Digital tools today enable much cleaner matte extraction and virtually perfect registration among the composited elements. In a digital image, each pixel is allocated 294
Visual Effects
KING KONG (RKO, 1933)
King Kong forces open the compound gates to attack the villagers of Skull Island. Kong is a miniature puppet animated with stop-motion photography. He was then matted into the shot using the Williams Process. Frame enlargement.
THE AFRICAN
QUEEN (UNITED
ARTISTS, 1951)
Optically printed trav-
elling mattes some-
times exhibit artifacts
where image elements
have been extracted
or joined together.
Matte lines are visible
here around actors
Katharine Hepburn
and Humphrey Bogart,
and her hair shows
some color fringing.
Frame enlargement.
295
Visual Effects
four channels, three of which are the red, green and blue components that together comprise its color. The fourth channel—the alpha channel —specifies the pixel’s degree of transparency, and this channel can be used for generating male and female mattes. A visual-effects artist working with the alpha channel can easily and automati-cally extract or “pull” a matte from any element in a digital image. Once a male matte is pulled, its alpha values can be inverted to produce a female matte. Moreover, the interaction of matted moving elements can be more complex in a digital composite because Z-depth mapping enables precise calculations about the distances of all objects in the frame from the camera. The Z-axis refers to the depth in the image along which objects are arranged or through which they move. A Z-depth map uses gray-scale values to visualize these distances, ranging from white (objects nearest the camera) to shades of gray to black (objects farthest from the camera). The optical composites used in earlier generations of Hollywood films did not allow for the complex, three-dimensional interactions among moving matted elements that digital tools facilitate.
GLASS PAINTINGS, FOREGROUND MINIATURES,
AND MIRRORS
Paintings produced on sheets of glass were an early and extremely effective visual effects technique. Norman Dawn, Edward Rogers and Ferdinand Pinney Earle were
creating glass shots in the teens, and by the 1920s glass shots were being combined with the matte-and-counter-matte system to create high-quality, complex visual effects shots. A glass painting could be produced on location. Using a sheet of glass set up between the camera and the set or location, a painter would supply vistas, buildings, trees, or other elements as needed for a scripted scene. Glass shots are early instances of matte paintings in cinema. Areas to be filmed as live action would be left unpainted on the glass and filmed through this opening. Alternatively, live action could be matted into the painting.
The silent version of Ben-Hur (1926) includes numerous extraordinary glass shots created by Earle, whose epic paintings add a sense of grandeur to many scenes.
Ben-Hur also brilliantly incorporated hanging foreground miniatures used as set extensions. The Coliseum where an elaborate chariot race occurs was built only as a one story structure; the upper stories were a foreground miniature outfitted with small wooden figurines that could be moved to suggest the responses of a crowd of spectators.
Foreground miniatures are suspended in the air at the top of the frame and between the camera and a distant set that has been partially built. The hanging miniature is much closer to the camera than is the set, and it supplies the missing sections of set. If it is positioned properly and is built to the correct scale, from the camera’s viewpoint it will appear on film to be an actual part of the set.
Because hanging miniatures create illusions of scale and depth, camera movement must be restricted in such shots, lest the disconnection between set and miniature become apparent. Limited pans and tilts are possible using a nodal tripod , one that pivots or tilts around the optical center of the lens and therefore produces no motion perspective. Normal tripods pivot and tilt a camera on an axis well behind the lens, and the distance between this area and the lens (which captures the image) produces motion perspective. This, in turn, will reveal the presence of a miniature, which will appear to move more quickly past the camera than will the more distant set. The 296
Visual Effects
BEN-HUR (MGM, 1926)
This visual effects mas-
terpiece features a bril-
liant blend of glass shots,
foreground miniatures, and
color tinting. Top: A matte
painting on glass compos-
ited with actors visible in
the lower right of frame.
Bottom: Foreground minia-
tures complete the stadium
as set extensions. Frame
enlargements.
chariot race in Ben Hur includes a pan across the miniature, and the absence of motion perspective preserves the illusion.
Hanging foreground miniatures are among the most magical of visual effects, and they have been used throughout film history. In Gone With the Wind (1939), when Scarlet (Vivian Leigh) returns to Twelve Oakes Plantation, now devastated by the 297
Visual Effects
THE AVIATOR (MIRAMAX, 2004)
Elaborate foreground miniatures — the airplane and wing, the rocky sea-break and concrete seawall, the tent, garbage cans and automobiles, the oil derricks — were positioned in front of the camera, and the actors performed the scene some sixty yards away. The illusion is perfect. Everything looks real, and the differences of scale and distance remain invisible. Frame enlargement.
war, she stands in the ruined mansion at the foot of the grand staircase. The lower part of the set was constructed in scale, and the upper portion, showing the staircase and second floor of the mansion, was created as a hanging miniature. The studio, Selznick International, had a nodal tripod for their Technicolor cameras which enabled them to do modest pans and tilts in shots with miniatures. As Scarlett looks at the ruined mansion, a pan and tilt follow the implied line of her gaze and reveal more of the set and the hanging miniature and establish a visual bridge connecting the two.
The final sequence in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator takes place after Howard Hughes lands his Hercules H-4 transport airplane and is celebrated by fans in a large tent next to the pier where the plane is docked. In the shot reproduced here, nearly everything in the foreground is a hanging miniature—the airplane, the rocky seawall, the concrete seawall, the tent, the oil derricks, and the automobiles in front of the tent and the aircraft’s pontoon. The actors performed the scene sixty yards away from the miniatures, and as the frame enlargement demonstrates, the illusion is perfect.
Scorsese remained fond of hanging miniatures, and in the final shot of Shutter Island , the lighthouse is a foreground miniature.
298
Visual Effects
GONE WITH THE
WIND (SELZNICK
INTERNATIONAL,
1939)
This production uses
elaborate visual effects
to create its portrait
of the Civil War era.
Scarlett (Vivian Leigh)
gazes at the ruined
mansion of Twelve
Oakes. The staircase is a
foreground miniature.
Frame enlargement.
Foreground miniatures create illusions of perspective, making something close by seem much farther away. Many visual effects tools work by creating perspective illusions, and miniatures generally are built in ways that create deceptive perspectives.
Forced perspective , for example, takes informational cues about depth and distance—
such as the way parallel lines seem to converge in the distance or the way objects seem to grow smaller as they get farther away—and exaggerates these to convey on the s
mall scale of a miniature model an impression of great size or distance. Many of the miniatures in The Lord of the Rings movie work this way, and many sets and props THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING (NEW LINE, 2001)
Visual effects often create perspective illusions. Sets built with forced perspective create the illusion that actors Ian McKellen and Ian Holm are different sizes. Frame enlargement.
299
Visual Effects
in those movies were built to different scales to convey illusions about the size of the hobbits relative to other characters. When Gandalf (Ian McKellen) sits at a table with Bilbo Baggins (Ian Holm), Bilbo’s small size is conveyed by placing the actor, Ian Holm, farther away from the camera than McKellen and making Bilbo’s section of the table larger so that, being farther away, the camera would see it as being the on the same scale as McKellen’s section of table.
Alfred Hitchcock loved visual effects and made sure that his movies included plenty of them. Saboteur (1942) was especially ingenious. Hitchcock’s art director, Robert Boyle, used a small indoor studio set to create the illusion of a lengthy circus caravan traveling along a dusty desert road. The film’s hero, Barry (Robert Cummings), is running from police and takes refuge in the caravan. Several point-of-view shots show the line of trucks halted as police with flashlights search them.
The caravan and the cops seem to stretch from the foreground way into the distance, but this was an illusion created with forced perspective. The road was painted on the concrete studio floor and outlined with dirt and was raised up in the rear of the set to simulate distant space. Real trucks in the foreground were succeeded by painted toy trucks in the background, and cops played by actors in the foreground became tiny cut-out figures with lights in the distance. Speaking about the methods of forced perspective used in the shots, Boyle said, “You’re achieving a large space in a limited space. You bring the background up, and you force everything smaller.”
Miniature models can be combined with live action using mirrors, and the
Schufftan process is a famous example of this technique. Eugene Schufftan was a cinematographer who invented a method of filming live action with the reflected image of a miniature model or a matte painting. By placing a mirror, that reflects the image of the miniature or painting, at a 45-degree angle to the camera, live action elements can be filmed through portions of the mirror that have been scraped away to leave transparent glass. The camera sees the live action through the glass and sees the miniature SABOTEUR (UNIVERSAL,
1942)
This highway and circus
caravan stretching into the
distance were built on a
small, indoor studio stage.
Normal-sized vehicles in
the foreground give way
to miniatures in the back-
ground and a raised floor to
suggest increasing distance.
The forced perspective is
ingeniously designed. Frame
enlargement.
300
Visual Effects
METROPOLIS (UFA,
1927)
This futuristic sports sta-
dium was created with the
Schufftan process. The ac-
tors were positioned on a
one-story set; the upper ar-
eas are a miniature reflected
by a mirror to the camera.
Frame enlargement.
reflected in the glass. The actors and the miniature or painting are thereby filmed simultaneously. The Shufftan process famously was used throughout the science fiction epic Metropolis (1927) to place live action inside miniature sets of the futuristic city. Alfred Hitchcock used the process in Blackmail (1929) to combine actors with miniatures of the London Museum. The Schufftan process facilitated a shot in Aliens (1986) that required a larger set than what could be constructed on budget. The filmmakers needed a shot of two characters entering a bar in the off-world boom town but didn’t have a full set. So they built a full-size door the actors could enter, and the rest of the building and surrounding area was a miniature reflected to the camera by a mirror.
THE HOLLYWOOD STUDIO ERA
From the late 1920s until the 1960s, it was very rare for American films to be shot on real locations. Instead, films were shot on indoor studio sets and outdoor studio properties, a practice that has become known as “backlot filmmaking.” Rather than traveling to Paris to film An American in Paris , for example, MGM, the studio producing the movie, built the city with sets, miniatures, and matte paintings. Environments built in this fashion on studio backlots relied on visual effects to simulate story settings.
Warner Bros.’ great adventure film, The Sea Hawk (1940), provides an example. Errol Flynn stars as Captain Geoffrey Thorpe, a 16 th -century English raider targeting Spanish ships. Thorpe leads his men on a guerrilla raid into Panama to seize Spanish treasure. The Panamanian jungle, of course, is no such thing, having been created with fog machines and tropical plants dressed on a studio soundstage. When Thorpe and his men escape from the jungle to the shore and row out 301
Visual Effects
to their ship to head for England, they walk from the jungle backlot into beach shots filmed on the Pacific coast in Ventura County, and from there to a partial model of a rowboat placed in a studio rear projection set, and then to shots in which they climb aboard a full scale model of a 135-foot ship placed in a specially constructed studio maritime soundstage and surrounded by a muslin cyclorama
painted with a skyscape. Their brief trip from jungle to ship takes place in these Optical printers were the visual effects workhorses of the
Hollywood studio era. Featuring
an interlocked camera and
projector, they enabled visual
effects artists to build compos-
ited shots by separately photo-
graphing each of their elements.
Optical printers were also used
to create credit sequences in
films and basic editing transi-
tions, such as fades, dissolves,
and wipes. They facilitated the
use of split-screen effects, as in
this sequence from An American
in Paris , introducing the char-
acter of Lise (Leslie Caron) by
playfully contrasting her many
moods and personalities. Frame
enlargement.
302
Visual Effects
composited environments, in which the sea and sky are, alternatively, real, a photographic projection and a painted backdrop.
Two important effects tools used extensively in this period were the optical printer and rear-screen projection. Optical printers were used to photograph and physically combine the elements of a composited effects shot. Optical printers were made of a synchronized process camera and a process projector that was called the printer head. Master positive footage of effects elements—models, travelling mattes, animation—was loaded into the printer head and run through and photographed
frame by frame in the process camera. (A process camera is one used in the laboratory for effects work, in distinction to a production camera used to film live action.) The final composite (the finished effects shot) was created gradually by this process of re-photographing each of its components. The composite negative in the process camera had to be re-wound each time so that each component of the shot could be photographed. Here lay one of the drawbacks of optical printing—it works with dupe footage (dupe footage is several generations away from the camera negative) and ultimately creates a dupe negative, a copy of a copy. It’s very common to see generational losses of image quality in optically printed shots. The more elements an effects shot contained, the more elaborate the printing process became. Two- and four-head optical printers enabled the photographing of multiple image elements in one pass, speeding the work of compositing.
Linwood Dunn, who became head
of RKO’s photographic effects department,
designed the Acme-Dunn Special Effects Optical Printer which was widely used throughout the studio era. Editing transitions in generations of Hollywood films, such as wipes, fades and dissolves, were created on optical printers, as were split screen effects and the opening and closing credits for a film. Many photographic effects could be achieved in optical printers by moving the printer head to simulate a move by the production camera or by enlarging a shot to simulate a zoom or camera move. Dunn estimated that 50 percent or more of the shots in Citizen Kane had been composited on an optical printer. These included some of the film’s famous deep focus shots, with the optical printer being used to exaggerate the depth of field captured on set by Gregg Toland, the cinematographer, and camera moves, such as the famous tracking shot through the glass skylight of the El Rancho nightclub.
Rear-screen projection was used so extensively that it became perhaps the most common visual effects tool of the Hollywood period. Rear-screen projection, or back projection, combines live action in the foreground with a background projected as a moving image upon a screen positioned behind the actors and set. The background images are projected behind the screen, which is, therefore, translucent. Many outdoor locations were simulated as rear projections, filmed with actors on indoor studio sets. Driving scenes, for example, where characters are shown riding in automobiles, were invariably done as back projections.
An ingenious variation of back projection is miniature rear projection , which enables filmmakers to place live actors in a miniature model or set. The method was used extensively throughout King Kong (1933) because all of the shots in which Kong interacts with human characters necessitated the use of miniature models and sets. Another variation was developed by visual effects artist Ray Harryhausen for his creature movies combining stop-motion animation and live action. In such films as 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957) and The 7 th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), the live action components of scenes were back projected behind Harryhausen’s creatures.
Movies and Meaning- Pearson New International Edition Page 46
