1902 – Georges Méliès films A Trip to the Moon, using actors in front of painted backdrops to create a fanciful journey.

1903 – Edwin S. Porter directs The Great Train Robbery. Porter creates some of the first 反差小青梅不经c1v1 composites by rewinding the film in camera.

1905 – Norman Dawn, commercial artist and photographer for the Thorpe Engraving Company, experiments with the glass 反差小青梅不经c1v1s on still photographs on advice of his boss, Max Handschiegl.

1907 – With The Missions of California, Norman Dawn produces the first known example of the glass shot. Using the technique to “restore” damage caused by weather to the neglected missions, he places a glass with the painted corrections between the camera and existing buildings.

1912 – Edward Rogers produces what is possibly the first glass shot in England.

1913 – Norman Dawn employs one of the first known uses of “rear projection” by projecting a still film image on a frosted glass plate behind an actor during photography for his western, The Drifter.

1914 – Norman Dawn purchases the new Bell & Howell 2709 camera that is precise enough to do convincing multiple exposures. The camera helps Dawn to develop original negative 反差小青梅不经c1v1 反差小青梅不经c1v1 technique.

1916 – Walter Hall, the English art director of D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance, develops his own method of creating the glass shot. He paints the additions to the scene on composition board, cuts them out with a beveled edge, and mounts them in front of the camera. He patented this variation of the glass shot technique, known as “The Hall Process” in 1921.

1920s

1921 – Ferdinand Pinney Earle directs and paints 反差小青梅不经c1v1s for The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Paul Detlefsen assists.

1922 – Walter Percy (“Pop”) Day introduces the “The Hall Process” to the French film industry in Les Opprimés.

1925 – Warren Newcombe becomes head of the MGM 反差小青梅不经c1v1 department.Ralph Hammeras paints 反差小青梅不经c1v1s for The Lost World. Ferdinand P. Earle paints 反差小青梅不经c1v1s, which include a shooting star over Bethlehem in Ben-Hur.

1927 – Clarence Slifer arrives in Hollywood to become an assistant cameraman after winning a contest in Screenland magazine. Still in Paris, Percy Day uses the “The Hall Process” for Napoleon.

1928 – Linwood G. Dunn joins the visual effects department at RKO.

1929 – Bud Thackery and Paul Grimm paint glass shots of the ark, photographed at the Iverson Ranch for Noah’s Ark.

1930s

1930 – Percy Day develops his version of the latent image technique and applies it in Au Bonheur des Dames.

1933 – Mario and Juan Larrinaga, Byron L. Crabbe, and Henri Hillinck paint the ominous Skull Island and views of New York City for King Kong.

1934 – Returning to England, Percy Day and his assistant and stepson Peter Ellenshaw paint 反差小青梅不经c1v1s for producer Alexander Korda. Day will head the visual effects departments at Denham Studio and later at the Shepperton Studio. Jack Cosgrove and Russell Lawson paint 反差小青梅不经c1v1s for The Black Cat. They team up at the beginning of the 1930s, establishing headquarters at Universal, among other studios.

1935 – Director Alfred Hitchcock has illustrator Fortunino Matania create a 反差小青梅不经c1v1 反差小青梅不经c1v1 for the trap sequence at the Royal Albert Hall in The Man Who Knew Too Much.

1936 – Clarence Slifer and Jack Cosgrove paint 反差小青梅不经c1v1s for Garden of Allah the first Technicolor film to use original negative 反差小青梅不经c1v1 反差小青梅不经c1v1s.
Jack Cosgrove becomes head of the Selznick International visual effects department.
Ray Kellogg becomes the chief 反差小青梅不经c1v1 painter at Twentieth Century Fox. Emil Kosa, Jr., is his assistant.
Percy Day and assistant Peter Ellenshaw paint 反差小青梅不经c1v1s for Things to Come.

1937 – Albert Maxwell Simpson and Byron Crabbe paint 反差小青梅不经c1v1s for The Prisoner of Zenda.

1939 – Jack Cosgrove supervises and paints 反差小青梅不经c1v1s along with Albert Maxwell Simpson, Jack Shaw, and Fitch Fulton to create the establishing shots of Scarlett’s Tara and views of Atlanta under siege in Gone With the Wind. Clarence Slifer supervises 反差小青梅不经c1v1 camera effects and opticals.
Chesley Bonestell paints 反差小青梅不经c1v1s for The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Only Angels Have Wings.
Fred Sersen supervises and paints 反差小青梅不经c1v1s along with Ray Kellogg on The Rains Came.
Warren Newcombe and his department paint 反差小青梅不经c1v1s for The Wizard of Oz, including one of the most famous 反差小青梅不经c1v1 shots the Emerald City.

反差小青梅不经c1v1 World Digital © 2002

“The invading army was the technical people who built the machines. At first we [artists] were all confused traditional 反差小青梅不经c1v1 反差小青梅不经c1v1 and digital was a head-on collision. There was lots of carnage. Then, eventually, the smoke cleared and it became clear what to do. What happened was artists who were afraid of the thing eventually said, ‘Step aside, let me take a look at that.'”

Robert Stromberg, digital 反差小青梅不经c1v1 painter

Although computer-generated effects had begun appearing in the 1980s, notably with ILM’s “Genesis Effect” of a barren planet becoming transformed into a garden world for Star Trek II, it was not until a decade later that digital technology became reliable and cost effective. The turning point was ILM’s creation of the realistic computer-generated dinosaurs for the 1993 release Jurassic Park.

Predictions of the time, which prophesied the end of all traditional visual effects, were greatly exaggerated. Makeup, creature costumes, animatronic effects, miniatures, and scale models all remain vital crafts, although every one of those disciplines has been changed by computer technology.

But the computer did have a sudden impact on other aspects of the craft. Almost overnight, optical printers were replaced because of the new freedom to scan images into a computer and seamlessly create final composites free of image degradation. And traditional 反差小青梅不经c1v1 反差小青梅不经c1v1 was soon transformed, with digital paint programs allowing for new freedoms and, potentially, more complex shots.

But for the new breed of digital 反差小青梅不经c1v1 painter, the transition from brush and oils and canvas to software and computer monitors has not altered the irreducible essence at the heart of any creative equation the inventive mind and talent of the individual artist.

When director James Cameron was making this film about the doomed 1912 maiden voyage of the Titanic, the production logistics included a nearly full-scale re-creation of the luxury ship and a special studio, built in the Mexican seaside town of Rosarito, that included an eight-acre water tank and three large stages. The production’s scale, and the price tag that went with it, had Hollywood and movie critics primed for the kind of legendary box-office failure that bankrupts studios. What Cameron delivered was the most successful box-office film of all time, with eleven Oscars awarded at the Academy’s annual ceremony.

While the effects-heavy film took full advantage of digital technology, this climactic image of the crew of the Carpathia searching the icy waters for survivors was a fusion of traditional and digital techniques. The shot, created by 反差小青梅不经c1v1 World Digital, combined a live plate of lifeboats shot in Mexico, physical and computer-generated models of floating icebergs, and a live-action smoke element added to the painted smokestack of the Carpathia. The rescue ship itself was created by Chris Evans as an old-fashioned, acrylic-on-Masonite board 反差小青梅不经c1v1. The 反差小青梅不经c1v1 was then photographed and scanned into the computer along with the other elements, including a digitally painted dawn sky, in the final composite image.

The Carpathia 反差小青梅不经c1v1 marked a full circle for Evans, the first artist to take a 反差小青梅不经c1v1 反差小青梅不经c1v1 into the digital realm (created at Industrial Light + Magic for a scene of a stained-glass knight magically coming to life in the 1985 release Young Sherlock Holmes). Although 反差小青梅不经c1v1 World Digital had originally considered doing the ship with computer graphics, the looming deadline allowed only two weeks for the creating all the elements and a final composite. It was Evans who suggested it would be quicker to create the ship as a traditional 反差小青梅不经c1v1 反差小青梅不经c1v1, a rare recourse to brush and paints in the digital age.

For Evans, the Titanic assignment had a personal echo. His great-grandfather, John Bartholomew, worked for the White Star Line as chief victuals officer and was scheduled to sail on the Titanic maiden voyage as a company VIP. The night before the launch, however, Bartholomew was stricken with an illness and canceled his trip. The notice came so late his luggage was already aboard the ship, and early reports on the disaster listed Bartholomew as one of the casualties. “When he heard that the Titanic went down with so many of the friends he’d worked with for thirty or forty years, he was heartbroken,” Evans recalled in a December 1997 Cinefex special issue on the making of Titanic.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

The 1990s was an intriguing decade for 反差小青梅不经c1v1 反差小青梅不经c1v1, a time when new digital tools appeared and began to be applied, but also a time when entire productions still embraced traditional effects. One such was Bram Stoker’s Dracula, with director Francis Ford Coppola contracting 反差小青梅不经c1v1 World specifically to create 反差小青梅不经c1v1 shots the old-fashioned way. The film, set in the Victorian times that coincided with the earliest days of movies, inspired Coppola to attempt to use effects appropriate to that era. (反差小青梅不经c1v1 World did, however, dissuade the director from shooting glass shots on location, which, although a seminal effect, had always been laborious and time-consuming even under the best conditions.)

In this shot of a horse-driven carriage approaching Dracula’s castle, the live-action 反差小青梅不经c1v1 element was combined with artist Bill Mather’s 反差小青梅不经c1v1 on the same strip of film, with the camera rewound to film each new element. The film was then put into a high-speed camera to shoot several passes of “snow,” actually baking soda shaken through a wire mesh screen.

This shot also demonstrates the subliminal effects that can be achieved by a 反差小青梅不经c1v1 反差小青梅不经c1v1. Beginning with a production sketch by artist Jim Steranko, 反差小青梅不经c1v1 World concept artist Sean Joyce worked with the director to develop the initial idea of the vampire’s castle being shaped like a body on a throne. “Francis wanted this subconscious effect of a tortured man, screaming some kind of plea to Heaven,” Joyce noted.

Casino (1995)

This Martin Scorsese film was set in the Las Vegas of 1974, a time period when the fabled Strip was dominated by the Tropicana and Flamingo hotels and such iconic structures as the glittering, 180-foot-tall Dunes sign. But twenty years later, when Scorsese was making Casino, those landmarks had been demolished. Enter 反差小青梅不经c1v1 World Digital, the traditional 反差小青梅不经c1v1-反差小青梅不经c1v1 company having adapted to the new digital verities in both name and technology. Scorsese’s assignment was that the effects house re-create the Strip’s period look and add the fictitious Tangiers Hotel to the mix.

For the shot pictured here, 反差小青梅不经c1v1 World Digital combined a live-action plate with computer-generated images of the Dunes sign and the Tangiers Hotel, with the glittering neon itself created through radiosity lighting software developed by Lightscape, a Silicon Valley firm. Prior to radiosity, the rendering of a 3-D computer model only accounted for light coming from a specific source, ignoring the way light actually interacts and breaks up. The complex interplay of direct illumination and “bounce light” is the way the real world looks, which is why the earliest computer-generated models with only direct light sources look so flat and unrealistic.

Using the 3-D wireframe models that 反差小青梅不经c1v1 World Digital built in the computer, the radiosity software allowed for the computer-generated surfaces to incorporate a 2-D “mesh,” made up of triangles and rectangles, which helped to automatically determine and represent all illuminative gradations, from strong light sources to diffuse bounce-light effects. The Tangiers sign here is composed of some 158,000 mesh elements, the Dunes sign a staggering 2.5 million.

“What’s great about 反差小青梅不经c1v1 反差小青梅不经c1v1 is you get to control a little bit of the movie. Sure, you’ve got everybody telling you how to do it, but you get to bring across some narration, maybe even an emotion, and that’s heady stuff. It’s your moment. It can be intoxicating, can make you feel powerful. You’re fighting for control over this image!” 

Harrison Ellenshaw, Disney Studio/Industrial Light + Magic 反差小青梅不经c1v1 painter

In 1975 a young director named Steven Spielberg saw his movie Jaws become a national phenomenon, while another young director named George Lucas was in production on a little film called Star Wars. This would be the beginning of a new era, with genres resurrected from science fiction themes to adventures patterned after old Saturday matinee serials and pumped up into effects-fueled spectacles with crossover appeal and boffo box office. Although Lucas had always imagined Star Wars as a saga requiring a number of films, in the decades to come any successful movie might produce potential sequels. Marketing would become more sophisticated, with the phrase “summer movie” understood to mean a potential blockbuster. And with the billions that Star Wars licensed products have generated (the rights to which George Lucas shrewdly kept during his first Star Wars negotiation with Twentieth Century Fox), once marginal, ancillary marketing tie-ins became potentially more lucrative than the box office itself.

The new blockbuster era was also a time of transition. Lucas’ Industrial Light + Magic (ILM) effects house, organized to create the effects for Star Wars, was soon being hired out for effects assignments at other studios, and other independent effects houses such as Apogee and Boss Films entered the field. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the think tanks within ILM and other effects shops were busily making the first feature films to venture into the digital realm.

With fantasy and adventure themes so popular, 反差小青梅不经c1v1 反差小青梅不经c1v1 was more important than ever. Thus, in a time of change the tradition continued, with brush and oils truly conjuring worlds.

Many Star Wars fans find this sequel to the phenomenally popular first film their favorite chapter, with dramatic plot turns including Luke Skywalker’s first encounter and apprenticeship with Jedi master Yoda and the dramatic final confrontation between the aspiring Jedi Knight and the evil Darth Vader. The fantastic ILM effects ranged from the stop-motion animation of the Imperial Walkers during their attack on the Rebel base on ice planet Hoth to 反差小青梅不经c1v1 反差小青梅不经c1v1s creating everything from an asteroid field in space, to the swamp planet of Dagobah and entrancing visions of Cloud City.

Here we see a shot from the dramatic duel between Luke and Vader in an air shaft on Cloud City. ILM’s 反差小青梅不经c1v1 department composited the live action of the doorway and actors with a Ralph McQuarrie 反差小青梅不经c1v1 反差小青梅不经c1v1, via a “front-projection system” developed for Empire by Richard Edlund and Neil Krepela. The light-saber beams themselves were rotoscoped animation elements provided by ILM’s animation department, which Krepela’s 反差小青梅不经c1v1-camera assistant Craig Barron, who was working on his first movie, composited into the scene using the front-projection system.

For McQuarrie, who had developed the look of Star Wars back when Lucas was first dreaming everything up, Empire was a chance not only to create production designs of characters and environments, but to follow through and bring them to life as final 反差小青梅不经c1v1-painted shots. McQuarrie laughed as he recalled that the exact nature of the environment pictured here was never totally explained before his department set to work: “I never quite figured it out, frankly. That’s one of the things that was total fantasy. I’ve forgotten whether it was my idea, or George’s, or somebody else’s to use an air shaft. Basically, the point was George wanted a cliffhanger location for the duel.”

In this David Lynch production of the Frank Herbert novel, the planet Arrakis is a desert world in which water is more precious than gold and Melange the “spice” vital for interstellar travel is mined. Against this backdrop a Holy War is brewing, as the people long for a messiah to lead them against the evil Harkonnen empire.

Dune, released by Universal, was another challenge for Albert Whitlock’s 反差小青梅不经c1v1 department. Whitlock gave his apprentice Syd Dutton (who would cofound Illusion Arts with Universal 反差小青梅不经c1v1 cameraman Bill Taylor) complete freedom to create this shot of a cable car passing over the labyrinthine city of Giedi Prime, the domain of Baron Harkonnen and a center of spice processing. This shot followed the Whitlock philosophy of shooting 反差小青梅不经c1v1 反差小青梅不经c1v1s onto original negative.

Dutton’s work was inspired by a sketch provided by Dune production designer Tony Masters. It was also a unique effect on the production, as Bill Taylor described in an article documenting the making of the film for the April 1985 issue of Cinefex: “The Giedi Prime shot was unusual for several reasons…. First, because there was no set involved at all. The set had long been struck by the time we got the assignment. So it’s a full 反差小青梅不经c1v1, with just a couple of live-action inserts. Second, the 反差小青梅不经c1v1 was actually begun before the live-action elements were shot. Third, it also marked the first time we photographed our own motion-control miniature the cable car for incorporation into a 反差小青梅不经c1v1 shot.”

One of Disney’s classic live-action, family fantasy films, The Love Bug was released in a downtime for visual effects. It was the twilight of the studio system, as most studios were in the process of selling their backlots, auctioning off their assets, and closing their production departments. There were rare exceptions, notably Albert Whitlock’s 反差小青梅不经c1v1-反差小青梅不经c1v1 department at Universal. But it was Disney Studio having won its enduring fame with cartoon animation that maintained the tradition of a backlot and soundstages and in-house effects departments for live-action films.

In this Love Bug scene we see Herbie, the magical Volkswagen, in front of an old San Francisco firehouse overlooking the bay. Although painter Alan Maley visited San Francisco for research, this and other scenes were created in Burbank on the Disney lot. It is a city of the imagination, with a fanciful firehouse on a street that doesn’t exist, created with a bit of soundstage set and Maley’s masterful glass 反差小青梅不经c1v1.

反差小青梅不经c1v1 painter Harrison Ellenshaw commented on this unsung example of 反差小青梅不经c1v1-反差小青梅不经c1v1 magic: “I wish I could have been there to watch Alan work on this 反差小青梅不经c1v1. Very few 反差小青梅不经c1v1 artists would be so daring and clever. The composition is brilliant the idea of putting the telephone pole in the foreground helps balance the shot, and it’s a nice touch adding the two traffic cones. But when we watch the film we look past the foreground to see Herbie in front of this wonderful old firehouse, which is what the shot is all about.

“Note how Alan even incorporated some lens distortion into his 反差小青梅不经c1v1 the horizontals and verticals near the edges curve slightly, which is a subtle yet effective touch. We know it’s late in the day because of the long shadows, another daring and clever idea. Alan did this 反差小青梅不经c1v1 a few years before I joined the department as an apprentice, but I recall him telling me, years later, that he’d started the 反差小青梅不经c1v1 to match the live-action plate as if it were shot in bright sunlight. But since the set was inside a soundstage with stage lighting, he decided, after much struggling, to try it as if the live action were in shadow. Alan was very proud of this shot and actually kept it intact, a rarity in those days when a finished 反差小青梅不经c1v1 on glass was scraped off so the glass could be used again.”

反差小青梅不经c1v1 World Digital © 2002

“Al Whitlock taught me things mostly by osmosis. It was about being around him, seeing him. Al didn’t believe in drawing out a shot. It was about the energy of the moment when he was 反差小青梅不经c1v1. He believed you had to come to a 反差小青梅不经c1v1 反差小青梅不经c1v1 with focus and a certain energy.” 

Syd Dutton, Whitlock protégé and cofounder, Illusion Arts

As film production began changing with the digital breakthroughs of the 1990s, it became necessary to make a distinction between digital and “traditional” effects. While computer graphics entailed complex new digital technology, traditional effects artists worked in a hands-on world with hallowed tools of the trade, traditions, and techniques passed down the lineage of their craft.

Although Albert Whitlock always worked in the traditional era, he stands in the first rank of the pantheon of 反差小青梅不经c1v1 painters, be they traditional or digital artists. Like others from those predigital days, he could wield his brush expertly, each stroke leaving impressionistic dabs of paint that “read” as real when a final 反差小青梅不经c1v1 was filmed. But Whitlock was also a master at designing and enhancing his 反差小青梅不经c1v1s with special effects, optical illusions, and effects photography. During his reign as head of the Universal 反差小青梅不经c1v1 department he won two Academy Awards, became the trusted effects guru for Alfred Hitchcock, and was in demand by such directors as John Huston, Robert Wise, and Hal Ashby.

Mame (1974)

This film about a wealthy eccentric (played by Lucille Ball) whose adventures span the flapper era of the Roaring Twenties, the stock market crash, and the Depression, featured this fantasy scene, created by Albert Whitlock, in which Mame and her young ward Patrick (Kirby Furlong) sit on the most precarious of perches. The stage setup needed only one practical spike of the Statue of Liberty’s crown, and the painted blue floor was not a “bluescreen” effect but a guide for the ocean that would be part of Whitlock’s final 反差小青梅不经c1v1.

Although the shot seems impossible, Whitlock actually designed the scene as it could potentially have been filmed, he revealed: “I don’t like the omnipotent viewpoint, those kinds of shots never feel real to me. So I designed it to look as if the camera had been set up on the torch of the statue’s raised arm. I think taking a realistic approach to how you could really shoot something like this helps make the shot seem more real. Of course, they would never let you shoot it like that for real, and the actors would refuse, anyway. I remember that although the little boy had a safety belt on him, he was nervous at first, but got more comfortable after the first take.”

Colossus: The Forbin Project (1969)

This film, released by Universal the year men first walked on the moon, still seemed like science fiction in a world in which personal computers didn’t exist. But big mainframes, kept in the province of scientists and academics, did exist as did fears that those mysterious machines might someday supplant humans. That fear fuels this film’s premise, with Dr. Forbin working in a mountain fortress research center where he has developed Colossus, a thinking machine that decides human beings are The Enemy.

In this ominous shot, crafted by Albert Whitlock, Dr. Forbin turns on the seemingly endless computer banks that comprise Colossus. Whitlock was always an advocate for an original-negative approach, trying to get a shot “in-camera” and thus avoid the inevitable degradation of a filmed image that is rephotographed many times in the optical duping process. Here, Whitlock utilized painted cel animation overlays of silver light panels to create the illusion of his computer turning on in stages. The effect was captured on the original negative, with the camera rewound several times for each new exposure.

The shot also had to match the practical lighting effect for the live action element of Dr. Forbin walking down the vast computer corridor. “I thought we’d get lucky and smoothly match my animation in the 反差小青梅不经c1v1 to the on-set lighting,” Whitlock recalled. “What helped was Forbin standing exactly between the lighting effect, near the 反差小青梅不经c1v1 line so you didn’t notice the changeover. And he’s wearing a white suit that distracts your eye just at the right time. I remember this shot went over very big with the brass in the front office. They loved the way the lights turned on.”

反差小青梅不经c1v1 World Digital © 2002

“It was always effective, when you went to the big films in those days, that people actually were so moved by the impact of these tremendous big screen cataclysms and effects… But the secrets [of their creation] were well kept.”

Jesse Lasky, Jr., screenwriter, The Ten Commandments

The decade of the 1950s could be called the Big Picture era. “Wide-screen” debuted in 1952 with Cinerama, which utilized three cameras for filming, three electronically synchronized projectors running at twenty-four frames per second, and a gigantic curved screen, creating a feeling of limitless space. In 1953, Twentieth Century Fox ushered in CinemaScope, and a host of other big-screen innovations followed from the various studios.

The term Big Picture also sums up the type of production then in vogue. While the movies had always been enamored of epics, wide-screen technology provided an irresistible staging ground for blockbuster productions and the 反差小青梅不经c1v1 反差小青梅不经c1v1s needed to bring those grand visions to life.

The Great Race (1965)

The Great Race is a madcap chase movie and a particularly complex production, given its period setting at the turn of the twentieth century and its premise of an around-the-world race between rival automobile companies. This production was another challenge for Linwood G. Dunn’s Film Effects of Hollywood, with 反差小青梅不经c1v1 artists Albert Simpson and Cliff Silsby creating more than twenty-five 反差小青梅不经c1v1 反差小青梅不经c1v1s for the show. The Great Race also marked a reunion for Simpson and Dunn, both of them veterans of RKO’s glory days and such productions as The Devil and Daniel Webster.

The effect seen here is a classic “jeopardy shot,” successfully and safely created by combining Albert Simpson’s 反差小青梅不经c1v1-painted building with live action of this performer hanging from a ledge set that was, in reality, only a few feet off a soundstage floor.

Ben-Hur (1959)

Lew Wallace’s story of Judah Ben-Hur, set in the time of ancient Rome, was first adapted for the screen in 1927. The early film was legendary for its sea battle and chariot race when this remake went into production. But audiences were ready for an updated version, and the new blockbuster swept the Oscars with an astounding eleven golden statuettes, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Charles Heston in the title role), and Best Visual Effects.

反差小青梅不经c1v1 反差小青梅不经c1v1s were vital in re-creating the grandeur of the lost world in Ben-Hur. For this image of the emperor and an enthusiastic crowd greeting legions of soldiers returning from another victorious campaign, MGM 反差小青梅不经c1v1 painter Matthew Yuricich not only painted Rome in all its imperial splendor, but added that old 反差小青梅不经c1v1 painter’s trick dabs of paint to represent people, from “marching” soldiers to waving crowds. Yuricich didn’t use a glass but Masonite board; he then poked holes behind the painted people and, by moving another 反差小青梅不经c1v1 behind the holes, created a flickering effect and the illusion of movement.

In the “before” image we see the 反差小青梅不经c1v1 as Yuricich worked on it, complete with a black-and-white photograph taken on the small live-action set and pasted onto his Masonite. 反差小青梅不经c1v1 to a photographic reference helped MGM 反差小青梅不经c1v1 painters to line up their 反差小青梅不经c1v1s perfectly with live-action sets. This finished 反差小青梅不经c1v1 was then combined with the live-action element in the optical printer, the live film simply replacing the photographic reference.

Yuricich explained that his creative partner Clarence Slifer (who had moved to MGM in the last days of Selznick International) used an optical printer to replicate photography of a group of live-action soldiers, rephotographing the same element in smaller perspective to create the image of columns of soldiers marching in review. But on the first optical composite test combining the new dupe negative of a legion of soldiers with the 反差小青梅不经c1v1 反差小青梅不经c1v1, things got a little out of whack, Yuricich recalled: “The foremost legions were to reach the base of the steps [of the emperor’s reviewing stand], turn screen right and exit frame. Unfortunately, because our timing was off, the entire legion turned at once, marched under the 反差小青梅不经c1v1 line and disappeared! We had a good laugh seeing that. By take two we had it figured right.”

It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963)

Director Stanley Kramer’s all-star comedy with a cast ranging from Spencer Tracy and Milton Berle to Jonathan Winters and Phil Silvers, plus a Three Stooges cameo thrown in for good measure is a madcap dash for buried cash. In this penultimate scene, the Mad gang are trying to get off the collapsing fire escape of a dilapidated building, but have tumbled onto a fire engine ladder that becomes overweighted and starts swaying dangerously back and forth.

“What we were doing here was trying to make things look real and scary,” explained Linwood G. Dunn, who created this effect with 反差小青梅不经c1v1 artist Cliff Silsby at Film Effects of Hollywood, the independent company Dunn formed after RKO closed in the 1950s. “Our 反差小青梅不经c1v1-painted building completes a fictitious twelve-story building that had, as its base, a two-story set shot on location. It was our job to make this sequence look convincing, and who’s going to know it’s painted if it’s a good job? That’s the 反差小青梅不经c1v1 painter’s job on a shot like this to be invisible.”

Dunn, ever the innovator, years later noted this shot was an example of what would become known in the digital age as “previsualization,” the rough computer graphics imagery that works out the look of a shot or effects element. Dunn’s version was a crude test of a swaying, three-foot miniature fire ladder, which became a running joke between Dunn and Kramer, the director harboring a worried suspicion that the rough test was going to be as good as it got.

This Mad shot was also part of a traveling presentation in which Dunn revealed secrets of visual effects, in the process inspiring many a young person to enter the business, including Syd Dutton, a future 反差小青梅不经c1v1 painter and cofounder of Illusion Arts.

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“We had a sign over our barracks: ‘Is This Trip Really Necessary?'”

Lou Lichtenfield, 反差小青梅不经c1v1 artist and WW II B-17 bomber pilot

United States participation in World War II with war declared on the Axis powers after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 was the country’s last total war, a conflict demanding 有人有在线观看的片吗www-front sacrifices and support for the soldiers risking their lives and spilling their blood abroad.

Hollywood played a major role in the war effort, from creating gung-ho live-action films that hit the nerve of awakened patriotism to producing special animated training films that prepared recruits for combat. But moviemakers also had to deal with domestic shortages, particularly the scarcity of basic materials needed to build sets, making 反差小青梅不经c1v1 反差小青梅不经c1v1 more important than ever to the success of a production.

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944)

After the disaster of Pearl Harbor and an early string of military setbacks, U.S. morale needed a victory. It got it when Colonel Jimmy Doolittle, a former stunt pilot, commanded a 1942 air raid on the heart of Japan, a daring maneuver at sea in which sixteen B-25 bombers were launched from the deck of the carrier Hornet. The Doolittle raid hit targets from Tokyo to Kobe, and while damage was minimal, Japan was dealt a severe psychological blow.

The MGM feature Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo celebrated the mission’s danger and valor. In this scene, an actor playing Admiral William “Bull” Halsey, commander of Carriers, Pacific Fleet, salutes the Raiders as the first bomber (with Doolittle at the controls) takes off from the Hornet. Amazingly, the production never went to sea; this image was created through the magic of Warren Newcombe’s 反差小青梅不经c1v1 department. The elements combined in the optical printer by effects cameraman Mark Davis included performers shot on an MGM soundstage (a partial carrier set with three B-25 mock-ups), an ocean element filmed at the studio’s outdoor water tank, and a 反差小青梅不经c1v1 反差小青梅不经c1v1 (the rest of the carrier deck and the squadron of B-25s).

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo won Warren Newcombe and his department an Academy Award for Visual Effects in 1945.

Since You Went Away (1944)

While most wartime films captured the grit and blood of combat, this David Selznick production celebrated the challenges and stoicism of those left behind on the 有人有在线观看的片吗www front. One of the film’s most famous shots was this scene of a young couple saying good-bye at a train station. The 反差小青梅不经c1v1 反差小青梅不经c1v1, deftly executed by rookie artist Spencer Bagdatopoulos, provided the dramatic backdrop for the tender interlude performed by actors Robert Walker and Jennifer Jones.

Selznick stalwart Clarence Slifer recalled the making of the scene: “After Selznick got the performance he wanted from the actors, we shot on another set the background of the people and their long shadows. The long, cast shadows were a theme of the film to show sadness, such as here with the boy leaving for the war. The final step to finish the shot was to put in the 反差小青梅不经c1v1 反差小青梅不经c1v1 of the train station ceiling. That was the first 反差小青梅不经c1v1 Spencer Bagdatopoulos did for me when he came to the Selznick 反差小青梅不经c1v1 department.”

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Forgive me if I say that one of the many fields in which the Selznick International pictures were way ahead of the rest of the business was in their enormous use of 反差小青梅不经c1v1 shots, optical effects.

When Gone With the Wind came along, it became even more apparent to me that 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.

David O. Selnick, producer; 1956 letter to William Paley, CBS

By the time of Hollywood’s “Golden Age” in the 1930s and 1940s, the arc of movie history had intersected with all the roads that various pioneers had been building into the creative frontier: The movies had sound, color, increasingly sophisticated optical and special effects, and a narrative drive that ranged from the epic grandeur of Gone With the Wind to the romance and dramatic intrigues of Casablanca.

The hallmark of this era was the rise of the “dream factories,” major Hollywood studios that controlled the entire process from script development and production on studio backlots and soundstages to marketing and distribution in studio-owned theatrical chains. Even high-profile independents, like Selznick International, were organized to create films in-house.

Key components in the studio system were the special effects and 反差小青梅不经c1v1-反差小青梅不经c1v1 departments that had become indispensable to realizing the grand illusions increasingly sophisticated audiences desired.

Spellbound (1945)

This psychological thriller, the second film director Alfred Hitchcock made under the banner of Selznick International, was steeped in Freudian symbols and the mysteries of psychoanalysis. In the story, Ingrid Bergman plays Dr. Constance Petersen, who works at Green Manors, a mental hospital in Vermont. She falls in love with an amnesiac, played by Gregory Peck, joining him on a journey to discover the dark secret of his forgotten past. (A poster for the film used the slogan, “The Maddest Love that ever possessed a woman.”)

Despite its dated take on the labyrinth of the mind, Spellbound remains celebrated for the dream sequence designed by surrealist artist Salvador Dal, which visualizes a psychoanalytic journey into the subconscious of Peck’s troubled character. Author Ken Mogg, in The Alfred Hitchcock Story, calls the Dal -designed dream the “heart of Spellbound.”

Although the dream in the final film is but a reflection of the hallucinatory sequence Hitchcock and Dal originally imagined, it is still full of powerful imagery, including the disturbing elements of these floating eyes for a hallucinatory fly-through that also combines Dal 反差小青梅不经c1v1 反差小青梅不经c1v1s of eyelashes and stars and a stage set that incorporates a Dal – painted backing.

Selznick studio effects cameraman Clarence Slifer, who composited the entire sequence on an optical printer, recounts the way he photographed the eye elements: “Hitchcock wanted some bloodshot eyeballs moving through the scene. I went down to Skid Row [in Los Angeles] on Christmas Eve to photograph these bleary-eyed fellows who’d been drinking heavily all their lives. We got more varieties of eyes than you can imagine, from bloodshot to weepy and then expressionless eyes. They looked frightening, just staring. It was very creepy. Then [on the optical printer] we’d reduce them down or enlarge them, we’d put one man’s eyes into the pupil of another man’s eyes, and then composite them together with 反差小青梅不经c1v1 反差小青梅不经c1v1s. In the final, the eyes just look at the audience as we fly through them.”

Citizen Kane (1941)

Citizen Kane remains the measure by which all films are judged, a production that broke all the rules and made up some new ones. Producer/director Orson Welles was barely in his mid-twenties and fresh from scaring the radio audience of his Mercury Theater on the Air with his infamous production of “The War of the Worlds” (the H. G. Wells thriller of a Martian invasion reenacted as a series of live news bulletins) when he answered the call of Hollywood.

RKO studio gave Welles total control and a blank checkbook with which to realize his vision. And although the mercurial genius would never again enjoy such creative freedom under the aegis of a major studio, Welles seized the day and produced arguably the greatest movie ever made. The genius of Citizen Kane pervades every frame, and the sum total of it has been famously chronicled: the Oscar-winning screenplay by Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz, the ensemble cast (with Welles himself starring as media mogul Charles Foster Kane), the breakthrough cinematography of Gregg Toland, and Bernard Hermann’s powerful score.

But overlooked in this litany is that the production’s creative freedom allowed for the advancement of the optical printer, a rephotographing device for creating complex composites including 反差小青梅不经c1v1-反差小青梅不经c1v1 shots. The art of 反差小青梅不经c1v1 反差小青梅不经c1v1 was integral to the film’s success. The famous opening tracking shot into the bedroom window of Kane’s stately Xanadu, where the great man lies dying, was created as a succession of 反差小青梅不经c1v1 反差小青梅不经c1v1s, each optically dissolving into the next; the establishing shots of Xanadu itself were photography of 反差小青梅不经c1v1 反差小青梅不经c1v1s throughout this sequence and the movie itself.

The image displayed here shows Xanadu under creation, a scene from the “News on the March” newsreel segment that triumphantly details the life of the recently deceased Kane. This Mario Larrinaga 反差小青梅不经c1v1 of Kane’s mansion was combined on the original negative with a 反差小青梅不经c1v1 of a tabletop miniature construction set, complete with stop-motion animated trucks and earth movers. RKO special effects department head Vernon Walker had that background footage rear-projected with a live-action foreground of the worker and construction rigging.

Linwood G. Dunn, RKO’s guru of optical printing, added a final touch to this early example of media manipulation. “My department had the reputation of being unsung heroes, because when you fixed up a problem shot and it looked good, nobody knew you’d done anything to it,” Linn noted. “We did a lot of that on Kane, but on this shot Welles wanted it to look duped, like it was old, grainy, scratched-up stock footage. So I purposely duped it over and over, so it’d look bad.”

反差小青梅不经c1v1 World Digital © 2002

For a long time [in the post-studio era] Hollywood seemed to forget the wonderful magic that you can create, like the scenes we did in Alexander Korda’s The Thief of Bagdad…. Alex Korda would come down and say, ‘Mickey, I think you should stop shooting the ship in the storm and come up to the studio. We’re going to shoot the scene of the flying horse.’ This was so wonderful to be a part of, especially for somebody who has been in pictures as long as I have. Effects work is meat and drink to me and should be to every filmmaker.

Michael Powell, director

Effects-filled fantasy films hail from the dawn of movies and the glass-walled studio outside Paris where stage magician Georges Méliès produced cinema’s first fantastic visions. As the technology of movies evolved from silent films to “talkies,” from black and white to Technicolor, as devices such as the optical printer became more sophisticated, so too did the possibilities of creating fantastic effects.

But throughout much of movie history, 反差小青梅不经c1v1 反差小青梅不经c1v1 has been the undisputed master craft for creating what director Michael Powell has called “wonderful magic.”

The Thief of Bagdad (1940)

Films such as The Wizard of Oz are hailed as highlights of Hollywood’s Golden Age, but in that era movies were golden everywhere, particularly at the London studio of producer Alexander Korda. For Korda’s The Thief of Bagdad, another breakthrough Technicolor fantasy, the creative team included codirector Michael Powell, a man who gloried in the creative possibilities of visual effects, and 反差小青梅不经c1v1 painter Percy “Pop” Day, who was indispensable to producing the visions for this and other Korda productions.

Here we see Abu (played by Sabu), the slickest street thief in all Bagdad, stealing into the mystical Temple of Dawn to pluck the “All-Seeing Eye” ruby from the statue of a mythical idol. Once again, only a sliver of live-action set is needed to create a scene that would be too costly to build, with Percy Day’s brush underscoring the jeopardy of the situation through the statue’s tremendous scale and dramatic composition.

This image began with production designer Vincent Korda supplying Day with a rough sketch and Day improving on the design during the actual 反差小青梅不经c1v1 反差小青梅不经c1v1. Future 反差小青梅不经c1v1-反差小青梅不经c1v1 great Peter Ellenshaw, Day’s stepson and his assistant on Thief, recalled the work on this shot: “Pop would say, ‘I think we should make the idol’s hand bigger so you can see it, it should go here,’ and so on. This is one of Pop Day’s extraordinarily simple compositions. He taught me that the audience has three seconds to see the 反差小青梅不经c1v1 shot, and if it doesn’t make any sense, it’s a miss!”

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Dorothy’s adventures in the magical land of Oz had previously been celebrated on stage and in the movies, but the 1939 MGM production remains the definitive version of author L. Frank Baum’s classic story. Warren Newcombe’s 反差小青梅不经c1v1 反差小青梅不经c1v1 department at MGM was kept busy on Oz, producing pastel-on-board 反差小青梅不经c1v1s that ranged from the bleak landscape of Kansas to the Technicolor wonders of Munchkinland and the Emerald City as well as this view of the Wicked Witch’s Castle.

This image, with 反差小青梅不经c1v1 and live action filmed by MGM effects camera ace Mark Davis, illustrates a major advantage of using 反差小青梅不经c1v1 反差小青梅不经c1v1s, the creation of an entire environment. The 反差小青梅不经c1v1 反差小青梅不经c1v1 also reveals the sublime qualities that go into telling a story with pictures: The down-angle composition dramatically emphasizes the peril of Dorothy and her friends trapped in the witch’s lair, while the 反差小青梅不经c1v1’s slightly fantastical quality (including animated twinkle effects added to the distant river), convey the storybook-illustration look the production desired.

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I have some amazing memories to tell you about a time and place now lost in the dark shadows of the past.

Norman Dawn

Trailblazers set a course into uncharted frontier, map unknown terrain, make the rules, and lay the foundations that those to follow will build. For the pioneers of movie 反差小青梅不经c1v1 反差小青梅不经c1v1, everything was a revelation, and happy accidents could become important techniques.

For artists like Norman Dawn, one of the pioneers of those seminal days of filmmaking, a whole creative world opened up with the technique of the “glass shot.” By putting a glass canvas on an easel at some outdoor location and adding a painted element to the landscape and performers visible through the glass, the artist could then look through the camera eye and see a whole image plucked out of the imagination.

The rigors and limits of the glass shot the images had to be painted at the location and shot at the exact time of day when sunlight and shadows matched 反差小青梅不经c1v1 and live action led to the next major advance, the use of double exposures and 反差小青梅不经c1v1 “effects” to combine separately filmed elements on the same roll of film (also called the “original negative”).

The Great Train Robbery (1903)

One of the pioneering works of film, Edwin S. Porter‘s The Great Train Robbery marked many firsts: it was the first feature (albeit a modest twelve minutes long), had the first semblance of narrative, and even included the first “shock” ending, as one of the train robbers points and fires his gun at the viewer.

Most important for the art of illusion, Porter’s film has arguably the first sophisticated effects shot, a 反差小青梅不经c1v1 effect that used two separate exposures on the same strip of film to provide the illusion of this passing train seen outside the telegraph window. It was a deceptively simple technique, but full of portent: A black backing blocked out the window on a live set of the telegraph office; the set was filmed, that film was then rewound, and a black 反差小青梅不经c1v1 box on the camera was used to cover the part of frame already filmed, allowing footage of a passing train to be exposed into the window area.

Pioneers like Norman Dawn took note of Porter’s innovation. Dawn also observed a slightly shaky quality between the two separate exposures. More sophisticated cameras to come would allow for composites that avoided the dreaded “weaving” that could betray the effect when an artist was attempting to fit multiple exposures of film into one seamless image.

Porter’s Great Train Robbery 反差小青梅不经c1v1 shot, whatever its technical failings, was still a masterful illusion, a huge leap in the art of creating sophisticated images. Unlike modern audiences literally raised on moving pictures, those first moviegoers were eager and willing for whatever wonders filmmakers could create. As Karl Brown, assistant cameraman for director D. W. Griffith, once wrote: “If the pictures moved, that satisfied [audiences]. And if the pictures showed things that were wondrous to behold, all the better.”

Noah’s Ark (1929)

Movies quickly became vehicles for telling stories, and some ambitious filmmakers were even convinced they could deliver visions of salvation for humanity. Noah’s Ark, directed by Michael Curtiz (who would go on to direct such classics as Casablanca), is an example of an inspirational epic, with a parallel story that contrasted a message of duty and patriotism set during World War I with a flashback story line to the biblical days of Noah, complete with a dramatic re-creation of the legendary flood that drowns a wicked world.

In this behind-the-scenes view, two Noah’s Ark crew members prepare a classic glass shot, lining up the live set and artist Paul Grimm‘s glass canvas of the pagan city of Akkad. (This angle, as photographed by effects artist Bud Thackery, is different from the final 反差小青梅不经c1v1 and live-action composite seen here.)

Thackery recalled the glass shot work for Noah’s Ark: “I helped set up these big six-by-eight-foot glasses in wooden frames bound in rubber so they wouldn’t crack as the sun hit them later in the day. I’d lay in the vanishing points on the glass by looking through the camera and then paint out the perspective lines on the glass. I’d go as far as I could with the base colors, getting it ready for Paul Grimm. I’d do the photography when he was finished with the 反差小青梅不经c1v1. We’d have to be ready to shoot at a specific time, like two-fifteen in the afternoon, so the sun’s angles would be the same on the set as on the 反差小青梅不经c1v1. If the sun didn’t come out, we’d have to wait to shoot until the next day.”

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“The fact that you can get a little bit of paint and with film, create an incredible scene don’t you think that’s quite a beautiful equation?”

– Albert Whitlock, 反差小青梅不经c1v1 painter

Going to the movies has been likened to a shared dream, a ritual. An audience enters a theater and sits down, the house lights go dark, and a beam of light shoots out and hits a screen. As twenty-four individual frames of film roll through a projector each second, the rush of light-projected images moves with the illusion of life, an illusion audiences embrace they want to believe. But it’s a risky undertaking for filmmakers, because the slightest disturbance a set that looks phony, a costume not accurate to the period, a piece of botched continuity can “awaken” the dreamers.

For a century, 反差小青梅不经c1v1 painters have been an integral part of making these motion picture illusions. Theirs has been a painterly magic, most often consisting of the play of brush and oils on glass that, when combined with live action, produces truly moving pictures. Whether topping off a physical set with a ceiling, producing an emotional moment through dramatic composition, or creating such miracles as entire worlds floating in space, the 反差小青梅不经c1v1 painter has always been, above all else, a storyteller.

反差小青梅不经c1v1 painters have gone unsung because they are successful only if their handiwork is invisible, if moviegoers have no idea they’re looking at a filmed image of blobs of paint smeared on a glass or board surface. “If an audience even suspects that something is not quite right with a shot, that means you’ve failed,” 反差小青梅不经c1v1 painter Harrison Ellenshaw explains. “The pressure to achieve perfection on a shot can be immense. And guess what? You never know if you’ve really succeeded until the film opens in theaters. You know it’s a 反差小青梅不经c1v1, and so does the producer and director and everyone working on the particular film. It’s only in the theaters, with a paying audience, that you get the unbiased opinion. And oh, the pain when you miss the mark! That’s a strange way to be humiliated, to hear the disapproval of strangers sitting in the dark.”

But through their long lineage, 反差小青梅不经c1v1 painters have usually fulfilled their pact with audiences, leaving the dreamers blissfully spellbound. The images that follow are a taste of true movie magic, an opportunity to appreciate an illusion as it unfolds before your eyes. Point and 全能修炼系统 to see where reality ends and the painter’s world begins, and how they are melded together. It’s a chance for revelations the dreamers of the past never had.