots, filmmakers needed a mechanical system of motion control, enabling them to exactly reproduce a camera movement on all of a composited shot’s optical elements. Motion control systems became available in the late 1940s and changed the look of visual effects. The Dupy Duplicator, developed at MGM by Olin Dupy, provided a means of recording camera movement in a live-action shot and then match-moving in the same way as a process camera shooting a matte painting. When both elements were optically composited, the film’s viewer seemed to see on-screen a single, unbroken camera move.

  The system debuted with a shot in Easter Parade (1948) that tilts up from a studio set depicting Fifth Avenue to a matte painting of Manhattan buildings. The opening and closing of An American in Paris (1951) used the Dupy Duplicator to join partial sets with matte paintings depicting set extensions. In a shot introducing Jerry (Gene Kelly), the camera pans from a sidewalk café (the real set) up the three-story building where he lives, revealing him looking out of a top story window. Above the second-floor level, the image is a painting, including roof and sky, and the motion-control blend of the image elements is perfect. Even if a viewer knows where the join is, it cannot be seen. Paramount Pictures had a proprietary motion repeater system, which it used in Samson and Delilah (1949) to replicate camera moves on live action and miniature model elements in a composite.

  The famous Slitcan sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey used motion control to create an abstract play of light and color. With its shutter held open, the camera moved along a fourteen-foot track toward a slit behind which were various pieces of backlit colored art. It took up to a full minute for the camera to finish its move, and each frame of film was exposed twice while the camera’s focus was continually changing, creating an impression of infinite depth of field, a sensation 309

  Visual Effects

  EASTER PARADE (MGM,

  1948)

  The Dupy Duplicator

  enabled motion control

  cinematography at MGM,

  allowing filmmakers to

  match-move a laboratory

  camera over a matte paint-

  ing or miniature and com-

  posite that footage with a

  camera move on set. The

  Fifth Avenue Easter parade

  that concludes the film was

  staged on an MGM backlot.

  A camera tilt begun on the

  set finishes with another

  move in the laboratory over

  the matte painting depicting

  Manhattan buildings. The

  two elements were compos-

  ited on an optical printer.

  Frame enlargement.

  that the astronaut David Bowman (Keir Dullea) was plunging into an infinity of space and consciousness.

  Computerized motion control systems arrived with Star Wars (1977). The spaceships were miniature models made to fly by slowly, moving the camera past them while filming. The moves had to be repeated numerous times to build up the layers of an effects shot, and computer control of the camera enabled extremely precise match-moving. Digital motion control systems are now the norm for producing match-moves in effects sequences.

  STAR WARS (20 TH CENTURY FOX, 1977)

  Computerized motion control enabled new levels of precision in building composited shots featuring camera movement. This X-wing fighter comes to life as a miniature model thanks to multiple-passes of a motion-controlled camera. Frame enlargement.

  310

  Visual Effects

  THE IMPACT OF STAR WARS

  Star Wars revived and reinvigorated visual effects in cinema, and its impact on effects and the popular culture surrounding them cannot be overstated. In the late 1960s, the studio system had broken apart, and no studios retained the extensive technical crews of matte painters and model builders that they once had. Most studios, in fact, apart from Disney, had shut down their matte painting departments because filmmaking had moved beyond the backlot practices of earlier decades. In the 1960s, movies were shot on location, and screen environments were not as extensively fabricated with effects tools as they were in the backlot era.

  George Lucas loved matte paintings and miniature models and the magic these

  create on screen, and in Star Wars he embraced these traditions of film production.

  Moreover, until Star Wars , the Hollywood studios had remained tight-lipped about visual effects, keeping them relatively secret and unpublicized. Norman O. Dawn, who pioneered the use of glass paintings and matte shots, worked at Universal for five years beginning in 1916, and recalled that studio heads “didn’t believe in telling anybody about effects . . . They considered anything that was a drawing or a glass shot a fake. So they didn’t want to let the exhibitors know that this was a cheap picture full of fakes. They kept all that quiet . . . no matter if it was nothing more than an ordinary double exposure.” More than any other single event, the release of Star Wars in 1977

  changed these attitudes. George Lucas had enthusiastically embraced visual effects, and the huge popular response to the film opened a new era in which visual effects were extensively publicized. Cinema effects today have a huge fan following, as well as serious journals devoted to them, like Cinefex which chronicles the history, technology, and aesthetics of visual effects.

  FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT

  George Lucas

  Though he has directed few films, George Lucas’s

  end on the threshold of the sixties. Its complex

  influence on contempor
ary cinema is enormous. He

  sound design resulted from Lucas’s collabora-

  has been one of the industry’s technological visionar-

  tion with sound designer Walter Murch, who also

  ies, fixed on the digital future of cinema and helping

  worked on THX-1138. Committed to optimiz-

  transition the industry toward all-digital production

  ing cinema sound, Lucas teamed with another

  methods. A graduate of the University of Southern

  top sound designer, Ben Burtt, on the Star Wars

  California Film School, Lucas took one of his student

  trilogy and built a state-of-the-art postproduction

  projects and expanded it into his first feature as direc-

  sound facility at Skywalker Ranch, his corporate

  tor. THX-1138 (1971) is a grim, science fiction vision

  headquarters.

  of a totalitarian future. Its somber tone is galaxies re-

  Lucas wanted to streamline film production using

  moved from the spirited hijinks of his subsequent Star

  digital methods, and he began funding systematic

  Wars series.

  research into digital applications in film production.

  Lucas followed THX-1138 with the hugely pop-

  In 1978, he recruited Edwin Catmull from the New

  ular American Graffiti (1973), portraying the bitter-

  York Institute of Technology to start a computer

  sweet antics of high-school graduates at summer’s

  graphics program at Lucasfilm.

  ( continued)

  311

  Visual Effects

  STAR WARS (20 TH CENTURY FOX, 1977)

  Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness) battles Darth Vader (David Prowse) as Imperial storm-troopers gather in the background. Like Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey , Lucas’s film is a definitive visual effects classic. In its embrace of matte paintings and miniatures, Star Wars embraced cinema’s enduring traditions of movie magic. Frame enlargement.