September 12, 2019 • 55 mins
Special effects have been around since the first movies. In fact, the techniques the earliest filmmakers created are still around today, we just use computers to do them faster and cheaper. Put on your beret and get ready for SYSK film class.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, Stuff you should know listeners, if you want to
come see s Live, You've only got a couple of
more cities this year that still have tickets, and that
is Orlando in New Orleans. Yeah, we'll be in Orlando
on October nine at the Plaza Live, and we'll be
in New Orleans at the Civic Theater the following night
October tent and friends like Chuck said, you better go
get your tickets. Go to s Y s K live
(00:22):
dot com for info and ticket links and everything you
need to come see us. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W.
(00:43):
Chuck Bryant wearing his Stone Tumble Pilots hat, and there's
Jerry over there. She's not wearing any hat. She's got
really cool hair. It's not Stone Tumple Pilots. It is too.
I've seen the Stone Tumble Pilots hats before and that's
what it is. STP because I bought two hats at
Auto Zone yesterday. I have a Champion spark Plug hat. Yeah,
(01:04):
they have good hats, they really do. I was getting
a battery, and I was like, oh, on these two hats.
It was a good Year Akron, Ohio good Year hat nice,
which is where Emily's from. So I wanted that. And
then I saw this stp hat Stone Temple pilots, but
I would get a Champion spark plug hat to those
are that's that's great, Okay. I'll let you borrow mine
anytime you want. I just gotta give it back. I
don't if I've ever seen you in a baseball cap.
(01:27):
It's a weird jam, is it not what you want
to see. I've seen you in shorts like twice in
twelve years, keep the legs covered. And I think one
of them was when you came over to borrow my lawnmower.
I remember that, Yeah, like nine years ago. Sure, I've
got to mow the lawn sometimes. Now things have changed.
You can buy a lawnmore. Yeah, and now we can
(01:49):
afford lawnmowers. I can wear shorts to actually have one
of those plug in lawnmowers. I have a battery powered
lawn more. Do you look at us stupid liberal hippies. Well,
mine's mine's battery powered too, but you have to plug
it in to charge it. Oh yeah, yeah, what what
kind do you have? I have the green one. Yeah,
I think they're all green. Now there's a blue one. Oh,
I've got the green one. To the sun Joe. No,
(02:10):
but I have a sun Joe pressure washer. He really
isn't battery operated. No, you plug that in. I was
gonna sail, but it just goes like tinkles out water.
But they do make a plug in lawnmowers, Like, it's
not a battery. You just like have a cord that
you walk around and over with your lawnmark. I guess
they're called electric sure, but yeah, I got the batter
one because I have so little grass now and we
(02:33):
may be done period with grass. Oh yeah, that's why
you're zero escaping. Well, we're definitely doing the front, but
the back it just got smaller and smaller. And my
last lawmar broke. So I was paying a guy to
come cut it. It's like, why am I paying this
guy to cut to do a seven minute mo There's
just that one bladed class grass that sees the lawnmower
coming like yeah, But then I went and got the
(02:55):
battery because lawnmowers are terrible for the environment. Yeah, that's
why I got it. They're one of the worst looters. Yeah,
we're both also aware that we are charging our battery
powered lawnmowers with coal fired power, and we understand that.
I'm just talking about exhaust fumes. I don't even need one.
I live in a condo, but I'm so dissatisfied with
(03:15):
the landscapers that take care of the condo that I thought, yes,
I bought a lawnmower just to do the little patch
out in front of our buildings. Poor Momo doesn't get
long grass against her junk when she's potty. It's a
great way to start this episode. So we're talking special effects. Obvious,
this has been law talk. We're talking special effects, Chuck. Yes,
(03:39):
movie special effects, which, boy, I mean, we could do
ten parts on this. This is kind of a big
summation because movie special effects can be everything from the
movie that you walk out of saying, oh that movie
had no special effects, when in fact it did wrong. Yeah,
just tiny little things that you may not even notice,
(03:59):
to things that are almost whole cloth special effects like
sky Captain in the World of Tomorrow, Yeah, or Sin City. Yeah.
I like both of those. Yes, did you know since City,
every single bit of the set was c G I yeah,
and that Sky Captain did it first, yeah, year before
huh yeah, every bit of that was it was a
green screen movie. I never saw it was a kid.
(04:20):
It was interesting, Like the look of it was amazing
and very much ahead of its time, like real art deco. Right, Yeah,
for sure, I call it black and white, but it wasn't.
It was just this really washed out color. But it
looked awesome and was not bad. I'll have to check
it out. And I think the dudes that made that
kind of quit making movies after that. It's a very
unique story. Have you ever seen This has nothing to
(04:41):
do with anything, but have you seen the Changeling? Oh
my god? Did you just see that? Yes? And I
have to tell you, I don't think I've ever gotten
chills more frequently from a movie that I did with
that one changed its great genuinely. It's a genuinely scary
ghost story. Yeah, like it is wonderful. Yeah. I miss
(05:03):
Georgie Scott too. Yeah, he's a good actor. And I
don't remember who that um the female lead was in there,
but she was great too. It's been a while. I
haven't seen it in many, many years, so anyway, special effects,
let's try this thing in We're gonna get derailed like
every five sets. Okay, effects are divided and this is
(05:24):
by the grabstor. He helped us out with This adds
a big movie guy and horror movie sci fi guy,
so he probably enjoyed writing this one up. Uh. They're
divided into three general categories. And this all has to
do with where the effect is happening. It can be practical,
which is in front of the camera, and that means
it's a physical thing that's happening. I think that's what
(05:44):
most people think of when they think special effects. You think, okay,
by most people, I mean me, uh, in camera effects
that happened inside the camera, and then post production effects.
And many times you're using one or all three of these.
So with like practical effects, that's things like UM, like
(06:05):
makeup and prosthetics like ed uses the example of David
Lynch's The Elephant Man, like the the prosthetic makeup that
was used to term John Hurt or John Hurd which
one hurt into Joseph Merrick. Um, that's a special effect.
(06:25):
An explosion on set that's a special effect. A UM,
a blood packet to make it look like somebody just
got shot in the chest. Squid. That's a special effect.
All three of those are practical effects. They're actually happening
in the physical world in front of you on set,
being captured on film. That's a practical special effect. Yeah.
And the other one I wanted to mention there that
(06:46):
you might not think of his stuff. Like if there
is a a fire like a fireplace in a scene
and then you flip the camera around to show the
people and you see that fire shimmering on the wall,
that's a practical effect too. Little things like that, but
it's lighting. It's a lighting effect, yeah. Or it's a
fire like you know, those aren't real fires. I mean
it's real fire. Somebody should put that out. But it's
(07:09):
not like someone lights a bunch of wood. They put
fake wood and they have these uh firebars that it's
like what you have under your grill basically, or like
hide those and then that's your fire because it has
to look perfect. You can't just chance somebody not being
able to start a fire or looking wonky. That's why
movie fires look perfect, Yeah, because they're fake. They are
(07:30):
kind of dreamy. So in camera effects is just basically
messing with the way the film is being produced inside
the camera what not? What's going on in reality the
film is capturing, but how the film is actually capturing
this stuff? Yeah, slow motion is a special effect in
camera special effect. Yeah, or fast motion too, which is
(07:53):
ten times more hilarious than fast motion if you ask me, like,
where would the monsters be without fast motion? Yeah? Or
Binny Hill for God's sake, that lived and breathed on
fast motion? Um, what else can you do there? You can?
And we'll see this some some of the early special effects,
like stopping the film, changing something, starting it again, like Bewitched,
(08:17):
appearing out of nowhere. Yeah, that's especially in camera special effect. Yeah.
One thing that struck me about all this from researching
this is how the basis the foundation for special effects
was laid immediately upon like motion pictures being like created,
like the the whole industry, not even the industry before
(08:37):
the industry existed, but basically after the invention of motion pictures,
and that it stayed virtually the same until the nineties. Uh. Yeah,
people refined it and got better at it, and techniques
got more the same general crafts were used, which is
why craft service is called craft service, because each department
(08:58):
is their own craft. I didn't know they're there to
serve them pizza roles, yeah, man or whatever. You can
put on some weight and film in something. I'll tell
you that for you can so uh stop motion animation.
That is an in camera effect. You're moving a little
clay figure or whatever, a doll or a King Kong,
(09:18):
one a California raisin, one frame at a time, twenty
four frames per second. Can you imagine? Didn't you do
that with your brother with g I Joe? I did?
And then years later I did a little Star Wars
thing when I got a high eight video camera and
um spent like three days working on something that ended
up being nine seconds long, and I said, I'm done.
What's funny is you're gonna get a season desist later
(09:40):
from Lucasfilm after talking about us in the podcast. Uh.
And then we have post production effects, and that is
I think that's what a lot of people think of
a special effects these days, because that's all the c
g I stuff that you will see as all happens
in post production. Okay, alright, yes, these days I got you, Like,
almost all special effects have and impost these days, right, well, no,
(10:02):
they still combined some of the old crafts as well.
But yeah, surely a lot of it is c g
I I mean, computers can do some amazing stuff. I
mean stuff that used to take months to do a
computer can do an hour's now and do it a
million times better. So, um, depending on your taste, I
should say. So those are the big three. Practical and
(10:24):
camera in post production and um, like I was saying,
like the basis of special effects was founded like in
the nineteenth century, and there were just some people who
had kind of followed in a tradition of still photography.
Still photographers by that time had already figured out some
(10:45):
cool stuff that you could do messing around with cameras,
something like double exposure. We're gonna take a picture of
one thing and then take a picture of another thing
with the previously exposed film, and all of a sudden,
it looks like there's a ghost looming behind you. Stuff
like that. So out of the gate, when motion pictures
were um beat started to become a little widespread and
people could afford them and try messing around with them.
(11:07):
They had a basis of of trickery to begin with.
But there's a lot of stuff you can do with
motion picture cameras that you can't do with still photo cameras.
And they figured this out right away. Yeah. That first
guy who's credited as the first special effect is Alfred
Clark and in uh, they don't have the year exactly right,
(11:28):
it's either ninety three, that's eight or eight. He made
a short film called the Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots,
and he did that little stop trick, like I was saying,
you shoot something, you stop the camera, you replace it,
or you remove something, and then you start the camera
and in real time when you go to play it back,
it's seamless. And in his case, did you look at it?
(11:53):
It's uh, he's just a stop trick with Mary getting beheaded,
and right when the axe is going to fall, you know,
he switches her out for a dummy, then starts the
camera back up and he chops the dummy's head off,
and it's it looks pretty good, like you can't. There's
no big weird jump he did for did a really
good job. Yeah, And the key to that is just
(12:13):
making sure that no one touches the camera or even
breathes on it, and then getting the dummy in the
same position as the actor. Yeah. And in fact, as
we'll talk about later with Matt Paintings, it's so crucial
that the camera not move. That one technique was they
used to bury the camera tripod like a couple of
feet into the earth, just to make sure like no
(12:36):
dumb dumb p a bumps into it like me. So um.
Alfred Clark is credited with the first special effect, but
a guy named George may Lee's today get it may Lee?
We should go ask Casey Pegrum. Oh yeah, he would know.
I think it's uh Millier, Oh nice, I think he
(12:58):
just nailed it, Oragemillier. At any rate, this guy is
known as the father of special effects. He was very
early on doing stuff that no one else was doing,
you know. Granted there were very few people working in
this field and the time of the five people did.
But he was an illusionist and he said, oh man,
(13:19):
I can really do some amazing tricks with this camera.
And he really put it to good use from a
very early um like I mean, turn to the last century. Yeah,
he actually stumbled upon that little stop trick by accident
when he was shooting a street traffic scene in Paris.
The camera jams. Well, I think a bus was coming
(13:40):
across frame. He's like, mad, fixes the camera. Can we
say that all right? We don't have any French people listening,
that's true. Uh, starts the camera back up, and of
course there's different things happening, and then when he went
back to look at it, it's he's kind of just
stumbled upon this weird little steps sitution splice that became
(14:01):
part of filmmaking. Yeah, because by the time the camera
had started up again, the bus was replaced by a hearse.
So it looked like when he went back and watched it,
the bus suddenly transformed into a hearse And he said,
wait till they get a load of bewitched seventies something
years from now. So, um, no, I guess what was
that in the fifties, sixties, sixties aren't So you may
(14:22):
not recognize George Malliers. Oh I got at that time name. Uh,
but you probably have heard of his work, like A
Trip to the Moon. What's very widely Side is like
one of the first actual movies. I think it was
in the twenties something minute range. But it was about
some explorers in the Victorian era getting into rocket and
(14:43):
traveling to the Moon and the rocket lands and the
man in the Moon's eye. Everybody's seen that. I don't
care who you are. If you say you haven't, you have. Um,
this was the guy who made that. And this is
a very early movie. It was from two. But he
was doing all sorts of a using stuff. He was
using extensive costuming, masks, um, all sorts of in camera techniques.
(15:07):
Is painting on film frames. Yeah, and this is two.
And like I was saying, this stuff was refined, but
it was the basis of special effects for the next
century to come. Should we take a quick break? I
think so. All right, let's take a quick break, and
we will talk a little bit about, uh, the Matt
technique right after this. I'm actually pretty psyched about this, alright, Chuck.
(15:54):
As I said, I'm very psyched about the Matt. Yeah.
So this isn't uh, this is a little confusing the
way it's laid out here. Um, because what what Ed's
talking about here with Norman Don is called original negative
matt painting. Um. If you hear of a Matt painting,
(16:14):
that is a piece of glass where you have and
I'm going to talk about the most common way you
might see it. Employed is you take a big piece
of glass and you paint like a city escape on it,
like really realistic, and then you put that in a
scene and shoot it. So it's instead of having someone
(16:34):
in front of a city, and this was pre blue
screen and green screen technology, you would just put Kurt
Russell and Escape from New York in a field and
there's a Matte painting of New York City behind him
and it looks great. And James Cameron painted that and
Escape from New York. He was a Matt painter. Oh
I didn't know that. That was like his first job.
It's neat Like if you, um, if you even if
(16:56):
you do know what Chuck is talking about, go to
the internet and just look up like eight Matt paintings
and there's a lot of really wonderful ones when you've
seen before ones you haven't. But basically, any time you've
seen a movie pre maybe um where somebody walks into
this enormous place or this amazingly elaborate future city or
(17:19):
something like that, what you're actually looking at is an
expertly painted painting that has been messed with in post
production or using an in camera technique to make it
look like it's alive or actually, you know, bustling or energetic,
but it's really it's a painting. It's a painting that
some amazing human being painted by hand. Yeah, and we
(17:40):
should point out they still do this today, they just
do it digitally and digital Matt painters are super talented
as well. Um, but it's kind of neat to think
about that old craft and James Cameron painting a piece
of glass, uh and sticking that behind Kurt Russell, And
I mean it was used in everything like I for
my money, Matt painting is the single most um important
(18:03):
and widespread special effect ever. Maybe hard to argue that,
Thank you like it. It was in Mary Poppins with
Mary Poppins is coming into the City of London. That's
a Matte painting. When Superman walks into the uh, where's
the what's the name of the place where he's from,
the Crystal Cave where um Fortress of Solitude? Yes, that
(18:25):
where he talks with um with Marlon Brando his dad.
Uh Yeah, I think so okay, Um, that's a Matte painting.
And I think the Fortress of Solitude are the remnants
of Krypton. I'm boys Superman. People are so mad at
me right now. People still I thought everybody was on
the marble train. No, people love Superman, not the comics. Okay,
(18:47):
because I was gonna say, I mean, you've seen what
they've done Superman lately, right and Batman? So, uh, that's
a Matt painting. And what that is it's called set extensions.
So that basically means you're just sort of extending the
re a life set to make something bigger and more
opulent um or maybe not more opent, just bigger and more.
(19:08):
But here's the thing, relying on that mat painter and
having the glass there, and glass can break and it
can you know, on set with lighting can be weird.
So that's all can get a little hinky. So that's
why this technique called original negative Matt painting was developed
by Norman Don and that is when nowadays he'll use
(19:29):
what's called the mat box, which is um literally like black.
I don't think it's cardboard these days, but whatever they
make out of a cardboard thing that you put over
the lens to block out whatever you want to block out.
Back in the day, they would paint cardboard and hold
it in front of the lens or they would actually
paint the lens. And what you're essentially doing is um
(19:50):
painting away it was early green screen. You're painting away
what you don't want in the frame or what you
want in the future, and then adding that later on. Right,
And because it's black or because it's covered, there's light
is not hitting that part of the film. That part
of the film, the actual film strip itself that you're
(20:11):
you're recording onto or filming onto, that's unexposed. All that
gets exposed is the part of the lens or the
camera that is not covered that has say, your actor
like doing the herky jerky dance, right. And then so
what you do after that is you take that film
that has your actor doing the herky jerky dance projected
(20:32):
onto a screen so you see where the actor is
and on the screen you literally paint the background that
you want. Then you film the whole thing a second time,
and now you have your actor in the set that
you originally wanted. Right. The only difference there, uh, which
is something that wasn't quite right here, is they don't
(20:53):
like projected. They just develop a few frames of it
and projected like a slide. So it's not like the
camera the film is moving through on the wall because
in the article here says and then you just stop it.
And what happens if you do that is the bulb
burns the film. So you can't just stop at produced
(21:13):
like a slide of him project that. Yeah, and then
you paint in the castle or the mountain or the
whatever you want, and then you go back and expose
it again. Pretty neat. You just open your trench coat.
And the big innovator with the original negative matt painting
was Norman Don and he really like really lead the way.
(21:35):
But I mean again, most of the stuff that that
does this now is done by computers imposed. But this
is like the links people were going to to make
movies at the time, and you watched them today and
you're like, god, that looks terrible. But if you stop
and think about the effort that they were going to
they were invented. Yeah, it's just mind boggling that they
(21:56):
managed to get it, you know to this point. Yeah,
Norman Don tried to patent that technique as well, but
they said, no, you did not invent this, you popularized it,
and you can't patent something that you made super popular.
There's some other stuff too. There's like rear projection in
front projection, which is basically like projecting the background to
(22:17):
moving background onto a screen behind the actors. Um, basically,
you know all those hokey driving scenes. Yeah, the person
is great, the cars being rocked or whatever, the road
behind him, that's front or rear projection. Yeah that and um,
people still will use that as homage, like in pulp fiction,
very famously Bruce Willis or I guess not, Yeah, when
Bruce Willis gets in the cab after the fight, and
(22:39):
if it looks old fashioned, this because QT used rear
screen projection for that. And there's also a technique that's
not in here that I just remembered, so I'm actually
having to look up what it's called. Um, when you're
in a car scene but you're not doing a rear
screen projection, So what happens here is you're you're sitting
in a car, in a still car on the set,
(23:01):
but they're not projecting anything behind you. What you've got
is uh, two people shaking the car frames. Oh yeah,
usually a grip, but I've I've shaken cars and trains before.
It's because I'm just a body on the set. Like,
get in there and shake that thing. In fact, one
job I was on that was a fake subway train
and the hydraulics broke early on and they're like, bring
(23:22):
out the p as, you're gonna shake this train for
a twelve hours. Rhythm get in there. Yeah. Oh, we
couldn't have too much rhythm because we got uh yelled
at for that because it looked to rhythmic. So we're like,
I don't know what, I don't know how to do this.
Who are you working for? It was just a commercial
director that said that our our movement of the train
looked to rhythmic and not believable. So anyway, this fruit
(23:45):
of Looms commercial is totally unbelievable. You sit in the car,
you're acting like you're driving. There's someone else shaking the car.
There might be someone else off camera, like flashing a
light uh through the car like you're going by a
street light, or a headlight goes across their face, and
there may be fake rain in the background. And this
(24:05):
is sometimes like six seven eight people working in concert
to make it look like you're driving at night in
the rain or something like right, so there's not like
an obvious background trees or road or whatever. But maybe
there's headlights coming up behind us, just dark, Yeah, but
they're people with a spotlight. Yeah, it's really really cool,
old fashioned, but people still use that stuff. And I
wish I could remember the full name of that technique,
(24:28):
the the shake and shimmy. It's I'm gonna be so
mad later on. What was this called the shake and chimmy? Okay,
that's right. Um, so you talked about green screen, and
that's actually super old too. There's a really convoluted explanation
about how originally green screen employed sodium vapor lights, which
(24:52):
would actually mess with the yellow exposure on panchromatic film,
and my brain I started bleeding out in my ear.
I cannot tell you how many times I read descriptions
about this and I can't quite get it. So suffice
to say that that was one technique for green screen.
What really kind of changed the industry is when they
(25:15):
figured out that again if you if you if you
film in black them, the film is not going to
be exposed. So anything you go and re expose it
to it will cover over that stuff so like it's transparent.
So for example, in The Invisible Man from I think
(25:36):
Claude Rains wore a black body suit and the background
was black. It was a black screen, like a black
green screen. But he wore clothes and everything, and bandages
and sunglasses, and I think he smoked a cigarette or whatever.
But when he took the bandages off and we took
his sunglasses and clothes off, there was nothing there. It
(25:57):
was a black bodysuit and a black background. So when
they filmed the background later on, all you could see
was the background in the clothes and the bandages. It
looked like there was nothing there because as far as
the film was concerned, when they were filming it, there
wasn't anything there. So the film wasn't exposed in those
sections on each frame. That's right, And that's called the
(26:18):
Williams process. And a key part of the Williams process
is the optical printer, and that is a projector that
actually prints an image directly onto the film that runs
through the camera while that printer and camera are SYNCD up. Yes,
so this is to me, the optical printers the second
most widespread and useful special effect technique in the history
(26:39):
of film. You just waved her hand. Suddenly they had
an ascot in a beret on. Uh yeah, hard to
argue that too. But all this stuff was just precursor
to what was blue screen early on Chroma Key blue
and then later became Chroma Key green. I'm not sure
why they made the switch actually, other than maybe the
green less private in or less use. I think so
(27:01):
probably maybe the blue was um because you know what,
you don't want anything close to that color will disappear
against the green screen. Anyone who's ever done the weather
on the newscast that, yeah, there have been. There are
blooper reels of weather people disappearing when they wear like
a green jacket or something. Right, it looks like the
weather is going on through their body. Same thing. So,
(27:23):
so I want to say one more thing about optical printers,
or another little bit about So what you have is
a projector projecting a film on to a screen, and
you have a camera recording what's being projected. Right, That's right,
that's the optical printer. And you could do all sorts
of stuff with that. So let's say you have a
shot where you have one Matt in the foreground and
(27:45):
live actor and then another Matt in the background that
has a bunch of different people in it or something
like that. Three. Okay, so you've got three different elements
to that shot. What you would do is using the
same film film each thing. So you go film that,
like the the actor, the live action actor, You've got
that on the film and you project that, and you
(28:08):
take film where you're filming the mat and you project
that and film that. I just totally have screwed this up.
Oh my god, this is just like, um no, it's
worse than that. Was it? Um false false positives. Do
you remember that time where I was like I took
a pretty simple thing and just completely walk the dog
(28:32):
with it. Okay, well I just do that again. Everyone.
I want you to go look up obstacle printers, read
a little bit about them, and then you'll say, oh,
Josh is right. Yeah this stuff stuff. It is essentially
you're filming a projection and you can do that multiple
times with the same film, and it adds up to
where you have the shot you wanted, where it makes
(28:53):
it look like all these things that you filmed three
separate times are all happening together in one space. Yes,
you're mary being separate images together onto a single piece
of film. Right. You couldn't do that with before optical printers,
which is a projector and a camera working together. That's right, Okay,
I think I needed that we should mention briefly motion
(29:15):
controlled cameras. This is a system that allows it's basically
taking the person out of the equation. There is not
a person pushing a dolly. There's not a person moving
the camera. It is a machine that is programmed to
move a camera through space very very precisely and exactly
the same every single time. Yeah, so you can do
(29:37):
the exact same motion over and over again, over and over,
and a lot of times you'll if you're on a
TV commercial, as boring as that is, you will see
stuff like this for like a food shoot, because food
shoots are notoriously tricky because everything is super close up
and has to be perfect, and you can't be off
a little bit with a camera because a lot of
times you'll sub in stuff later and post. And that's
(29:58):
the whole reason for a mo and control is to
replicate moves with exact precision. So, um, I was reading
about industrial light and magic using this to really great
effect with the first Star Wars, which is episode four right,
the New Hope. That's the first one right right. I'm
not confirming or denying anything. I'm just gonna let that stand.
(30:20):
Episode four is the first Star Wars movie that ever
came out. Correct, The Star Wars and New Hope is
the first episode that I ever saw in a movie theater,
because that's the first one that ever came out. Anyway,
when they were making this, you know, is it a
Star Destroyer? The big the big daddy ships. Okay, oh man,
(30:40):
we're gonna get murdered. Um. Everything. All of the ships
and Star Wars were models, fairly small models. Actually they
were okay, I think it was episode four. I'm almost positible. So, um,
those models were not moving in these shots and these
enormous like huge panoramic shots where like there's um taie
(31:01):
fighters flying around shooting everything and um X wing fighters
shooting the tie fighters. None of those models were moving.
What happened was they figured out how to use motion
controlled cameras so that the camera would go through the
shot and around the model and make it look like
the model was moving, and plus it was moving the
(31:22):
shot through space. Right. The thing is is, let's say
you have five different ships. You film those five ships separately,
but those five ships are all going to be in
the same shot, so you have to film that same
shot the exact same way five different times and then
running through an optical printer so that you can get
(31:43):
all of them, all five shots onto the same strip
of film. But that's one of the one of the
ways that motion um motion controlled cameras were really put
to good use, and it was extremely groundbreaking because not
one of those ships were moving in reality when they
were filming Start Wars. Can you name five Star warships
tie Fighter X wing Fighter. You already said one tie
(32:07):
fighter too. Huh. The deuce is what the people in
the no call it. Um the Uh you already said
star destroyer should so star destroyer was right. Yeah, there's
a star Destroyer. Okay, you made a face like I
was just totally off. Um. You could make the case
that end Or was a ship even though it was
a planet. Uh. There was the forest Speeder, the the
(32:35):
pod Raiser, yeah, and um drs as that's right, and
he's the final ship. Uh. You know many people by
their calf muscles just popped right out of the back
to their legs. Hollie Fry is like hyperventilating somewhere in
the office and she doesn't know why. So, as I
(32:58):
said earlier, it's it's usually a combination of these different
techniques to create one overall special effect using these different crafts.
And a great example is Jurassic Park in the um
in the scene with the velociraptors in the kitchen, that great,
great sequence when it was playing cat and mouse with
(33:18):
those children. There were puppets, there were actors and costumes,
there were animatronic raptor heads, and there were full c
g I raptors and you throw this all in a hat,
mix it all up, and it comes out to be
like a really believable looking scene. It comes out as
an oscar. Yeah, I'm sure they want oscars, right, but
(33:43):
they had to have I don't know, but there's just
no way. It was groundbreaking. I remember being just gob
smacked in the movie theater when I first saw those
dinosaurs walking across the screen. And that was I believe
for the first Jurassic Park, right, Jurassic Park A New Hope,
the first one that came out so um, but that
(34:04):
was five years after the first oscar had been awarded
for special effects. As far as I know, I believe
that the Abyss was the first one to win an
OSCAR for special effects maybe or there No, No, I'm sorry,
I'm way off, way off. Um. The Abyss was the
first movie to win a special effect for a c
(34:25):
G I effect. Remember the water? Um still looks pretty good.
It looks amazing. And this is seven we're talking about. Wow?
Is that when that came out? Yeah? I was surprised
to see that too, because I thought it was Yeah,
it's a good movie. I really like that movie. How
do you not like Ed Harris? You don't like get Here?
What did you not like get Here? No? I like
(34:46):
I like him as an actor. I think a lot
of people might have problems with Ed Harris as a person.
He's notoriously cantankerous. I've never heard that. I believe it. Sure,
he looks like he could yell somebody down, doesn't he?
But he also keeps a cool head when he's an actor.
Is a seventies or sixties NASA guy. Hey, I love it, Harris.
All right, let's take another break and we're gonna come
(35:09):
back and talk a little bit about Star Wars episode
whatever right after this. Okay, we're back, and we should talk.
(35:42):
We should mention the garbage, Matt real quick, because that
is uh, that is a big deal. A lot of
times you have wire work or you have um, you
have things hanging from wires. It doesn't have to be
a person. It can be like a model plane or
a tie fighter or whatever. You gotta get rid of
those wires. Unless you're ed Wood, you can't have fishing line. No,
(36:05):
you're supposed to not, but yes. Or if you're Charlie
Throne in mad Max Fury Road, you gotta get it
rid of that arm. Or if you're in Forrest Gump,
you gotta get rid of Lieutenant Dan's legs. Man. That
was amazing. That was the first time anybody's ever done
really something like that throughout. Yeah. I had my problems
with that movie, for sure, And one of them is
(36:26):
I think he way Over. He was like a kid
in a candy store and way Over did the like
and now Forest is in the White House and using
archival footage and sticking Forest in it. Yeah, that whole
like half hour dialogue he has with Peter Cushing's ghost,
it was uncanny. Uh, But I get it. I get
(36:46):
why these filmmakers get excited these really technical wizards. Well
you get a new technique and they just hammer it.
The guy from Industrial Lite and Magic when they made
the first Star Wars call it what you will um.
His name was like John Deekstra, and this motion controlled
camera assembly that they created was called distro Flex Super groundbreaking,
(37:08):
and they really did amazing stuff with it. Well, he's
like a legend in this industry now, and I saw
an interview with him recently and he was like, I'm
so tired of seeing just whole cities leveled and like
just the most amazing stuff you can possibly think of
being done just because we can do it. He put
(37:28):
it really, really well. I think it's an embarrassment of riches,
you know, like it can be done, so it's being done,
everybody's doing it. It's just you know, like and it
makes it less amazing, not necessarily because it looks bad.
It just keeps looking better and better every time. Like
if you if you look at Charlie's theren's um prosthetic
(37:49):
arm or missing arm compared with Lieutenant Dan's missing legs,
it does so it's getting better. There's just too much
of it, I think is the point to be you know,
just to be all ed heresy on this. No. I
have long predicted a return to practical effects, and it's
starting to happen a little bit more and more. Yeah,
I could see starting with indie filmmakers. Yeah, for sure.
(38:11):
Which is funny because finally computer generated effects have trickled
down enough, like you or I could just walk out
of the studio and probably get on any one of
those backs out there and use stuff that ten fifteen
years ago, when we cost five hundred thousand dollars to
set up a rig like that. Yeah. And that's how
(38:31):
some young filmmakers have gotten noticed is by making these
um short films with like zero money on their computer
that get a lot of action on YouTube because it
looks so amazing. In the studio will be like sign
that person up. I can't remember the guy's name, but
that's happened a couple of times in recent years. Ed Harris, Uh,
(38:52):
we should talk about a few of the groundbreaking people
over the years. Um, we'll go through these a little
quicker than what we have in front of us, I think,
but we should mention Lon Cheney, one of the original
um superstars of film and the Silent era, the Man
of a Thousand Faces. He was, uh, he was very
(39:12):
talented doing his own makeup and changing his face. Um.
That's why it's called the Man of a thousand Faces, Right,
He's like, here's nine. What about Willis O'Brien. He was
one of the pioneers of stop motion photography. Again, if
you're a California Racings fan, you have a lot to
thank Willis O'Brien for. He also this dude, the stuff
(39:35):
he did. I mean, if you look back, he did
King Kong, the nineteen thirty three King Kong. Yeah, and
if you look back at this, you're like, this is
this is cool. But if you research what was done
to create this, you're just blown away by it. Yeah. Again,
many processes coming together, um to create that nineteen thirty
three version of King Kong. And that fight looks good still,
(39:58):
I mean it doesn't look realistic consider the year. It
looks awesome. It does, and it's about three three and
a half minutes long, King Kong fighting the tarannosaurs rex um.
But it took seven weeks to film because there's twenty
four frames shot per second in a film, and for
every frame, they moved the models a little bit here
(40:21):
or there. So that's why it took seven weeks just
for that fight scene. I think it was fifty five
weeks for all of the stop motion photography that was
done in that movie. Yeah, that's impressive. It really is impressive,
especially when you realize the trouble they went to when
you go back and watch it, like this is pretty nuts. Yeah.
Ray Harry Housing continued the work of Willis O'Brien and
(40:43):
very famously in like the fifties and sixties with movies
like Jason and the Argonauts, Clash of the Titans, remember
Medusa Scary Lady. Yeah, that had to be towards the
end of his career, I guess because that was in
the eighties. Yeah, I think like eighty one maybe remember
the minuteur Too Man? That was cool movie. That was
a big movie for me as a kid. Yeah, And
I was like when l A Law came along, I
(41:04):
was like, I know that guy's right, there's the Titans guy.
Uh we we should shout out militant Patrick. This is
a very interesting story. She was one of the only,
well first and only women working in special effects back
in the day, and she created the very famous mask
of the gil Man from Creature from the Black Lagoon.
(41:26):
In the mid nineteen fifties and was unceremoniously fired, not
just fired, stricken from the credits. Yeah, this guy named
Bud Westmore. He assisted her and then basically had her
fired rather than give her the credit for the mask,
which he would take credit for because I think he
was the supervisor in charge of effects or costume or something.
(41:46):
Oh I thought. I guess he assisted her, but he
was her boss. Yeah, okay, but like she very clearly
on her own, came up with the gil Man for yeah,
the creature, and this has only come out in the
last like few years. They've kind of dug up the
original stuff and uh yeah, sexism just basically pushed her
out of the industry altogether. Very sad. She's starting to
(42:08):
get her do now though, which is good. Yeah, that
is very good. Um, there's Dick Smith was amazing. He
created the Squib. Yeah, he's a he's a very famous
makeup artist. He's really good at making people look aged. Yeah.
He made forty seven year old Marlon Brando look much
than the Godfather. Oh yeah, yeah, he was only he
(42:30):
was a year younger than me. Brando. I never thought
about that. Nut. Wow, he really is good. He also
did Death Becomes Her, which is one of the all
time great movies, Yeah for sure, and The Exorcist and
Scanners and if you were seeing Ghost Story from Yeah,
very scary movie. The old Dudes he did he did that?
(42:50):
What else? Very famously aged Dustin Hoffman a little big
man by many, many years. And then in the last
like twenty five thirty years, Rick Baker and stan Winston,
stan Winston's He's mcc got my vote. Yeah, I mean,
these two guys were both just creative leaders in the
(43:13):
industry and um trailblazers in the industry, and as Ed
says in here, like mentored a generation of special effects employees, employees, creators, artists.
All three of those were Lord gig workers. Rick Baker
American Werewolf in London in one which still holds up,
(43:34):
the thriller video in nineteen eighty three Star Wars, Moss
Eisley Cantina, he made all those Yeah did you know
that about the mos Eisley Cantina. I didn't know that.
He was almost single handedly response. And then Stan Winston,
you got to talk about movies like The Thing and
Predator and Terminator and they both have set up, you know,
foundations and schools and things like that. Stan Winston also
(43:57):
did the makeup for what I think is maybe the
best slash film of all time, Friday the Thirteenth Part two. Yeah,
two is when Jason comes along, right, Yes, it's Jason
before he got his mask. He gets his mask in three.
I think the Thirteenth franchises as good as it gets
for horror movies. I dropped off at a certain point.
(44:17):
Did you see all those No? No, I still haven't
seen all of them, but even just putting like the
first five or six up, um, I think it's like
watching him again as an adult. I'm like, these are
really good scarcer films, like even better than I remember
for Me and a Kid. Um. And the reason stan
Winston filled in for Friday Thirteenth Part two is because
(44:38):
the guy who did ft the first one, Tom Savini,
was unavailable. He was off doing creep Show. I believe
that Tom Savini is another legend. I think they're redoing
creep Show? Are they? Okay? I'd watched that different stories?
Oh even better if I'm not mistaken. But yeah, Savini
is well known for being sort of the godfather of Gore.
(45:00):
He did Maniac. Do you see that Yeah, that was
off the Rocker movie. And then these days there are
companies UM I l M and Wetta I LM, Industrial
Light and Magic is Lucas company and they're cool because
they invented this stuff because Lucas needed stuff to be
(45:21):
done that couldn't be done, and he was like, go
figure out how to do it, and they did, they
really did. And then WET as Peter Jackson's company, and
he's the one that has really pioneered the mo cap
the motion capture techniques where a person is wearing like
a suit and the suit has a bunch of different
kind of like almost ping pong balls all over it
(45:42):
at like joints and crucial places where the body moves
and the actor, stunt person or dancer whoever wearing the
suit goes through the motions and then uh, they're just
going through the motions and that that those motions that
what's captured is fed into a computer in the computer
generates a care a doing all those same motions, creating
the performance, but it's a computer generated character. Yeah. I
(46:05):
don't think he was the first, but the Golem character
and those Lord of the Rings movies, UM was really
one of the first really terrific looking fully c G
I character. Yeah, I found, from what I could tell,
the first full c g I character ever in a movie.
You want to guess, You'll never guess. Well, I mean
(46:25):
it's touted as Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. Wrong, really,
what is it going to be? It's another Spielberg movie. Okay,
it's young Sherlock Holmes. Do you remember the Stained Glass
Night that comes to life and tries to slash one
of them with his sword? First full c g I
character in a movie, Well, why, I don't know, But
(46:48):
that's what I could find in that. One's from well
it says maybe there's it's in the nitpicky language because
in the Last Crusade when walt Or Donovan's face melts
and turns to dust when he drinks from the chalice,
that's in that's in writers of Lost Ark, isn't it.
Oh no, you're right, you're right. It says here it
(47:10):
was the first ever digital composite of a full screen
live action image. There's something in a language there, Yeah,
because it was a full screen or something. This was
the this was the first c G I, but it
wasn't the first c G I image. This is the
first moving c g I image. The first c g
I'M image was in Looker. Remember that movie. I totally
(47:34):
saw a Looker. That was a big HBO movie for
me for sure. Same here it was Looker, Runaway, Runaways,
Tom Selleck yeah, and Gene Simmons. Yeah, that's right, that's
all crawl a lot too, look Ahead, Albert Finney, right,
if I remember correctly, Albert Finney and Susan Day. Yeah,
Susan Day right, written by Michael Crichton. I think that
(47:55):
was the first full body three D human, but it
did not move. It was static and the very first
computer generated effects period. Funny enough, we're used to replicate
computer screen. So whenever you would see a computer screen
and like Westworld or Aliens or Star Wars, and they
were like, what is the computer gonna look like? You know?
(48:17):
Not now that that was the first time they used
computer generated imaging was to make a fake computer screen.
And the first full c g I scene ever done
was in The Wrath of Khan, which I believe came
out in But there's a genesis like Earth being you know,
like cooling and turning into the Earth, and there's this
(48:38):
amazing shots around it. That's all c G I and
that was the first one and Tron. I thought for
sure Tron would have been among the first. Apparently most
of that was animated by humans, not computers them, like
all the glowing lines, all that stuff animated, which makes
it nuts that they were able to create that. Uh.
(49:01):
Now the big thing is is d aging technique, that
they're getting better and better they are. Yeah, so the
new um Scorsese picked the Irishman I think d ages
and and has taken a long time to get out
because the d aging didn't look good enough for Scorsese,
so they have d aged to narrow. And then I
saw this new angle movie Jim and I Man, where
(49:22):
Will Smith of Now he plays an assassin and he
has to go kill his younger self. Uh yeah, sort
of like Looper, I guess. But this Jim and I
Man script has been in development for like twenty five
years with various people attached, but they could never do
it because the technology was Yeah, it's finally here. But
here's the thing I didn't know. Like, I've seen this
(49:43):
trailer and I'm like, man, that d aging looks great.
They didn't d age him. It is a fully c
g I. Will Smith the younger version is yeah, because
I was like, man, they're getting so good at the
d aging. So he mo capped his whole performance motion
captured and they just used fresh Prince photos and they
just basically deep faked them. Sort of have you seen
(50:07):
the Bill Hayter deep fake that's going around now. It's
pretty cool, Yeah, because he goes from Hayter to Tom
Cruise to seth Rogan back to Tom Cruise. It's like
kind of all over the place. It's really uh. And
then you know, like we said, they use c g
I for so many movies, little mistakes that can be corrected,
(50:27):
little things that it's just much cheaper to add digitally
later on. It could be a movie that, like I said,
looks like it has no c g I whatsoever. And
it's cheaper to put a play the food in the
background digitally than cook the food and put it on set,
which is that's a bad example. Or you can color
graad a movie you completely change like the movie Oh Brother,
(50:49):
where Art Thou has that yellow hue for everything. All
that stuff is green. You know, they're in the Deep
South in the summertime, and they used to have to
like film it at some weird exposure and then projected
at another exposure with some filter, and then record the
whole thing on an optical negative. Yeah. Now they can
just do it all with a computer, easy peasy. It's great.
(51:11):
Anything else, I'm kind of looking around, but this is
like one eight of this topic. Hopefully it made you
appreciate movies more. Yeah, you specifically me, I know you
love the movies. Uh. If you want to know more
about movies, go list into Chuck's podcast Movie Crush. You'll
love it. Uh. And since I said movie Crush, it's
(51:34):
time for listener mail. Uh. And actually, since you said
movie Crush, we're about to release an episode on The Matrix.
Hadn't seen that movie. It's been twenty years since it
came out. You've never seen The Matrix. No, I hadn't
seen it in a long time, but I didn't realize
this is the twenty year anniversary. Watch it last night.
Still totally holds up, really looks great. Fun. Yeah, well
(51:57):
acted by most of the cast members who didn't act well. Oh,
you know Kanu while he's gets picked on. I love
that guy, I know, kung Fu He's perfect in that role. Though, Yeah,
he's great. I can't imagine anybody else and it would
be too just too serious. I think, like imagine Tom
Cruise in that in the major. Yeah, you're right, he
(52:18):
hads a little like something light, doesn't he. Yeah, it
makes it a little more every man, almost a little
more believable in a weird wa have you seen those
John Wick movies. I've seen some of it. It's just
like a little too video gaming for me. But I
mean it's fine. I respect that people like it. Sure,
here we go. Okay, it's about three D three D.
(52:42):
It's about solar panels. I got movies on you got
the well they are in three D. I guess I
got movies on the brain. Hey, guys. Being a roof
of my entire life and never thought i'd have much
input until now it's my time to shine. One thing
that wasn't mentioned in the solar panel episode is that
people really need to consider the age of their existing
roof before installing solar panels. A new residential single roof
(53:04):
should last about thirty years, but if the roof isn't
nearly new, I would not suggest installing solar panels, and
definitely don't install it if the roof the roof. The
roof is on fire. Once the panels are installed. Roof
repairs or replacement is very difficult and much more expensive
that the life of the roof ends. Before the solar
panels die, you can easily add fifty or more to
(53:27):
the cost of the reroofing due to the added labor
costs to remove and reinstall the panels. Yeah, and you
think about that, so you should align it ideally with
your new roof. I do mostly commercial roofing. Can't tell
you the number of customers so I talked to had
solar panels on an old roof and are now paying
through the nose for repairs or replacement. Reputable solar panels
(53:50):
specialists should have this roof conversation with a potential customer
before installing the panels. I'm afraid it doesn't always happen,
or customers underestimate the added reroofing costs once they're installed. Man,
this is a great p s A. It is thanks
again for what you guys do. I'm in my truck
a lot driving to different job sites and it's always
(54:10):
easier on Tuesday through Thursday when I have a new stuff.
You should know and that is from Owen, uh Cincinnick.
Great name, first day and last I love the name
on way Stephen King's kids name. Yeah, Owen King, thanks
a lot, Ohen. We appreciate that big time. That was
a great email. I would have never thought about that,
(54:33):
and he didn't even send his business and to be plugged.
So just google his name and roofing and if he
happens to live near you, use him. That's how dedicated
this guy. He sounds honest. Well, if you want to
be a cool person like Owen, you can get in
touch with us. You can go onto stuff you Should
Know dot com and check out our social links. You
can also send us an email to stuff podcast at
iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
(54:58):
production of i Heeart Radios. Stuff Works. For more podcasts
for my heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
M M
Hello, Stuff you should know listeners, if you want to
come see s Live, You've only got a couple of
more cities this year that still have tickets, and that
is Orlando in New Orleans. Yeah, we'll be in Orlando
on October nine at the Plaza Live, and we'll be
in New Orleans at the Civic Theater the following night
October tent and friends like Chuck said, you better go
get your tickets. Go to s Y s K live
(00:22):
dot com for info and ticket links and everything you
need to come see us. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W.
(00:43):
Chuck Bryant wearing his Stone Tumble Pilots hat, and there's
Jerry over there. She's not wearing any hat. She's got
really cool hair. It's not Stone Tumple Pilots. It is too.
I've seen the Stone Tumble Pilots hats before and that's
what it is. STP because I bought two hats at
Auto Zone yesterday. I have a Champion spark Plug hat. Yeah,
(01:04):
they have good hats, they really do. I was getting
a battery, and I was like, oh, on these two hats.
It was a good Year Akron, Ohio good Year hat nice,
which is where Emily's from. So I wanted that. And
then I saw this stp hat Stone Temple pilots, but
I would get a Champion spark plug hat to those
are that's that's great, Okay. I'll let you borrow mine
anytime you want. I just gotta give it back. I
don't if I've ever seen you in a baseball cap.
(01:27):
It's a weird jam, is it not what you want
to see. I've seen you in shorts like twice in
twelve years, keep the legs covered. And I think one
of them was when you came over to borrow my lawnmower.
I remember that, Yeah, like nine years ago. Sure, I've
got to mow the lawn sometimes. Now things have changed.
You can buy a lawnmore. Yeah, and now we can
(01:49):
afford lawnmowers. I can wear shorts to actually have one
of those plug in lawnmowers. I have a battery powered
lawn more. Do you look at us stupid liberal hippies. Well,
mine's mine's battery powered too, but you have to plug
it in to charge it. Oh yeah, yeah, what what
kind do you have? I have the green one. Yeah,
I think they're all green. Now there's a blue one. Oh,
I've got the green one. To the sun Joe. No,
(02:10):
but I have a sun Joe pressure washer. He really
isn't battery operated. No, you plug that in. I was
gonna sail, but it just goes like tinkles out water.
But they do make a plug in lawnmowers, Like, it's
not a battery. You just like have a cord that
you walk around and over with your lawnmark. I guess
they're called electric sure, but yeah, I got the batter
one because I have so little grass now and we
(02:33):
may be done period with grass. Oh yeah, that's why
you're zero escaping. Well, we're definitely doing the front, but
the back it just got smaller and smaller. And my
last lawmar broke. So I was paying a guy to
come cut it. It's like, why am I paying this
guy to cut to do a seven minute mo There's
just that one bladed class grass that sees the lawnmower
coming like yeah, But then I went and got the
(02:55):
battery because lawnmowers are terrible for the environment. Yeah, that's
why I got it. They're one of the worst looters. Yeah,
we're both also aware that we are charging our battery
powered lawnmowers with coal fired power, and we understand that.
I'm just talking about exhaust fumes. I don't even need one.
I live in a condo, but I'm so dissatisfied with
(03:15):
the landscapers that take care of the condo that I thought, yes,
I bought a lawnmower just to do the little patch
out in front of our buildings. Poor Momo doesn't get
long grass against her junk when she's potty. It's a
great way to start this episode. So we're talking special effects. Obvious,
this has been law talk. We're talking special effects, Chuck. Yes,
(03:39):
movie special effects, which, boy, I mean, we could do
ten parts on this. This is kind of a big
summation because movie special effects can be everything from the
movie that you walk out of saying, oh that movie
had no special effects, when in fact it did wrong. Yeah,
just tiny little things that you may not even notice,
(03:59):
to things that are almost whole cloth special effects like
sky Captain in the World of Tomorrow, Yeah, or Sin City. Yeah.
I like both of those. Yes, did you know since City,
every single bit of the set was c G I yeah,
and that Sky Captain did it first, yeah, year before
huh yeah, every bit of that was it was a
green screen movie. I never saw it was a kid.
(04:20):
It was interesting, Like the look of it was amazing
and very much ahead of its time, like real art deco. Right, Yeah,
for sure, I call it black and white, but it wasn't.
It was just this really washed out color. But it
looked awesome and was not bad. I'll have to check
it out. And I think the dudes that made that
kind of quit making movies after that. It's a very
unique story. Have you ever seen This has nothing to
(04:41):
do with anything, but have you seen the Changeling? Oh
my god? Did you just see that? Yes? And I
have to tell you, I don't think I've ever gotten
chills more frequently from a movie that I did with
that one changed its great genuinely. It's a genuinely scary
ghost story. Yeah, like it is wonderful. Yeah. I miss
(05:03):
Georgie Scott too. Yeah, he's a good actor. And I
don't remember who that um the female lead was in there,
but she was great too. It's been a while. I
haven't seen it in many, many years, so anyway, special effects,
let's try this thing in We're gonna get derailed like
every five sets. Okay, effects are divided and this is
(05:24):
by the grabstor. He helped us out with This adds
a big movie guy and horror movie sci fi guy,
so he probably enjoyed writing this one up. Uh. They're
divided into three general categories. And this all has to
do with where the effect is happening. It can be practical,
which is in front of the camera, and that means
it's a physical thing that's happening. I think that's what
(05:44):
most people think of when they think special effects. You think, okay,
by most people, I mean me, uh, in camera effects
that happened inside the camera, and then post production effects.
And many times you're using one or all three of these.
So with like practical effects, that's things like UM, like
(06:05):
makeup and prosthetics like ed uses the example of David
Lynch's The Elephant Man, like the the prosthetic makeup that
was used to term John Hurt or John Hurd which
one hurt into Joseph Merrick. Um, that's a special effect.
(06:25):
An explosion on set that's a special effect. A UM,
a blood packet to make it look like somebody just
got shot in the chest. Squid. That's a special effect.
All three of those are practical effects. They're actually happening
in the physical world in front of you on set,
being captured on film. That's a practical special effect. Yeah.
And the other one I wanted to mention there that
(06:46):
you might not think of his stuff. Like if there
is a a fire like a fireplace in a scene
and then you flip the camera around to show the
people and you see that fire shimmering on the wall,
that's a practical effect too. Little things like that, but
it's lighting. It's a lighting effect, yeah. Or it's a
fire like you know, those aren't real fires. I mean
it's real fire. Somebody should put that out. But it's
(07:09):
not like someone lights a bunch of wood. They put
fake wood and they have these uh firebars that it's
like what you have under your grill basically, or like
hide those and then that's your fire because it has
to look perfect. You can't just chance somebody not being
able to start a fire or looking wonky. That's why
movie fires look perfect, Yeah, because they're fake. They are
(07:30):
kind of dreamy. So in camera effects is just basically
messing with the way the film is being produced inside
the camera what not? What's going on in reality the
film is capturing, but how the film is actually capturing
this stuff? Yeah, slow motion is a special effect in
camera special effect. Yeah, or fast motion too, which is
(07:53):
ten times more hilarious than fast motion if you ask me, like,
where would the monsters be without fast motion? Yeah? Or
Binny Hill for God's sake, that lived and breathed on
fast motion? Um, what else can you do there? You can?
And we'll see this some some of the early special effects,
like stopping the film, changing something, starting it again, like Bewitched,
(08:17):
appearing out of nowhere. Yeah, that's especially in camera special effect. Yeah.
One thing that struck me about all this from researching
this is how the basis the foundation for special effects
was laid immediately upon like motion pictures being like created,
like the the whole industry, not even the industry before
(08:37):
the industry existed, but basically after the invention of motion pictures,
and that it stayed virtually the same until the nineties. Uh. Yeah,
people refined it and got better at it, and techniques
got more the same general crafts were used, which is
why craft service is called craft service, because each department
(08:58):
is their own craft. I didn't know they're there to
serve them pizza roles, yeah, man or whatever. You can
put on some weight and film in something. I'll tell
you that for you can so uh stop motion animation.
That is an in camera effect. You're moving a little
clay figure or whatever, a doll or a King Kong,
(09:18):
one a California raisin, one frame at a time, twenty
four frames per second. Can you imagine? Didn't you do
that with your brother with g I Joe? I did?
And then years later I did a little Star Wars
thing when I got a high eight video camera and
um spent like three days working on something that ended
up being nine seconds long, and I said, I'm done.
What's funny is you're gonna get a season desist later
(09:40):
from Lucasfilm after talking about us in the podcast. Uh.
And then we have post production effects, and that is
I think that's what a lot of people think of
a special effects these days, because that's all the c
g I stuff that you will see as all happens
in post production. Okay, alright, yes, these days I got you, Like,
almost all special effects have and impost these days, right, well, no,
(10:02):
they still combined some of the old crafts as well.
But yeah, surely a lot of it is c g
I I mean, computers can do some amazing stuff. I
mean stuff that used to take months to do a
computer can do an hour's now and do it a
million times better. So, um, depending on your taste, I
should say. So those are the big three. Practical and
(10:24):
camera in post production and um, like I was saying,
like the basis of special effects was founded like in
the nineteenth century, and there were just some people who
had kind of followed in a tradition of still photography.
Still photographers by that time had already figured out some
(10:45):
cool stuff that you could do messing around with cameras,
something like double exposure. We're gonna take a picture of
one thing and then take a picture of another thing
with the previously exposed film, and all of a sudden,
it looks like there's a ghost looming behind you. Stuff
like that. So out of the gate, when motion pictures
were um beat started to become a little widespread and
people could afford them and try messing around with them.
(11:07):
They had a basis of of trickery to begin with.
But there's a lot of stuff you can do with
motion picture cameras that you can't do with still photo cameras.
And they figured this out right away. Yeah. That first
guy who's credited as the first special effect is Alfred
Clark and in uh, they don't have the year exactly right,
(11:28):
it's either ninety three, that's eight or eight. He made
a short film called the Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots,
and he did that little stop trick, like I was saying,
you shoot something, you stop the camera, you replace it,
or you remove something, and then you start the camera
and in real time when you go to play it back,
it's seamless. And in his case, did you look at it?
(11:53):
It's uh, he's just a stop trick with Mary getting beheaded,
and right when the axe is going to fall, you know,
he switches her out for a dummy, then starts the
camera back up and he chops the dummy's head off,
and it's it looks pretty good, like you can't. There's
no big weird jump he did for did a really
good job. Yeah, And the key to that is just
(12:13):
making sure that no one touches the camera or even
breathes on it, and then getting the dummy in the
same position as the actor. Yeah. And in fact, as
we'll talk about later with Matt Paintings, it's so crucial
that the camera not move. That one technique was they
used to bury the camera tripod like a couple of
feet into the earth, just to make sure like no
(12:36):
dumb dumb p a bumps into it like me. So um.
Alfred Clark is credited with the first special effect, but
a guy named George may Lee's today get it may Lee?
We should go ask Casey Pegrum. Oh yeah, he would know.
I think it's uh Millier, Oh nice, I think he
(12:58):
just nailed it, Oragemillier. At any rate, this guy is
known as the father of special effects. He was very
early on doing stuff that no one else was doing,
you know. Granted there were very few people working in
this field and the time of the five people did.
But he was an illusionist and he said, oh man,
(13:19):
I can really do some amazing tricks with this camera.
And he really put it to good use from a
very early um like I mean, turn to the last century. Yeah,
he actually stumbled upon that little stop trick by accident
when he was shooting a street traffic scene in Paris.
The camera jams. Well, I think a bus was coming
(13:40):
across frame. He's like, mad, fixes the camera. Can we
say that all right? We don't have any French people listening,
that's true. Uh, starts the camera back up, and of
course there's different things happening, and then when he went
back to look at it, it's he's kind of just
stumbled upon this weird little steps sitution splice that became
(14:01):
part of filmmaking. Yeah, because by the time the camera
had started up again, the bus was replaced by a hearse.
So it looked like when he went back and watched it,
the bus suddenly transformed into a hearse And he said,
wait till they get a load of bewitched seventies something
years from now. So, um, no, I guess what was
that in the fifties, sixties, sixties aren't So you may
(14:22):
not recognize George Malliers. Oh I got at that time name. Uh,
but you probably have heard of his work, like A
Trip to the Moon. What's very widely Side is like
one of the first actual movies. I think it was
in the twenties something minute range. But it was about
some explorers in the Victorian era getting into rocket and
(14:43):
traveling to the Moon and the rocket lands and the
man in the Moon's eye. Everybody's seen that. I don't
care who you are. If you say you haven't, you have. Um,
this was the guy who made that. And this is
a very early movie. It was from two. But he
was doing all sorts of a using stuff. He was
using extensive costuming, masks, um, all sorts of in camera techniques.
(15:07):
Is painting on film frames. Yeah, and this is two.
And like I was saying, this stuff was refined, but
it was the basis of special effects for the next
century to come. Should we take a quick break? I
think so. All right, let's take a quick break, and
we will talk a little bit about, uh, the Matt
technique right after this. I'm actually pretty psyched about this, alright, Chuck.
(15:54):
As I said, I'm very psyched about the Matt. Yeah.
So this isn't uh, this is a little confusing the
way it's laid out here. Um, because what what Ed's
talking about here with Norman Don is called original negative
matt painting. Um. If you hear of a Matt painting,
(16:14):
that is a piece of glass where you have and
I'm going to talk about the most common way you
might see it. Employed is you take a big piece
of glass and you paint like a city escape on it,
like really realistic, and then you put that in a
scene and shoot it. So it's instead of having someone
(16:34):
in front of a city, and this was pre blue
screen and green screen technology, you would just put Kurt
Russell and Escape from New York in a field and
there's a Matte painting of New York City behind him
and it looks great. And James Cameron painted that and
Escape from New York. He was a Matt painter. Oh
I didn't know that. That was like his first job.
It's neat Like if you, um, if you even if
(16:56):
you do know what Chuck is talking about, go to
the internet and just look up like eight Matt paintings
and there's a lot of really wonderful ones when you've
seen before ones you haven't. But basically, any time you've
seen a movie pre maybe um where somebody walks into
this enormous place or this amazingly elaborate future city or
(17:19):
something like that, what you're actually looking at is an
expertly painted painting that has been messed with in post
production or using an in camera technique to make it
look like it's alive or actually, you know, bustling or energetic,
but it's really it's a painting. It's a painting that
some amazing human being painted by hand. Yeah, and we
(17:40):
should point out they still do this today, they just
do it digitally and digital Matt painters are super talented
as well. Um, but it's kind of neat to think
about that old craft and James Cameron painting a piece
of glass, uh and sticking that behind Kurt Russell, And
I mean it was used in everything like I for
my money, Matt painting is the single most um important
(18:03):
and widespread special effect ever. Maybe hard to argue that,
Thank you like it. It was in Mary Poppins with
Mary Poppins is coming into the City of London. That's
a Matte painting. When Superman walks into the uh, where's
the what's the name of the place where he's from,
the Crystal Cave where um Fortress of Solitude? Yes, that
(18:25):
where he talks with um with Marlon Brando his dad.
Uh Yeah, I think so okay, Um, that's a Matte painting.
And I think the Fortress of Solitude are the remnants
of Krypton. I'm boys Superman. People are so mad at
me right now. People still I thought everybody was on
the marble train. No, people love Superman, not the comics. Okay,
(18:47):
because I was gonna say, I mean, you've seen what
they've done Superman lately, right and Batman? So, uh, that's
a Matt painting. And what that is it's called set extensions.
So that basically means you're just sort of extending the
re a life set to make something bigger and more
opulent um or maybe not more opent, just bigger and more.
(19:08):
But here's the thing, relying on that mat painter and
having the glass there, and glass can break and it
can you know, on set with lighting can be weird.
So that's all can get a little hinky. So that's
why this technique called original negative Matt painting was developed
by Norman Don and that is when nowadays he'll use
(19:29):
what's called the mat box, which is um literally like black.
I don't think it's cardboard these days, but whatever they
make out of a cardboard thing that you put over
the lens to block out whatever you want to block out.
Back in the day, they would paint cardboard and hold
it in front of the lens or they would actually
paint the lens. And what you're essentially doing is um
(19:50):
painting away it was early green screen. You're painting away
what you don't want in the frame or what you
want in the future, and then adding that later on. Right,
And because it's black or because it's covered, there's light
is not hitting that part of the film. That part
of the film, the actual film strip itself that you're
(20:11):
you're recording onto or filming onto, that's unexposed. All that
gets exposed is the part of the lens or the
camera that is not covered that has say, your actor
like doing the herky jerky dance, right. And then so
what you do after that is you take that film
that has your actor doing the herky jerky dance projected
(20:32):
onto a screen so you see where the actor is
and on the screen you literally paint the background that
you want. Then you film the whole thing a second time,
and now you have your actor in the set that
you originally wanted. Right. The only difference there, uh, which
is something that wasn't quite right here, is they don't
(20:53):
like projected. They just develop a few frames of it
and projected like a slide. So it's not like the
camera the film is moving through on the wall because
in the article here says and then you just stop it.
And what happens if you do that is the bulb
burns the film. So you can't just stop at produced
(21:13):
like a slide of him project that. Yeah, and then
you paint in the castle or the mountain or the
whatever you want, and then you go back and expose
it again. Pretty neat. You just open your trench coat.
And the big innovator with the original negative matt painting
was Norman Don and he really like really lead the way.
(21:35):
But I mean again, most of the stuff that that
does this now is done by computers imposed. But this
is like the links people were going to to make
movies at the time, and you watched them today and
you're like, god, that looks terrible. But if you stop
and think about the effort that they were going to
they were invented. Yeah, it's just mind boggling that they
(21:56):
managed to get it, you know to this point. Yeah,
Norman Don tried to patent that technique as well, but
they said, no, you did not invent this, you popularized it,
and you can't patent something that you made super popular.
There's some other stuff too. There's like rear projection in
front projection, which is basically like projecting the background to
(22:17):
moving background onto a screen behind the actors. Um, basically,
you know all those hokey driving scenes. Yeah, the person
is great, the cars being rocked or whatever, the road
behind him, that's front or rear projection. Yeah that and um,
people still will use that as homage, like in pulp fiction,
very famously Bruce Willis or I guess not, Yeah, when
Bruce Willis gets in the cab after the fight, and
(22:39):
if it looks old fashioned, this because QT used rear
screen projection for that. And there's also a technique that's
not in here that I just remembered, so I'm actually
having to look up what it's called. Um, when you're
in a car scene but you're not doing a rear
screen projection, So what happens here is you're you're sitting
in a car, in a still car on the set,
(23:01):
but they're not projecting anything behind you. What you've got
is uh, two people shaking the car frames. Oh yeah,
usually a grip, but I've I've shaken cars and trains before.
It's because I'm just a body on the set. Like,
get in there and shake that thing. In fact, one
job I was on that was a fake subway train
and the hydraulics broke early on and they're like, bring
(23:22):
out the p as, you're gonna shake this train for
a twelve hours. Rhythm get in there. Yeah. Oh, we
couldn't have too much rhythm because we got uh yelled
at for that because it looked to rhythmic. So we're like,
I don't know what, I don't know how to do this.
Who are you working for? It was just a commercial
director that said that our our movement of the train
looked to rhythmic and not believable. So anyway, this fruit
(23:45):
of Looms commercial is totally unbelievable. You sit in the car,
you're acting like you're driving. There's someone else shaking the car.
There might be someone else off camera, like flashing a
light uh through the car like you're going by a
street light, or a headlight goes across their face, and
there may be fake rain in the background. And this
(24:05):
is sometimes like six seven eight people working in concert
to make it look like you're driving at night in
the rain or something like right, so there's not like
an obvious background trees or road or whatever. But maybe
there's headlights coming up behind us, just dark, Yeah, but
they're people with a spotlight. Yeah, it's really really cool,
old fashioned, but people still use that stuff. And I
wish I could remember the full name of that technique,
(24:28):
the the shake and shimmy. It's I'm gonna be so
mad later on. What was this called the shake and chimmy? Okay,
that's right. Um, so you talked about green screen, and
that's actually super old too. There's a really convoluted explanation
about how originally green screen employed sodium vapor lights, which
(24:52):
would actually mess with the yellow exposure on panchromatic film,
and my brain I started bleeding out in my ear.
I cannot tell you how many times I read descriptions
about this and I can't quite get it. So suffice
to say that that was one technique for green screen.
What really kind of changed the industry is when they
(25:15):
figured out that again if you if you if you
film in black them, the film is not going to
be exposed. So anything you go and re expose it
to it will cover over that stuff so like it's transparent.
So for example, in The Invisible Man from I think
(25:36):
Claude Rains wore a black body suit and the background
was black. It was a black screen, like a black
green screen. But he wore clothes and everything, and bandages
and sunglasses, and I think he smoked a cigarette or whatever.
But when he took the bandages off and we took
his sunglasses and clothes off, there was nothing there. It
(25:57):
was a black bodysuit and a black background. So when
they filmed the background later on, all you could see
was the background in the clothes and the bandages. It
looked like there was nothing there because as far as
the film was concerned, when they were filming it, there
wasn't anything there. So the film wasn't exposed in those
sections on each frame. That's right, And that's called the
(26:18):
Williams process. And a key part of the Williams process
is the optical printer, and that is a projector that
actually prints an image directly onto the film that runs
through the camera while that printer and camera are SYNCD up. Yes,
so this is to me, the optical printers the second
most widespread and useful special effect technique in the history
(26:39):
of film. You just waved her hand. Suddenly they had
an ascot in a beret on. Uh yeah, hard to
argue that too. But all this stuff was just precursor
to what was blue screen early on Chroma Key blue
and then later became Chroma Key green. I'm not sure
why they made the switch actually, other than maybe the
green less private in or less use. I think so
(27:01):
probably maybe the blue was um because you know what,
you don't want anything close to that color will disappear
against the green screen. Anyone who's ever done the weather
on the newscast that, yeah, there have been. There are
blooper reels of weather people disappearing when they wear like
a green jacket or something. Right, it looks like the
weather is going on through their body. Same thing. So,
(27:23):
so I want to say one more thing about optical printers,
or another little bit about So what you have is
a projector projecting a film on to a screen, and
you have a camera recording what's being projected. Right, That's right,
that's the optical printer. And you could do all sorts
of stuff with that. So let's say you have a
shot where you have one Matt in the foreground and
(27:45):
live actor and then another Matt in the background that
has a bunch of different people in it or something
like that. Three. Okay, so you've got three different elements
to that shot. What you would do is using the
same film film each thing. So you go film that,
like the the actor, the live action actor, You've got
that on the film and you project that, and you
(28:08):
take film where you're filming the mat and you project
that and film that. I just totally have screwed this up.
Oh my god, this is just like, um no, it's
worse than that. Was it? Um false false positives. Do
you remember that time where I was like I took
a pretty simple thing and just completely walk the dog
(28:32):
with it. Okay, well I just do that again. Everyone.
I want you to go look up obstacle printers, read
a little bit about them, and then you'll say, oh,
Josh is right. Yeah this stuff stuff. It is essentially
you're filming a projection and you can do that multiple
times with the same film, and it adds up to
where you have the shot you wanted, where it makes
(28:53):
it look like all these things that you filmed three
separate times are all happening together in one space. Yes,
you're mary being separate images together onto a single piece
of film. Right. You couldn't do that with before optical printers,
which is a projector and a camera working together. That's right, Okay,
I think I needed that we should mention briefly motion
(29:15):
controlled cameras. This is a system that allows it's basically
taking the person out of the equation. There is not
a person pushing a dolly. There's not a person moving
the camera. It is a machine that is programmed to
move a camera through space very very precisely and exactly
the same every single time. Yeah, so you can do
(29:37):
the exact same motion over and over again, over and over,
and a lot of times you'll if you're on a
TV commercial, as boring as that is, you will see
stuff like this for like a food shoot, because food
shoots are notoriously tricky because everything is super close up
and has to be perfect, and you can't be off
a little bit with a camera because a lot of
times you'll sub in stuff later and post. And that's
(29:58):
the whole reason for a mo and control is to
replicate moves with exact precision. So, um, I was reading
about industrial light and magic using this to really great
effect with the first Star Wars, which is episode four right,
the New Hope. That's the first one right right. I'm
not confirming or denying anything. I'm just gonna let that stand.
(30:20):
Episode four is the first Star Wars movie that ever
came out. Correct, The Star Wars and New Hope is
the first episode that I ever saw in a movie theater,
because that's the first one that ever came out. Anyway,
when they were making this, you know, is it a
Star Destroyer? The big the big daddy ships. Okay, oh man,
(30:40):
we're gonna get murdered. Um. Everything. All of the ships
and Star Wars were models, fairly small models. Actually they
were okay, I think it was episode four. I'm almost positible. So, um,
those models were not moving in these shots and these
enormous like huge panoramic shots where like there's um taie
(31:01):
fighters flying around shooting everything and um X wing fighters
shooting the tie fighters. None of those models were moving.
What happened was they figured out how to use motion
controlled cameras so that the camera would go through the
shot and around the model and make it look like
the model was moving, and plus it was moving the
(31:22):
shot through space. Right. The thing is is, let's say
you have five different ships. You film those five ships separately,
but those five ships are all going to be in
the same shot, so you have to film that same
shot the exact same way five different times and then
running through an optical printer so that you can get
(31:43):
all of them, all five shots onto the same strip
of film. But that's one of the one of the
ways that motion um motion controlled cameras were really put
to good use, and it was extremely groundbreaking because not
one of those ships were moving in reality when they
were filming Start Wars. Can you name five Star warships
tie Fighter X wing Fighter. You already said one tie
(32:07):
fighter too. Huh. The deuce is what the people in
the no call it. Um the Uh you already said
star destroyer should so star destroyer was right. Yeah, there's
a star Destroyer. Okay, you made a face like I
was just totally off. Um. You could make the case
that end Or was a ship even though it was
a planet. Uh. There was the forest Speeder, the the
(32:35):
pod Raiser, yeah, and um drs as that's right, and
he's the final ship. Uh. You know many people by
their calf muscles just popped right out of the back
to their legs. Hollie Fry is like hyperventilating somewhere in
the office and she doesn't know why. So, as I
(32:58):
said earlier, it's it's usually a combination of these different
techniques to create one overall special effect using these different crafts.
And a great example is Jurassic Park in the um
in the scene with the velociraptors in the kitchen, that great,
great sequence when it was playing cat and mouse with
(33:18):
those children. There were puppets, there were actors and costumes,
there were animatronic raptor heads, and there were full c
g I raptors and you throw this all in a hat,
mix it all up, and it comes out to be
like a really believable looking scene. It comes out as
an oscar. Yeah, I'm sure they want oscars, right, but
(33:43):
they had to have I don't know, but there's just
no way. It was groundbreaking. I remember being just gob
smacked in the movie theater when I first saw those
dinosaurs walking across the screen. And that was I believe
for the first Jurassic Park, right, Jurassic Park A New Hope,
the first one that came out so um, but that
(34:04):
was five years after the first oscar had been awarded
for special effects. As far as I know, I believe
that the Abyss was the first one to win an
OSCAR for special effects maybe or there No, No, I'm sorry,
I'm way off, way off. Um. The Abyss was the
first movie to win a special effect for a c
(34:25):
G I effect. Remember the water? Um still looks pretty good.
It looks amazing. And this is seven we're talking about. Wow?
Is that when that came out? Yeah? I was surprised
to see that too, because I thought it was Yeah,
it's a good movie. I really like that movie. How
do you not like Ed Harris? You don't like get Here?
What did you not like get Here? No? I like
(34:46):
I like him as an actor. I think a lot
of people might have problems with Ed Harris as a person.
He's notoriously cantankerous. I've never heard that. I believe it. Sure,
he looks like he could yell somebody down, doesn't he?
But he also keeps a cool head when he's an actor.
Is a seventies or sixties NASA guy. Hey, I love it, Harris.
All right, let's take another break and we're gonna come
(35:09):
back and talk a little bit about Star Wars episode
whatever right after this. Okay, we're back, and we should talk.
(35:42):
We should mention the garbage, Matt real quick, because that
is uh, that is a big deal. A lot of
times you have wire work or you have um, you
have things hanging from wires. It doesn't have to be
a person. It can be like a model plane or
a tie fighter or whatever. You gotta get rid of
those wires. Unless you're ed Wood, you can't have fishing line. No,
(36:05):
you're supposed to not, but yes. Or if you're Charlie
Throne in mad Max Fury Road, you gotta get it
rid of that arm. Or if you're in Forrest Gump,
you gotta get rid of Lieutenant Dan's legs. Man. That
was amazing. That was the first time anybody's ever done
really something like that throughout. Yeah. I had my problems
with that movie, for sure, And one of them is
(36:26):
I think he way Over. He was like a kid
in a candy store and way Over did the like
and now Forest is in the White House and using
archival footage and sticking Forest in it. Yeah, that whole
like half hour dialogue he has with Peter Cushing's ghost,
it was uncanny. Uh, But I get it. I get
(36:46):
why these filmmakers get excited these really technical wizards. Well
you get a new technique and they just hammer it.
The guy from Industrial Lite and Magic when they made
the first Star Wars call it what you will um.
His name was like John Deekstra, and this motion controlled
camera assembly that they created was called distro Flex Super groundbreaking,
(37:08):
and they really did amazing stuff with it. Well, he's
like a legend in this industry now, and I saw
an interview with him recently and he was like, I'm
so tired of seeing just whole cities leveled and like
just the most amazing stuff you can possibly think of
being done just because we can do it. He put
(37:28):
it really, really well. I think it's an embarrassment of riches,
you know, like it can be done, so it's being done,
everybody's doing it. It's just you know, like and it
makes it less amazing, not necessarily because it looks bad.
It just keeps looking better and better every time. Like
if you if you look at Charlie's theren's um prosthetic
(37:49):
arm or missing arm compared with Lieutenant Dan's missing legs,
it does so it's getting better. There's just too much
of it, I think is the point to be you know,
just to be all ed heresy on this. No. I
have long predicted a return to practical effects, and it's
starting to happen a little bit more and more. Yeah,
I could see starting with indie filmmakers. Yeah, for sure.
(38:11):
Which is funny because finally computer generated effects have trickled
down enough, like you or I could just walk out
of the studio and probably get on any one of
those backs out there and use stuff that ten fifteen
years ago, when we cost five hundred thousand dollars to
set up a rig like that. Yeah. And that's how
(38:31):
some young filmmakers have gotten noticed is by making these
um short films with like zero money on their computer
that get a lot of action on YouTube because it
looks so amazing. In the studio will be like sign
that person up. I can't remember the guy's name, but
that's happened a couple of times in recent years. Ed Harris, Uh,
(38:52):
we should talk about a few of the groundbreaking people
over the years. Um, we'll go through these a little
quicker than what we have in front of us, I think,
but we should mention Lon Cheney, one of the original
um superstars of film and the Silent era, the Man
of a Thousand Faces. He was, uh, he was very
(39:12):
talented doing his own makeup and changing his face. Um.
That's why it's called the Man of a thousand Faces, Right,
He's like, here's nine. What about Willis O'Brien. He was
one of the pioneers of stop motion photography. Again, if
you're a California Racings fan, you have a lot to
thank Willis O'Brien for. He also this dude, the stuff
(39:35):
he did. I mean, if you look back, he did
King Kong, the nineteen thirty three King Kong. Yeah, and
if you look back at this, you're like, this is
this is cool. But if you research what was done
to create this, you're just blown away by it. Yeah. Again,
many processes coming together, um to create that nineteen thirty
three version of King Kong. And that fight looks good still,
(39:58):
I mean it doesn't look realistic consider the year. It
looks awesome. It does, and it's about three three and
a half minutes long, King Kong fighting the tarannosaurs rex um.
But it took seven weeks to film because there's twenty
four frames shot per second in a film, and for
every frame, they moved the models a little bit here
(40:21):
or there. So that's why it took seven weeks just
for that fight scene. I think it was fifty five
weeks for all of the stop motion photography that was
done in that movie. Yeah, that's impressive. It really is impressive,
especially when you realize the trouble they went to when
you go back and watch it, like this is pretty nuts. Yeah.
Ray Harry Housing continued the work of Willis O'Brien and
(40:43):
very famously in like the fifties and sixties with movies
like Jason and the Argonauts, Clash of the Titans, remember
Medusa Scary Lady. Yeah, that had to be towards the
end of his career, I guess because that was in
the eighties. Yeah, I think like eighty one maybe remember
the minuteur Too Man? That was cool movie. That was
a big movie for me as a kid. Yeah, And
I was like when l A Law came along, I
(41:04):
was like, I know that guy's right, there's the Titans guy.
Uh we we should shout out militant Patrick. This is
a very interesting story. She was one of the only,
well first and only women working in special effects back
in the day, and she created the very famous mask
of the gil Man from Creature from the Black Lagoon.
(41:26):
In the mid nineteen fifties and was unceremoniously fired, not
just fired, stricken from the credits. Yeah, this guy named
Bud Westmore. He assisted her and then basically had her
fired rather than give her the credit for the mask,
which he would take credit for because I think he
was the supervisor in charge of effects or costume or something.
(41:46):
Oh I thought. I guess he assisted her, but he
was her boss. Yeah, okay, but like she very clearly
on her own, came up with the gil Man for yeah,
the creature, and this has only come out in the
last like few years. They've kind of dug up the
original stuff and uh yeah, sexism just basically pushed her
out of the industry altogether. Very sad. She's starting to
(42:08):
get her do now though, which is good. Yeah, that
is very good. Um, there's Dick Smith was amazing. He
created the Squib. Yeah, he's a he's a very famous
makeup artist. He's really good at making people look aged. Yeah.
He made forty seven year old Marlon Brando look much
than the Godfather. Oh yeah, yeah, he was only he
(42:30):
was a year younger than me. Brando. I never thought
about that. Nut. Wow, he really is good. He also
did Death Becomes Her, which is one of the all
time great movies, Yeah for sure, and The Exorcist and
Scanners and if you were seeing Ghost Story from Yeah,
very scary movie. The old Dudes he did he did that?
(42:50):
What else? Very famously aged Dustin Hoffman a little big
man by many, many years. And then in the last
like twenty five thirty years, Rick Baker and stan Winston,
stan Winston's He's mcc got my vote. Yeah, I mean,
these two guys were both just creative leaders in the
(43:13):
industry and um trailblazers in the industry, and as Ed
says in here, like mentored a generation of special effects employees, employees, creators, artists.
All three of those were Lord gig workers. Rick Baker
American Werewolf in London in one which still holds up,
(43:34):
the thriller video in nineteen eighty three Star Wars, Moss
Eisley Cantina, he made all those Yeah did you know
that about the mos Eisley Cantina. I didn't know that.
He was almost single handedly response. And then Stan Winston,
you got to talk about movies like The Thing and
Predator and Terminator and they both have set up, you know,
foundations and schools and things like that. Stan Winston also
(43:57):
did the makeup for what I think is maybe the
best slash film of all time, Friday the Thirteenth Part two. Yeah,
two is when Jason comes along, right, Yes, it's Jason
before he got his mask. He gets his mask in three.
I think the Thirteenth franchises as good as it gets
for horror movies. I dropped off at a certain point.
(44:17):
Did you see all those No? No, I still haven't
seen all of them, but even just putting like the
first five or six up, um, I think it's like
watching him again as an adult. I'm like, these are
really good scarcer films, like even better than I remember
for Me and a Kid. Um. And the reason stan
Winston filled in for Friday Thirteenth Part two is because
(44:38):
the guy who did ft the first one, Tom Savini,
was unavailable. He was off doing creep Show. I believe
that Tom Savini is another legend. I think they're redoing
creep Show? Are they? Okay? I'd watched that different stories?
Oh even better if I'm not mistaken. But yeah, Savini
is well known for being sort of the godfather of Gore.
(45:00):
He did Maniac. Do you see that Yeah, that was
off the Rocker movie. And then these days there are
companies UM I l M and Wetta I LM, Industrial
Light and Magic is Lucas company and they're cool because
they invented this stuff because Lucas needed stuff to be
(45:21):
done that couldn't be done, and he was like, go
figure out how to do it, and they did, they
really did. And then WET as Peter Jackson's company, and
he's the one that has really pioneered the mo cap
the motion capture techniques where a person is wearing like
a suit and the suit has a bunch of different
kind of like almost ping pong balls all over it
(45:42):
at like joints and crucial places where the body moves
and the actor, stunt person or dancer whoever wearing the
suit goes through the motions and then uh, they're just
going through the motions and that that those motions that
what's captured is fed into a computer in the computer
generates a care a doing all those same motions, creating
the performance, but it's a computer generated character. Yeah. I
(46:05):
don't think he was the first, but the Golem character
and those Lord of the Rings movies, UM was really
one of the first really terrific looking fully c G
I character. Yeah, I found, from what I could tell,
the first full c g I character ever in a movie.
You want to guess, You'll never guess. Well, I mean
(46:25):
it's touted as Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. Wrong, really,
what is it going to be? It's another Spielberg movie. Okay,
it's young Sherlock Holmes. Do you remember the Stained Glass
Night that comes to life and tries to slash one
of them with his sword? First full c g I
character in a movie, Well, why, I don't know, But
(46:48):
that's what I could find in that. One's from well
it says maybe there's it's in the nitpicky language because
in the Last Crusade when walt Or Donovan's face melts
and turns to dust when he drinks from the chalice,
that's in that's in writers of Lost Ark, isn't it.
Oh no, you're right, you're right. It says here it
(47:10):
was the first ever digital composite of a full screen
live action image. There's something in a language there, Yeah,
because it was a full screen or something. This was
the this was the first c G I, but it
wasn't the first c G I image. This is the
first moving c g I image. The first c g
I'M image was in Looker. Remember that movie. I totally
(47:34):
saw a Looker. That was a big HBO movie for
me for sure. Same here it was Looker, Runaway, Runaways,
Tom Selleck yeah, and Gene Simmons. Yeah, that's right, that's
all crawl a lot too, look Ahead, Albert Finney, right,
if I remember correctly, Albert Finney and Susan Day. Yeah,
Susan Day right, written by Michael Crichton. I think that
(47:55):
was the first full body three D human, but it
did not move. It was static and the very first
computer generated effects period. Funny enough, we're used to replicate
computer screen. So whenever you would see a computer screen
and like Westworld or Aliens or Star Wars, and they
were like, what is the computer gonna look like? You know?
(48:17):
Not now that that was the first time they used
computer generated imaging was to make a fake computer screen.
And the first full c g I scene ever done
was in The Wrath of Khan, which I believe came
out in But there's a genesis like Earth being you know,
like cooling and turning into the Earth, and there's this
(48:38):
amazing shots around it. That's all c G I and
that was the first one and Tron. I thought for
sure Tron would have been among the first. Apparently most
of that was animated by humans, not computers them, like
all the glowing lines, all that stuff animated, which makes
it nuts that they were able to create that. Uh.
(49:01):
Now the big thing is is d aging technique, that
they're getting better and better they are. Yeah, so the
new um Scorsese picked the Irishman I think d ages
and and has taken a long time to get out
because the d aging didn't look good enough for Scorsese,
so they have d aged to narrow. And then I
saw this new angle movie Jim and I Man, where
(49:22):
Will Smith of Now he plays an assassin and he
has to go kill his younger self. Uh yeah, sort
of like Looper, I guess. But this Jim and I
Man script has been in development for like twenty five
years with various people attached, but they could never do
it because the technology was Yeah, it's finally here. But
here's the thing I didn't know. Like, I've seen this
(49:43):
trailer and I'm like, man, that d aging looks great.
They didn't d age him. It is a fully c
g I. Will Smith the younger version is yeah, because
I was like, man, they're getting so good at the
d aging. So he mo capped his whole performance motion
captured and they just used fresh Prince photos and they
just basically deep faked them. Sort of have you seen
(50:07):
the Bill Hayter deep fake that's going around now. It's
pretty cool, Yeah, because he goes from Hayter to Tom
Cruise to seth Rogan back to Tom Cruise. It's like
kind of all over the place. It's really uh. And
then you know, like we said, they use c g
I for so many movies, little mistakes that can be corrected,
(50:27):
little things that it's just much cheaper to add digitally
later on. It could be a movie that, like I said,
looks like it has no c g I whatsoever. And
it's cheaper to put a play the food in the
background digitally than cook the food and put it on set,
which is that's a bad example. Or you can color
graad a movie you completely change like the movie Oh Brother,
(50:49):
where Art Thou has that yellow hue for everything. All
that stuff is green. You know, they're in the Deep
South in the summertime, and they used to have to
like film it at some weird exposure and then projected
at another exposure with some filter, and then record the
whole thing on an optical negative. Yeah. Now they can
just do it all with a computer, easy peasy. It's great.
(51:11):
Anything else, I'm kind of looking around, but this is
like one eight of this topic. Hopefully it made you
appreciate movies more. Yeah, you specifically me, I know you
love the movies. Uh. If you want to know more
about movies, go list into Chuck's podcast Movie Crush. You'll
love it. Uh. And since I said movie Crush, it's
(51:34):
time for listener mail. Uh. And actually, since you said
movie Crush, we're about to release an episode on The Matrix.
Hadn't seen that movie. It's been twenty years since it
came out. You've never seen The Matrix. No, I hadn't
seen it in a long time, but I didn't realize
this is the twenty year anniversary. Watch it last night.
Still totally holds up, really looks great. Fun. Yeah, well
(51:57):
acted by most of the cast members who didn't act well. Oh,
you know Kanu while he's gets picked on. I love
that guy, I know, kung Fu He's perfect in that role. Though, Yeah,
he's great. I can't imagine anybody else and it would
be too just too serious. I think, like imagine Tom
Cruise in that in the major. Yeah, you're right, he
(52:18):
hads a little like something light, doesn't he. Yeah, it
makes it a little more every man, almost a little
more believable in a weird wa have you seen those
John Wick movies. I've seen some of it. It's just
like a little too video gaming for me. But I
mean it's fine. I respect that people like it. Sure,
here we go. Okay, it's about three D three D.
(52:42):
It's about solar panels. I got movies on you got
the well they are in three D. I guess I
got movies on the brain. Hey, guys. Being a roof
of my entire life and never thought i'd have much
input until now it's my time to shine. One thing
that wasn't mentioned in the solar panel episode is that
people really need to consider the age of their existing
roof before installing solar panels. A new residential single roof
(53:04):
should last about thirty years, but if the roof isn't
nearly new, I would not suggest installing solar panels, and
definitely don't install it if the roof the roof. The
roof is on fire. Once the panels are installed. Roof
repairs or replacement is very difficult and much more expensive
that the life of the roof ends. Before the solar
panels die, you can easily add fifty or more to
(53:27):
the cost of the reroofing due to the added labor
costs to remove and reinstall the panels. Yeah, and you
think about that, so you should align it ideally with
your new roof. I do mostly commercial roofing. Can't tell
you the number of customers so I talked to had
solar panels on an old roof and are now paying
through the nose for repairs or replacement. Reputable solar panels
(53:50):
specialists should have this roof conversation with a potential customer
before installing the panels. I'm afraid it doesn't always happen,
or customers underestimate the added reroofing costs once they're installed. Man,
this is a great p s A. It is thanks
again for what you guys do. I'm in my truck
a lot driving to different job sites and it's always
(54:10):
easier on Tuesday through Thursday when I have a new stuff.
You should know and that is from Owen, uh Cincinnick.
Great name, first day and last I love the name
on way Stephen King's kids name. Yeah, Owen King, thanks
a lot, Ohen. We appreciate that big time. That was
a great email. I would have never thought about that,
(54:33):
and he didn't even send his business and to be plugged.
So just google his name and roofing and if he
happens to live near you, use him. That's how dedicated
this guy. He sounds honest. Well, if you want to
be a cool person like Owen, you can get in
touch with us. You can go onto stuff you Should
Know dot com and check out our social links. You
can also send us an email to stuff podcast at
iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
(54:58):
production of i Heeart Radios. Stuff Works. For more podcasts
for my heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
M M
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