Colin Stone - Final Project

Movie Magic: A Progression of Special F/X From the 1970’s, and Its Impact on Today’s Cinema

There was a time when the mere existence of “moving pictures” was enough. Those first audiences, mouths agape at the grainy, skittering images, were impressed by anything, be it a steamy train arrival or a woman walking her children. The sheer ability to see actual moving pictures had left even the most sophisticated audiences in a state of awe and wonder.

Over time, the public’s progression of expectations, in combination with an attention span approaching that of a overly-caffeinated squirrel, can no longer achieve that level of wonder and intrigue with the mere capturing of motion; and so spawned the introduction and gradual evolution of special effects and movie magic. Starting with the late 1960’s through the 70’s, a new era in the evolution of cinema dawned with an ever-expanding relationship between technology and movie magic that has been crucial in how we experience today’s cinema and recapture that feeling of being “amazed”.

Marking the progression that evolved into today’s CGI , Inspiration for this concept dates back to the summer of 1992: --He was ten years old and about to see his first R-rated movie in the theatre with his old man. The movie was called Terminator 2: Judgment Day. He had never seen the original Terminator, but it didn’t matter…his interest in any kind of narrative or plot was far outweighed by the prospect of his hero, the one and only Arnold, being a badass fighting robot and blowing things up. Needless to say, he was not disappointed…but it was not until the introduction of the T-1000 and his liquid-metal physique that he experienced a true understanding of the concept of “suspension of disbelief”. He had never seen anything like it, and couldn’t understand how anything so remarkable could be filmed without being real.--
Later that year, James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day won the Oscar for visual effects, some could say dawning today’s era of CGI and computer enhanced imagery prevalent in nearly any higger-budget blockbuster.

The seeds of this era, however, as stated, were planted much earlier and owe their conception to the higher budget blockbusters of the 1970’s that strived for that very purpose of creating shock and amazement through state of the art visual effects. The biggest pioneers of this era would probably have to be credited to directors George Lucas and Steven Spielberg for their credit to some of cinema’s most prolific films, while technicians such as Douglas Trumbull, famed for his effects work on Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, were crucial in the evolution of camera work and computer technology.

Studios during the 70’s had realized huge successes in what began the “blockbuster” era of international audiences, with larger productions and higher budgets than before. Because of this, some filmmakers seized the opportunity, through advancements in technology, to blow up the boundaries of special effects, shocking audiences with never before seen realism and technological wizardry. With the success of Kubrick’s 2001, A Space Odyssey in 1968, there was a raised interest in the genre of science fiction, a genre often defined by visual conception, and capitalized upon with the releases of films like Omega Man (1971), Logan’s Run (1976), Silent Run (1972) and Soylent Green (1973), which had varied success. The popularity of the science fiction genre seemed to fluctuate with the successes and failures of the films that it produced, and those films produced seemed to fluctuate with the success and utilization of visual effects they incorporated.

In the realm of science fiction and blockbuster films of the 1970’s, it would be difficult not to
bring up George Lucas’ Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope. It is perhaps the quintessential sci-fi epic and part one of one of the greatest trilogies in cinema history. Upon its release in 1977, a New York Times article noted,

“The unprecedented success of [Star Wars] turned Hollywood’s attitudes toward science fiction upside down, changed the industry’s definition of summer, re-established symphonic music in films, exploded the boundaries of special effects, gave new importance to sound, created a pop mythology, and made merchandising the characters from a movie as important as the movie itself.”

With Hollywood’s attitude towards the sci-fi genre in the early 70’s, the biggest initial challenge was simply getting it produced. Realizing this, Lucas knew that in order to be successful, he would have to create visuals and effects on a level that would quantum leap Kubrick’s revolutionary 2001, utilizing techniques that hadn’t even been invented yet. During this time, the retirement Hollywood’s best F/X people led to Lucas starting his own visual effects department called Industrial Light and Magic (or ILM) which, today, is one of the biggest special effects outfits in the industry, and handles a majority of Hollywood films. Lucas hired John Dykstra to head the effects department at ILM in ’75, who was instrumental in the creation of Star Wars’ visual aesthetic. Each effects shot combined several elements that had to be photographed separately and then printed together, such as spaceships, animated overlays and miniatures (represented in previous photograph). In the end, Star Wars utilized a remarkable 3,838 individual elements in 365 miniature and photographic effects shots.

ILM took effects methods that had been used for years as individual jobs and combined them into one system, making camera movement with miniatures much more efficient and effective. One of the biggest innovations for the Star Wars production, which is still used today, is the development of motion control. This was a technique which uses computers to mechanically control the movement in both the spaceships and cameras in a precise fashion. With the computerization of precisely fashioned mechanical dollies, pan and tilt heads, and model movers, a frame by frame repeatability can be accomplished, which is a key element to modern F/X shots. The end result of this innovation was a much more fluid movement than anyone had ever been able to achieve in special effects. People at ILM also developed a vastly improved blue-screen system as well as a new Rotoscoping system that resulted in startlingly realistic images. It is these techniques that will eventually give birth to motion capture, mapping and computer mapping utilized in the most recent and high-budget productions.

Speaking of large productions, one cannot discuss the “blockbuster” phenomenon during the 70’s without bringing up Steven Spielberg who, like Lucas, is responsible for some of the biggest hits in cinema history. In 1975 Spielberg directed the remarkable adaptation of Jaws, based on Peter Benchley’s novel, which, upon its release broke records as the highest grossing film ever (until the release of Star Wars two years later), making it “the” blockbuster. Two years later he directed the sci-fi film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, with great success.


Jaws, with it’s immaculate success, ironically, had an infamously troubled production and went way over-budget. Issues ranging from the mechanical sharks being corroded by salt water to poor weather, to random sailboats finding their way into the shot. Production created three mechanical sharks; a full one for underwater shots (pictured below), one that turned from left to right, though exposing its left side to machinery, and an identical one with its right side exposed. To add realism, Spielberg inter-cut actual footage of sharks with the mechanical shark footage. As it turns out, he was more effective in that aspect than he realized. After the film’s release, people went into a shark-fearing frenzy, making noticeable declines in beach attendance as well as a marked incline in shark poaching! Though not the pioneer of modern-day mechanical monsters, Spielberg was utilizing state of the art machinery in a full production scale in conjunction with actual footage, making the best possible choices in how to depict the shark (the infamous opening with the skinny-dipping girl is a perfect example of this). Combined with its award-winning score, Jaws a terrifying reminder of how the unseen can be a far more horrifying concept than the usual boogeyman.

These particular examples give an idea of how the extra concentration and attention to the visual effects aspect of filmmaking defined them, through the utilization and re-thinking of old techniques, to innovating new techniques. One can easily see how the visuals of today’s cinema, though far advanced from the 70’s, saw their infancy in the blockbuster epics of that era. The use of mechanizing and computer control has simply evolved, which is perhaps both good and bad. Today’s cinema, from children’s movies and animation, to the highest budget action movies, is losing the tangible aesthetic of actually filming something. CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) is becoming a less expensive, more efficient way of filming what would be large and plush set pieces. Granted, some shots can only exist in software, but too often the over-use of CGI and flashy computer generated visuals give a flattened aesthetic to a shot that could have otherwise been physically shot on camera. Filmmakers should realize that flashy CG explosions and monsters cannot replace good writing and thought-out cinematic structure.
It seems as if we may have entered an era of filmmaking that will make the camera obsolete. We can already begin to see this transition in animation…when was the last time you saw an animated movie hit theatres in which the animation wasn’t done in a hard-drive? Movies such as Beowulf and A Scanner Darkly utilize real actors, but are now scanned into the screen as opposed to being captured on celluloid.

Movie Magic is great, but there must be a happy medium found between actual production and the aid of computer enhancement. The trend, while in some ways has done incredible things for film, if overused, flattens a film taking the magic right back out, leaving us a squirrely mess, yearning for the films we grew up with and know by heart.


Bibliography:

David Cook, Lost Illusions: American Cinema in the Shadow of Watergate and Vietnam 1970-1979. Berkley: University of California Press, 2000. Ch. 3.

Ted Edwards, Star Wars, The Unauthorized Compendium. Little, Brown and Company. 1999. Ch. I.

Ron Fry and Pamela Fourzon, The Saga of Special Effects: The complete history of cinematic illusion. Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 1977. Ch. 1, 8.

David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction, 7th Edition. McGraw-Hill Inc. University of Wisconsin. 2004. Ch. 12.

Internet Resource. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaws_(film).

Internet Resource. http://www.oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/06-may/o36lucas.html. (article)

Internet Resource. http://www.ilm.com/insideilm.html (Industrial Light and Magic’s internet resource).