June 27, 2025 • 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):
Hey, everybody, welcome back to the playlist. It's me Josh,
and this episode is all about special effects. We tried
to cram as much as we possibly could into this episode,
and there's a lot to talk about with special effects,
and there's all sorts of different kinds of special effects.
Most of the stuff we think of today is all CGI,
but that's built on things that people used to have
(00:21):
to build with their own hands to make amazing movies
look believable. I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I
hope you've enjoyed this playlist. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know,
a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant wearing his
(00:44):
Stone Temple Pilot's hat, and there's Jerry over there. She's
not wearing any hat. She's got really cool hair.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
It's not Stone Temple Pilots.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
It is too I've seen the Stone Temple Pilots hats
before and that's.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
What it is. STP. Because I bought hats at Auto
Zone yesterday.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
I have a Champion spark Plug hat. Yeah, they have
good hats, they really do.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
I was getting a battery, and I was like, I
want these two hats. It was a good Year Akron,
Ohio Goodyear hat nice, which is where Emily's from. Sure,
so I wanted that. And then I saw this stp.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Hat Stone Temple Pilot.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
But I would get a Champion spark plug hat too.
Those are That's great.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Okay, I'll let you borrow mine anytime you want. I
just got to give it back.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
I don't know if I've ever seen you in a
baseball cap.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
It's a weird jam, is it now? What you want
to see.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
I've seen you in shorts like twice in twelve years.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
I keep the legs covered.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
And I think one of them was when you came
over to borrow my lawnmower. I remember that, Yeah, like
nine years ago.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Sure, I've got a mow the lawn sometimes.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Now things have changed. You can buy a lawnmower. Yeah,
and now we can afford lawnmowers.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
I can wear shorts too. I actually have one of
those plugin lawnmowers.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
I have a battery power lawnmower. Dude, look at us,
stupid liberal hippies.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Well mine's mine's battery powered too, but you have to
plug it in and charge it.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Oh yeah, yeah, what kind do you have? I have
the green one.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Yeah, I think they're all green.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
No, there's a blue one.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Oh, I've got the green one to the sun Joe.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
No, but I have a sun Joe pressure watcher.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Do you really is it battery operated?
Speaker 2 (02:14):
No? You plug that in?
Speaker 1 (02:15):
I was gonna say, I'll bet it just goes like
tinkles out water.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
But they do make plug in lawnmowers. Like, it's not
a battery. You just like have a cord that you
walk around.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
And run over with your lawnmower.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
I guess they're called electric. Sure, but yeah, I got
the battery because I have so little grass now and
we may be done period with grass.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Oh yeah, that's why you're zero escaping.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Well, we're definitely doing the front, but the back it
just got smaller and smaller. And my last lawnmower 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.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Mo There's just that one bladed grass that sees the
lawnmower coming.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Like yeah, But then I went and got the battery
because lawnmowers are terrible for the environment.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Yeah, that's why I got it.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
They're one of the worst.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Full. Yeah, we're both also aware that we are charging
our battery powered lawnmowers with coal fired power.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Yes, and we understand that.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
We know.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
I'm just talking about exhaustpiums.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
I don't even need one. I live in a condo,
but I'm so dissatisfied with the landscapers that take care
of the condo that I yes, I bought a lawnmower
just to do the little patch out in front of
our buildings. Now, poor Momo doesn't get long grass against
her junk when she's pot of you.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
It is a great way to start this episode.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
So we're talking special effects.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Obviously, this has been lawn talk.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
We're talking special effects, Chuck.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Yes, movie special effects, which, uh 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.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Yeah wrong.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yeah, just tiny little things that you may not even notice,
to things that are almost whole cloth special effects like
Skycaptain in the World of.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Tomorrow yeah, or Sin City.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yeah. I like both of those Yes, did.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
You know Sin City? Every single bit of the set
was cgi.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Yeah, and that Skycaptain did it first, Yeah, a year
before huh yep, every bit of that was. It was
a green screen movie.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
I never saw it. Was he good?
Speaker 2 (04:20):
It was interesting, Like the look of it was amazing
and very much ahead of its time.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Like real art deco.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Right, Yeah, for sure, I call it black and white,
but it wasn't. It was just this really washed out color. Yeah,
but it looked awesome and was not bad.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Nice. I'll have to check it out.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
And I think the dudes that made that kind of
quit making movies after that. It's very unique story.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Have you ever seen This has nothing to do with anything,
but have you seen the Changeling?
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Yeah? Sure, Oh my god, did you just see that? Yes?
Speaker 1 (04:48):
And I have to tell you, I don't think I've
ever gotten chills more frequently from a movie than I
did with that one.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Changed.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
It is great, genuinely, it's a genuinely scary ghost story. Yeah,
like it is wonderful.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Yeah. I miss Georgie Scott too.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Yeah, he's a good actor. And I don't remember who
the female lead was in there, but she was great too.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
It's been a while. I haven't seen it in many,
many years.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
So anyway, special effects, let's try this again. Yeah, we're
gonna get derailed like every five sets. Okay.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Effects are divided, and this is by the Grab story
helped us out with this. AD's a big movie guy
and horror movie sci fi guy. Sure, so he probably
enjoyed writing this one up. 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
(05:42):
that's happening.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
I think that's what most people think of when they
think special effects. You think, sure, okay, by most people,
I mean me.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Right right, So with like practical effects, that's things like
makeup and prosthetics, like ed uses, the example of David
Lynch's The Elephant Man, like the prosthetic makeup that was
used to turn John Hurt or John Hurd which one
(06:19):
hurt into Joseph Merrick. Yes, that's a special effect. An
explosion on set, that's a special effect, a blood packet
to make it look like somebody just got shot in
the chest. A squib 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
(06:41):
on film. That's a practical special effect.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Yeah. And the other one I wanted to mention there
that you might not think of as stuff like if
there is a fire like a fireplace in a scene,
and then you flip the camera around to show that
people and you see that fire shimmering on the wall.
That's a practical effect too.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Little things like that, But it's lighting. It's a lighting effect, yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Or it's a fire like you know, those aren't real fires. Yeah,
I mean it's real fire.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Somebody should put that out.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
But it's not like someone lights a bunch of wood.
They put fake wood and they have these fire bars
that it's like what you have under your grill basically, right,
Or they hide those and then that's your fire. Sure,
because that's 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.
(07:30):
They are kind of dreamy they're so good.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
So in camera effects is just basically messing with the
way the film is being produced inside the camera, not
what's going on in reality the film is capturing, but
how the film is actually capturing this stuff.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Yeah, slow motion is a special effect in camera special effect.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Yeah, or fast motion too, which is ten times more
hilarious than fast motion. If you ask me, like, where
would the monsters be without fast motion? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Or Benny Hill for God's sake, sure that lived and
breathed on fast motion? 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.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Like Bewitched appearing out of nowhere.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Yeah, that's a special in camera special effect.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
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 whole industry, not even the industry before the
industry existed, but basically after the invention of motion pictures,
(08:41):
and that it stayed virtually the same until the nineties. Uh. Yeah,
people refined it and got better at it, and techniques
got more.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
The same general crafts. Ye were used very much, so,
which is why craft service is called craft service. Oh yeah,
because of each department is their own craft. I didn't
know they're there to serve them pizza rolls.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Yeah, man, or whatever. You can put on some weight
and film in something. I'll tell you that for you can.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Oh my god, so stop motion animation. That is an
in camera effect. You're moving a little clay figure or whatever,
a doll or a King Kong, a raisin one a
California raisin, one frame at a time, twenty four frames
per second.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Can you imagine? Didn't you do that with your brother
with g I Joe?
Speaker 2 (09:25):
I did? And then years later I did a little
Star Wars thing when I got a high eight video
camera and spent like three days working on something that
ended up being nine seconds long, and I said, I'm done.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
What's funny is you're going to get a seasoned desist
later from Lucasfilm after talking about us in the podcast Night.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
And then we have post production effects, and that is
I think that's what a lot of people think of
as special effects these days, really, because that's all the
CGI stuff that you will see is all happens in post.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Production Okay, all right, Yes, these days I got youa like,
almost all special effects happen imposts these days. Right.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Well, no, they still combined some of the old crafts
as well. But yeah, surely a lot of it is CGI.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
I mean, computers can do some amazing stuff.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
They can.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
I mean, stuff that used to take months to do
a computer can do in hours now and do it
a million times better. Yeah, So depending on your taste,
I should say, that's right. So those are the big
three practical in camera and post production. And like I
was saying, like the basis of special effects was founded,
(10:34):
like in the nineteenth century, 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
cool stuff that you could do messing around with cameras,
something like double exposure, where you take a picture of
one thing and then take a picture of another thing
with the previously exposed film, and all of a sudden,
(10:55):
it looks like there's a ghost looming behind you. Stuff
like that. So out of the gate, when motion pictures
were started to become a little widespread and people could
afford them and try messing around with them. They had
a basis 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
(11:17):
figured this out right away.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Yeah. That first guy who's credited as the first special
effect is Alfred Clark. And they don't have the year
exactly right. It's either ninety three, that's eighteen ninety three, yeah,
or eighteen ninety five. He made a short film called
The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scott's, and he did
that little stop trick, like I was saying, you shoot something,
(11:40):
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, right.
And in his case, did you look at it?
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Did you want to? Did you see that one?
Speaker 2 (11:53):
It's he uses a stop trick with Mary getting beheaded,
and right when the ax 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 eighteen ninety three.
He did a really good job.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Yeah, and the key to that is just making sure
that no one touches the camera or even breathes on it,
don't move, and then getting the dummy in the same
position as the actor.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
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 dumb dumb pa bumps into
it like me.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
So Alfred Clark is credited with the first special effect,
but a guy named George may leise did they get it? Maylee?
Speaker 2 (12:51):
We should go ask Casey Pegram.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Oh yeah, he would know.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
I think it's uh milia, Oh nice.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
I think he just nailed it. At any rate, this
guy is known as the father of special effects.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
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.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
And none of the five people did.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
But he was an illusionist and he said, oh man,
I can really do some amazing tricks with this camera.
And he really put it to good use. From a
very early, like I mean, turn to the last century.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Yeah, he actually stumbled upon that little stop trick by
accident when he was shooting a street traffic scene in
Paris in eighteen ninety six. The camera jams while I
think a bus was coming across frame. He's like, mad,
fixes the camera.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Can we say that? Sure? All right? We don't have
any French people sitting?
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Yeah, that's true, 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 kind of just
stumbled upon this weird little substance tution splice that became
part of filmmaking.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
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.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
And he said, wait till they get a load of
Bewitched seventy something years from now. So or no, I
guess what was that in the fifties, sixties, sixties, all right.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
So you may not recognize George Meliaise, oh I got
at that time, I think so name, but you probably
have heard of his work like a Trip to the Moon. Yeah,
what's very widely sighted is like one of the first
actual movies. I think it was in the twenty something
minute range. But it was about some explorers in the
Victorian era getting into a rocket and traveling to the
(14:43):
moon and the rocket lands and the man in the
Moon's eye. Yeah, everybody's seen that. I don't care who
you are. If you say you haven't, you have. This
was the guy who made that. And this is a
very early movie. It was from nineteen oh two, but
he was doing all sorts of a maze using stuff.
He was using extensive costuming, masks, all sorts of in
(15:06):
camera techniques.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
His painting on film frames.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Yeah, and this is nineteen oh two, and like I
was saying, this stuff was refined, but it was the
basis of special effects for the next century to come.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Should we take a quick break?
Speaker 1 (15:20):
I think so.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
All right, let's take a quick break and we will
talk a little bit about the MAT technique right after this.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
I'm actually pretty psyched about this, all right, Chuck. As
(15:54):
I said, I'm very psyched about the MAT.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Yeah. So this isn't This is a little confusing the
way it's laid out here, because what Ed's talking about
here with Norman Don is called original negative matte painting.
If you hear of a matte painting, that is a
piece of glass where you have and I'm going to
(16:19):
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 scape on it, like really realistic,
and then you put that in a scene and shoot it.
So it's instead of having someone in front of a
city and this was pre blue screen and green screen technology,
(16:39):
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 matte painter.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Oh, I didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
That was like his first job.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
It's Nate like, if you, if you even if you
do know what Chuck's talking about, go to the internet
and just look up like great matte paintings.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
It's amazing.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
There's a lot of really wonderful ones. One you've seen before,
ones you haven't. But basically, anytime you've seen a movie
pre nineteen ninety three, maybe nineteen ninety where somebody walks
into this enormous place or this amazingly elaborate future city
or something like that. What you're actually looking at is
(17:22):
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 or there. But it's really it's a painting.
It's a painting that some amazing human being painted by hand.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Yeah, and we should point out they still do this today.
They just do it digitally. And digital matte painters are
super talented as well. Sure, but it's kind of neat
to think about that old craft and James Cameron painting
a piece of glass, yeah, and sticking that behind Kurt Russell.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
And I mean it was used in everything like I
for my money, matt painting is the single most important
and widespread special effect ever. Maybe hard to argue that,
thank you, like it was in Mary Poppins. When Mary
Poppins is coming into the City of London float, that's
a Matte painting. When Superman walks into the uh, where's
(18:18):
the what's the name of the place where he's from?
The Crystal Cave.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Where Fortress of Solitude.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Yeah, is that where he talks with with Marlon Brando
his dad? Uh yeah, I think so, Okay, that's a
matte painting, and.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
I think the Fortress of Solitude are the remnants of Krypton. Okay,
I'm boy, Superman. People are so mad at me right now.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
People still I thought everybody's on the marble train.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
No, people love Superman the comics.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Oh okay, because I was gonna say, I mean, you've
seen what they've done Superman lately, right and Batman?
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Yeah? So, uh, that's the matte painting. And what that
is it's called set extension. So that basically means you're
just sort of extending the real life set to make
something bigger and more opulent, or maybe not more obvious,
just bigger and more.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
But here's the.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
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 matte painting was developed by Norman Don and
that is when nowadays he'll use what's called the mat box,
(19:30):
which is 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 painting away. It was early
(19:52):
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.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
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 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
(20:23):
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
onto a screen so you see where the actor is, yes,
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
(20:46):
that you originally wanted.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Right. The only difference there, which is something that wasn't
quite right here, is they don't like project it. They
just develop a few frames of it and project it
like a slide gotcha. So it's not like the camera
the film was moving through on the wall, right, because
in the article here says and then you just stop it,
and what happens if you do that is the bulb
(21:08):
burns the film. Okay, So you can't just stop a
mooty projector.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
You produce like a slide of and project that.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
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. Yep, pretty neat.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
You just open your trench coat. There you go.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
And the big innovator with the original negative matte painting
was Norman Down and he really like really led the way.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
But I mean again, most of the stuff 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 watch them today and you're like, god,
it looks terrible. But if you stop and think about
the effort that they were going to they were inventing. Yeah,
it's just mind boggling that they managed to get it,
(21:57):
you know to this point.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Yeah, Norman don I had 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.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
There are some other stuff too. There's like rear projection
in front projection, which is basically like projecting the background
and moving background onto a screen behind the actors. Yeah,
basically you know all those hokey driving scenes. Yeah, yeah,
the person's great, the car is being rocked or whatever
the road behind him, that's front of rear projection.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Yeah, and 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. Yeah,
and 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
(22:49):
actually having to look up what it's called. When you're
in a car scene but you're not doing a rear
screen projection, so what happens here is you're sitting in
a car, in a still car on the set, but
they're not projecting anything behind you. What you've got is
two people shaking the car at a frame.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
What do they gripped?
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Yeah, usually a grip. But 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 there was a faked subway train
and the hydraulics broke early on and they're like, bring
out the PA's you're gonna shake this train for twelve hours.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Like you got rhythm, get in there.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Yeah. Oh, we couldn't have too much rhythm because we
got yelled at for that because it looked too rhythmic.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
Gotcha.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
So we're like, I don't know what, I don't know
how to do this.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Who are you working for? Oh?
Speaker 2 (23:37):
It was just a commercial director that said that our
movement of the train looked to rhythmic and not believable.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
So anyway, this Fruit of the Loom's commercial was totally unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
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 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 is sometimes like six seven
eight people working in concert to make it look like
(24:10):
you're driving at night in the rain or something like that.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Right, So there's really like an obvious background trees or
rode or whatever. But maybe there's headlights coming up behind
you just dark.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Yeah, but there are people with a spotlight.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
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.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
The shaken shimmy.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
I'm gonna be so mad later on.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
What was this called the shake and chimmy? Okay, that's right.
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, yeah, which would actually
mess with the yellow exposure on panchromatic film, and my
(25:00):
I started bleeding out of 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 figured out that again,
if you if you film in black, the film is
(25:23):
not going to be exposed. So anything you go and
re expose it to it will cover over that stuff
like it's transparent. So for example, in The Invisible Man
from I think nineteen thirty thirty thirty three, yeah, Claude
Rains wore a black bodysuit and the background was black.
It was a black screen, like a black green screen.
(25:46):
But he wore clothes and everything in bandages and sunglasses
and I think he smoked a cigarette or whatever. But
when he took the bandages off and he took his
sunglasses and closed off, there was nothing there. It 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
(26:08):
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.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
That's right, And that's called the 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 synced up.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Yes, so this is to me, the optical printer is
the second most widespread and useful special effect technique in
the history of film.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
You just waved your hand.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
They suddenly had an ass gotten a er a on.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
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 prevalent or less use I
think so. Probably maybe the blue was because you know what,
you don't want anything close to that color will disappear
(27:08):
against the green screen.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Anyone who's ever done the weather on the newscast I
can tell you.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
That, Yeah, there have been. There are blooper reels of
weather people disappearing when they wear like a green jacket
or something.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Right, it looks like the weather's going on through their body.
Same thing. So I want to say one more thing
about optical printers, or another little bit about it. Sure,
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.
(27:39):
And you could do all sorts of stuff with that.
So let's say you have a shot where you have
one mat in the foreground and live actor and then
another mat in the background that has a bunch of
different people in it or something like that, or stormtroopers three. Okay,
so you've got three different elements to that shot. What
you would do is using the same film film each thing.
(28:00):
So you go film that, like the actor, the live
action actor, You've got that on the film, and you
project that, and you 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 ohn, No, it's worse than that. Was it?
(28:22):
False false positives? Do you remember that time where I
was like, I took a pretty simple thing and just
completely walk the dog with it. Yeah, okay, well I'll
just do that again. Everyone. I want you to go
look up optical printers, read a little bit about them,
and then you'll say, oh, Josh is.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Right, Yeah, this tough stuff.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
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 it look like all these things that
you film three separate times are all happening together in
one space.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Yes, you're marrying separate images together onto a single piece
of film.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Right. You couldn't do that with before optical printers, which
is a projector in a camera working together.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
That's right, Okay, I think I needed that We should
mention briefly motion 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 DOLLI, there is
not a person moving the camera. It is a machine
that is programmed to move a camera through space very
(29:33):
very precisely and exactly the same every single time.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Yeah, So you can do the exact same motion over
and over again.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Over and over and a lot of times. 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's 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 in post. And
that's the whole reason for emotion control, is to replicate
(30:03):
moves with exact precision.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
So 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.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
I'm not confirming or denying anything. I'm just gonna let
that stand.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Episode four is the first Star Wars movie that ever
came out.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Correct, The Star Wars A New Hope is the first
episode okay, that I ever saw in a movie theater, because.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
It'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, we're
gonna get murdered everything. All of the ships and Star
Wars were models, yes, fairly small models. Actually they were.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
At that base, Okay, I think it was episode four,
I'm almost positive.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Okay, So those models were not moving in these shots
and these enormous like huge panoramic shots where like there's
tie fighters flying around shooting everything and 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
(31:15):
shot around the model and make it look like the
model was moving, and plus it was moving the shot
through space.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
Right.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
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 run it through an
optical printer so that you can get all of them,
all five shots onto the same strip of film. But
(31:46):
that's one of the ways that 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 Star Wars.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Can you name five Star warships.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Tie Fighter, X wing Fighter.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
You already said one my tie fighter too.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
Uh uh the deuce is what the people in the
no call it.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
The Uh you already said star destroyer. So star destroyer
was right, Yeah, there's a Star Destroyer. Okay, you made
a face like I just was just totally off. You
can make the case that Indoor was a ship even
though it was a planet.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Uh. There was the the the forest Speeder, uh huh,
the the pod racer, Yeah, and.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Doctors as that's right, he's a final ship. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Do you know many people, boy, their calf muscles just
popped right out of the back to their legs.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Ollie Fry is like hyperventilating somewhere in the office and
she doesn't know why. So, as I said earlier, it's
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 scene with
(33:13):
the veloscer raptors in the kitchen, a great great sequence
when it was playing cat and mouse with those children. Yeah,
there were puppets, there were actors in costumes, there were
animatronic raptor heads, and there were full cgi raptors and
you throw this all in a hat, mix it all up,
and it comes out to be like a really believable
(33:35):
looking scene.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Yeah, it comes out as an oscar.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Yeah. I'm sure they won oscars, right, but.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
They had two of I don't know, but there's just
no way.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
It was groundbreaking. I remember being just gobsmacked in the
movie theater. Yeah, when I first saw those dinosaurs walking
across the screen.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
And that was nineteen ninety three, I believe, for the
first Jurassic Park, right, Jurassic Park, New Hope, the first
one that came out. So, but that was five years
after the first oscar had been awarded for special effects.
As far as I know, h really, I believe that
The Abyss was the first one to win an OSCAR
for special effects. Maybe or they're no, No, I'm sorry,
(34:18):
I'm way off, way off. The Abyss was the first
movie to win a special effect for a CGI effect. Okay,
remember the.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Water Sure still looks pretty good.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
It looks amazing. Yeah, this is nineteen eighty seven we're
talking about.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
Wow was that when that came out?
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Yeah? I was surprised to see that too, because that
holds out. I thought it was. Yeah, it's a good movie.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
I really liked that movie.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
How do you not like Ed Harris? You don't like what?
Did you not like it? Hair? No?
Speaker 2 (34:46):
I like 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.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
I've never heard that, I believe it.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Sure he looks like he could yell somebody down, didn't he.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Sure, But he also keeps a cool head when he's
an actor as a seventies or sixties NASA guy.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Hey, I love that, Harris. All right, let's take another break, okay,
and we're going to come back and talk a little
bit about Star Wars episode whatever right after this. Okay,
(35:41):
we're back, and we should talk. We should mention the
garbage Matt real quick, because that is a big deal.
A lot of times you have wire work or you
have 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 got to
get rid of those wires unless you're ed.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
Would you can't have fishing line, No, you're supposed to not,
but yes, Or if.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
You're Charlie's thrown in mad Max Ferry Road, you got
to get it rid of that arm. Or if you're
in Forrest Gump, you got to get rid of Lieutenant
Dan's legs.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
Man. That was amazing. That was the first time anybody's
ever done really something like that throughout.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
Yeah, I have my problems with that movie for sure,
and one of them is I think he way over it.
He was like a Kidney candy store and way over
did the like and now Forrest is in the White
House and using archival footage and sticking Forest in it.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Yeah, that whole half hour dialogue he has with Peter
Cushing's ghost, it was uncanny.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
But I get it. I get why these filmmakers get excited,
these really technical wizards. Well, you get a new technique
and they just hammer it.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
The guy from Industrial Light and Magic when they made
the first Star Wars call it what you will. His
name was I think John Dykstra, and this motion controlled
camera assembly that they created was called Diystra Flex super
groundbreaking and they really did amazing stuff with it. Well,
he's like a legend in this industry now, and I
(37:13):
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 it really, really well. I think it's an embarrassment
of riches, you know, like it can be done, so
(37:34):
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
Stern's prosthetic arm or missing army compared with Lieutenant Dan's
missing legs, looks different. It does, So it's getting better.
(37:57):
There's just too much of it, I think is the
point just to be all ed harrisy on this now.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
I have long predicted a return to practical effects, really,
and it's starting to happen a little bit more and more.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
Yeah, I could see starting with indie filmmakers, Yeah, for sure,
which is funny because finally computer generated effects have trickled
down enough. Yeah, 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've lost five hundred thousand dollars
(38:29):
to set up a rig like that.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Yeah, And that's how some young filmmakers have gotten noticed
is by making these short films with like zero money
on their computer that get a lot of action on
YouTube because it looks so amazing, and the studio will
be like, sign that person up. Yeah, I can't remember
the guy's name, but that's happened a couple of times
in recent years, Ed Harris, we should talk about a
(38:53):
few of the groundbreaking people over the years. Oh yes,
we'll go through these a little quicker than what we
have in front of us, I think, but we should
mention Lon Cheney. Sure, one of the original superstars of
film in the Silent era, the Man of a thousand Faces.
He was. He was very talented doing his own makeup
(39:14):
and changing his face. That's why he's called the Man
of one thousand faces.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Right, He's like, here's nine hundred and ninety seven.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
What about Willis O'Brien.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
He was one of the pioneers of stop motion photography. Again,
if you're a California Racins fan, you have a lot
to thank Willis O'Brien for.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
He also this dude, the stuff 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.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
Yeah. Again, many processes coming together to create that nineteen
thirty three version of King Kong. And that fight looks
good still, I mean it DOESN'TOK realistic, No, consider the year,
it looks awesome.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
It does. And it's about three and a half minutes
long King Kong fighting the Tyrannosaurus recks. But it took
seven weeks to film, Yeah, because there's twenty four frames
shot per second in a film, and for every frame,
they moved the models a little bit here or there. Yeah,
(40:22):
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.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Yeah, that's impressive.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
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.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
Yeah. Ray Harry Housen continued the work of Willis O'Brien
and very famously in like the fifties and sixties with
movies like Jason and the Argonauts.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
And Clash of the Titans. Yeah, I remember Medusa sure,
Scary Lady.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
Yeah, that had to be toward the end of his career,
I guess, because that was in the eighties.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Yeah, I think like eighty one maybe remember the Minute
Tar two Man. That was cool movie.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
That was a big movie for me as a kid.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Yeah, and I was like when La Law came along,
I was like, I know that guy. That's right, there's
the Titans guy.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
We we should shout out Millicent 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 gill Man from Creature from the Black Lagoon in
the mid nineteen fifties and was unceremoniously fired.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
Not just fired, stricken from the credits.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
Yeah, this guy named Bud Wes Moore, he assisted her
and then basically had her fired rather than give her
the credit for the mask, which he would take credit for.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
Because I think he was the supervisor in charge of
effects or costume or something.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
Oh I thought, I guess he assisted her, but he
was her boss.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
Yeah, okay, but like she very clearly on her own
came up with the gill man for yeah, the creature
from the And this has.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
Only come out in the last few years. They've kind
of dug up the original stuff. And yeah, sexism just
basically pushed her out of the industry altogether. Yeah, very sad.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
She's starting to get her due now though, which is good.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Yeah, that is very good.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
There's Dick Smith was amazing.
Speaker 2 (42:15):
He created the squib.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Oh really, yeah, he's a he's a very famous makeup artist.
He's really good at making people look aged.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
Yeah. He made forty seven year old Marlon Brando look
much over five than The Godfather. Oh yeah, yeah, he
was only he was a year younger than me. Brando.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
I never thought about that.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
That nuts.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
Wow. He really is good. He also did Death Becomes
Her which is one of the all time great movies, yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
For sure. And The Exorcist yep, and.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
Scanners and have you ever seen Ghost Story from nineteen
eighty one? Oh yeah, yeah, very scary movie. The old
dudes he did, he did that?
Speaker 2 (42:50):
What else? Very famously aged Dustin Hoffmann little big Man
by many many years.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
And then in the last like twenty five thirty years,
Rick Baker and Stan Winston.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
Stan Winston's He's got my vote.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
Yeah, I mean these two guys were both just creative
leaders in the industry and trailblazers in the industry. And
as Ed says in here, like mentored a generation of
special effects employees, employees, creators, artists.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
Sure, all three of those Lord gig workers.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Rick Baker American Werewolf in London in nineteen eighty one,
which still holds up. The thriller video in nineteen eighty three,
star Wars Moss Isley Cantina.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
He made all those Yeah, did you know that about
the Moss Eisley Cantina. Sure, I didn't know that. He
was almost single handily respondib Yeah, for all of them.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
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.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
Stan Winston also did the makeup for what I think
is maybe the best slash film of all time, Friday
the Thirteenth Part two.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
Yeah, two was when Jason comes along, right, Yes.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
It's Jason before he got his mask. He gets his
mask in three. I think the Fria thirteenth franchise is
as good as it gets for horror movies.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
I dropped off at a certain point. Did you see
all those?
Speaker 1 (44:18):
No? No, I still haven't seen all of them, but
even just putting like the first five or six up. Yeah.
I think it's like watching him again as an adult.
I'm like, these are really good. Yeah, Fisher films like
even better than I remember for Me and a kid. Yeah,
And the reason Stan Winston filled in for Friday the
Thirteenth Part two is because the guy who did Friday
(44:39):
Thirteenth the first one, Tom Savini, was unavailable. He was
off doing Creep Show, I believe. But Tom Savini's another legend.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
I think they're redoing creep Show, are they Okay? I'd
watched that different stories? Oh even better, I think, if
I'm not mistaken. Nice, But yeah, Savini is well known
for being sort of the godfather of Gore.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
Yeah, he did Maniac Do you everous see that?
Speaker 2 (45:02):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (45:02):
That was off the Rocker movie.
Speaker 2 (45:06):
And then these days there are companies ILM and WETA.
ILM Industrial Light and Magic is Lucas's company, and they're
cool because they invented this stuff because Lucas needed stuff
to be done that couldn't be done right, and he
was like, go figure out how to do it, and
they did, they really did. And then WETA is Peter
(45:28):
Jackson's company, and he's the one that has really pioneered
the mo cap the motion capture techniques.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
Where a person's wearing like a suit and the suit
has a bunch of different kind of like almost ping
pong balls all over it. Yeah, at like joints and
crucial places where the body moves and the actor, stunt
person or dance or whoever wearing the suit goes through
the motions and.
Speaker 2 (45:52):
Then they're just going through the motions.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
Sure, and that those motions that what's captured is fed
into a computer and the computer generates a character doing
all those same motions, creating the performance. But it's a
computer generated character. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
I don't think he was the first, but the Gollum
character in those Lord of the Rings movies was really
one of the first, really terrific looking fully CGI character.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
Yeah, I found, from what I could tell, the first
full CGI character ever in a movie. You want to guess,
you'll never guess.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
Well, I mean it's touted as Indiana Jones and the
Last Crusade. Wrong, Really, what is it going to be?
Speaker 1 (46:31):
It's another Spielberg movie. Okay, it's young Sherlock Holmes. Well,
do you remember the Stained Glass Night that comes to
life and tries to slash one of them with his sword?
First full CGI character in a movie. Well why, I
don't know, but that's what I could find. And that
one's from nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
Well it says maybe there's it's in the nitpicky language
because in the Last Crusade, when Walter Donovan's face melts
and turns to dust when he drinks from the jalice.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
That's in. That's in Writers of the Lost Arc, isn't it.
Oh no, you're right, you're right.
Speaker 2 (47:09):
It says here it was the first ever digital composite
of a full screen live action image.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
There's something in the language there.
Speaker 2 (47:17):
It was a full screen or something. This was the gotcha.
Speaker 1 (47:20):
This was the first CGI, but it wasn't the first
CGI image. This is the first moving CGI image. The
first CGI image was in Looker. Remember that movie.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
I totally saw Looker. Yeah, that was a big HBO movie.
Speaker 1 (47:36):
For me for sure. Same here. It was Looker Runaway.
Speaker 2 (47:39):
Uh huh, Kroll Runaway. It's Tom Selleck, yeah, and Gene
Simmons in the bad Guy's right, that's all Kroll a
lot too. Oh yeah, Looker had Albert Finnie, right, if
I remember correctly.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
Albert Finnie and Susan Day.
Speaker 2 (47:51):
Yeah, Susan Day.
Speaker 1 (47:53):
Yeah, written by Michael Crichton.
Speaker 2 (47:54):
I think that 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, were used
to replicate computer screen. So whenever you would see a
computer screen in like Westworld or Aliens or Star Wars,
and they were like, what is the computer going to
(48:16):
look like? You know?
Speaker 1 (48:17):
Not?
Speaker 2 (48:17):
Now, that was the first time they used computer generated
imaging was to yeah, make a fake computer screen.
Speaker 1 (48:24):
And the first full CGI scene ever done was in
The Wrath of Khan, which I believe came out in
nineteen eighty two. But there's a genesis like Earth being
you know, like cooling and turning into the Earth, and
there's this amazing shots around it. That's all CGI. And
that was the first one, and Tron I thought for
(48:45):
sure Tron would have been among the first. Apparently most
of that was animated by humans, not computers. That's right,
The like all the glowing lines, all that stuff animated,
which makes it nuts that they were able to create that.
Speaker 2 (48:59):
Yeah. Now the big thing is this de aging technique
that they're getting better and better.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
Yeah, they really are.
Speaker 2 (49:06):
Yeah, So the new Scorsese picked the Irishman I think
d ages and it has taken a long time to
get out because it's the d aging didn't look good
enough for Scorsese, so they have d aged de Naro.
And then I saw this new Angle movie Gemini Man,
where Will Smith of now he plays an assassin and
(49:26):
he has to go kill his younger self Looper. Uh yeah,
sort of like Looper, I guess. But this Gemini Man
script has been in development for like twenty five years
with various people attached, but they could never do.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
It because of the technology.
Speaker 2 (49:39):
Yeah huh, it's finally here. But here's the thing I
didn't know. Like, I've seen this trailer and I'm like, man,
that the aging looks great. They didn'td agent. It is
a fully cgi Will Smith.
Speaker 1 (49:50):
Oh and it looks that really the younger.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
Version is yeah wow. So I was like, man, they're
getting so good at the dh that's amazing. So he
mowcapped his whole performance motion captured and they just used
fresh prints photos.
Speaker 1 (50:02):
And they just basically deep fake them.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
Sort of have you seen the Bill Hayter deep fake
that's going around now. It's pretty cool. Yeah, because he
goes from Hater to Tom Cruise, to seth Rogan back
to Tom Cruise. It's like kind of all over the place.
Speaker 1 (50:19):
It really well done.
Speaker 2 (50:21):
And then you know, like we said, they use CGI
for so many movies, little mistakes that can be corrected,
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 CGI whatsoever, and it's cheaper
to put a plate of food in the background digitally
than cook the food and put it on set, which
(50:43):
is that's a bad example. Or you can color grate
a movie you completely change like the movie Oh Brother,
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.
Speaker 1 (50:56):
They used to have to like film it at some
weird exposure, then projected at another exposure to some filter,
and then re the whole thing on an optical negative. Yeah,
now they can just do it all with a computer, easypasy.
Speaker 2 (51:10):
It's great. Anything else, I'm kind of looking around, but
this is like one eighth of this topic.
Speaker 1 (51:18):
Yeah, hopefully it made you appreciate movies more. Yeah, you
specifically me, I know you love the movies. Sure, if
you want to know more about movies, go listen to
Chuck's podcast movie Crush. You'll love it. Hey. Thanks, And
since I said movie Crush, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 2 (51:38):
And actually, since you said movie Crush, we're about to
release an episode on the Matrix. Oh, I hadn't seen
that movie. It's been twenty years since it came out.
Speaker 1 (51:45):
You've never seen The Matrix.
Speaker 2 (51:46):
No, I hadn't seen it in a long time. Gotcha,
But I didn't realize this is the twenty year anniversary.
Watched it last night. Still totally holds up, really looks great. Fun. Yeah,
well acted by most of the cast.
Speaker 1 (51:59):
Members who didn't act well.
Speaker 2 (52:02):
Oh, you know Ken't who always gets picked on. I
love that guy, I know, kung Fu. He's perfect in
that role. Though.
Speaker 1 (52:10):
Yeah, he's great. I can't imagine anybody else and it'd
be too just too serious. I think, like, imagine Tom
Cruise in that in the Matrix.
Speaker 2 (52:17):
Yeah, you're right. He adds a little like something light,
doesn't he.
Speaker 1 (52:21):
Yeah, it makes it a little more every man, almost
a little more believable in a weird way.
Speaker 2 (52:25):
So do you see those John Wick movies?
Speaker 1 (52:29):
I've seen some of it. It's just like a little
too video gamy for me. Yeah, but I mean it's fine.
I respect that people like it.
Speaker 2 (52:36):
Sure, here we go. Okay, it's about three D three D.
It's about solar panels.
Speaker 1 (52:43):
I got movies on the three D.
Speaker 2 (52:45):
Got the well they are in three D. I guess
I got movies on the brain. Hey, guys. Being a
roof for my entire life, I 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 before installing solar panels.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
Oh that's a good point.
Speaker 2 (53:02):
A new residential shingle roof should last about thirty years.
But if the roof isn't nearly new, I would not
suggest installing solar panels.
Speaker 1 (53:09):
And definitely don't install it if the roof the roof
is on fire.
Speaker 2 (53:14):
Once the panels are installed, roof repairs or replacement is
very difficult and much more expensive. If the life of
the roof ends before the solar panels die, you can
easily add fifty to seventy five percent or more to
the cost of the reroofing due to the added labor
costs to remove and reinstall the panels. Yeah, don't you
think about that? So you should align it ideally with
(53:37):
your new roof. Sure, 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
panel specialists should have this roof conversation with a potential
customer before installing the panels if I'm afraid it doesn't
always happen or customers underestimates the added reroofing cost once
(54:02):
they're installed.
Speaker 1 (54:03):
Man, this is a great PSA.
Speaker 2 (54:05):
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 easier on Tuesday through Thursday. I want
to have a new stuff you should know and that
is from Owen Sinsinik.
Speaker 1 (54:18):
Great name first and last. Yep, love the name Owen.
Stephen King's kids name them Yeah, Owen King. Thanks a lot, Owen.
We appreciate that big time. That was a great email.
I would have never thought about that.
Speaker 2 (54:33):
And he didn't even send his business in to be plugged.
So just google his name and roofing and if he
happens to live near you, use him.
Speaker 1 (54:40):
That's how dedicated this guy is.
Speaker 2 (54:42):
He sounds honest.
Speaker 1 (54:43):
Well, if you want to be a cool person like Owen,
you can get in touch with us. You can go
on to stuff you Should Know dot com and check
out our social links. You can also send us an
email to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you
Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
(55:04):
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, everybody, welcome back to the playlist. It's me Josh,
and this episode is all about special effects. We tried
to cram as much as we possibly could into this episode,
and there's a lot to talk about with special effects,
and there's all sorts of different kinds of special effects.
Most of the stuff we think of today is all CGI,
but that's built on things that people used to have
(00:21):
to build with their own hands to make amazing movies
look believable. I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I
hope you've enjoyed this playlist. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know,
a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant wearing his
(00:44):
Stone Temple Pilot's hat, and there's Jerry over there. She's
not wearing any hat. She's got really cool hair.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
It's not Stone Temple Pilots.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
It is too I've seen the Stone Temple Pilots hats
before and that's.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
What it is. STP. Because I bought hats at Auto
Zone yesterday.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
I have a Champion spark Plug hat. Yeah, they have
good hats, they really do.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
I was getting a battery, and I was like, I
want these two hats. It was a good Year Akron,
Ohio Goodyear hat nice, which is where Emily's from. Sure,
so I wanted that. And then I saw this stp.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Hat Stone Temple Pilot.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
But I would get a Champion spark plug hat too.
Those are That's great.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Okay, I'll let you borrow mine anytime you want. I
just got to give it back.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
I don't know if I've ever seen you in a
baseball cap.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
It's a weird jam, is it now? What you want
to see.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
I've seen you in shorts like twice in twelve years.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
I keep the legs covered.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
And I think one of them was when you came
over to borrow my lawnmower. I remember that, Yeah, like
nine years ago.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Sure, I've got a mow the lawn sometimes.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Now things have changed. You can buy a lawnmower. Yeah,
and now we can afford lawnmowers.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
I can wear shorts too. I actually have one of
those plugin lawnmowers.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
I have a battery power lawnmower. Dude, look at us,
stupid liberal hippies.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Well mine's mine's battery powered too, but you have to
plug it in and charge it.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Oh yeah, yeah, what kind do you have? I have
the green one.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Yeah, I think they're all green.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
No, there's a blue one.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Oh, I've got the green one to the sun Joe.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
No, but I have a sun Joe pressure watcher.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Do you really is it battery operated?
Speaker 2 (02:14):
No? You plug that in?
Speaker 1 (02:15):
I was gonna say, I'll bet it just goes like
tinkles out water.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
But they do make plug in lawnmowers. Like, it's not
a battery. You just like have a cord that you
walk around.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
And run over with your lawnmower.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
I guess they're called electric. Sure, but yeah, I got
the battery because I have so little grass now and
we may be done period with grass.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Oh yeah, that's why you're zero escaping.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Well, we're definitely doing the front, but the back it
just got smaller and smaller. And my last lawnmower 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.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Mo There's just that one bladed grass that sees the
lawnmower coming.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Like yeah, But then I went and got the battery
because lawnmowers are terrible for the environment.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Yeah, that's why I got it.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
They're one of the worst.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Full. Yeah, we're both also aware that we are charging
our battery powered lawnmowers with coal fired power.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Yes, and we understand that.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
We know.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
I'm just talking about exhaustpiums.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
I don't even need one. I live in a condo,
but I'm so dissatisfied with the landscapers that take care
of the condo that I yes, I bought a lawnmower
just to do the little patch out in front of
our buildings. Now, poor Momo doesn't get long grass against
her junk when she's pot of you.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
It is a great way to start this episode.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
So we're talking special effects.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Obviously, this has been lawn talk.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
We're talking special effects, Chuck.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Yes, movie special effects, which, uh 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.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Yeah wrong.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yeah, just tiny little things that you may not even notice,
to things that are almost whole cloth special effects like
Skycaptain in the World of.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Tomorrow yeah, or Sin City.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yeah. I like both of those Yes, did.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
You know Sin City? Every single bit of the set
was cgi.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Yeah, and that Skycaptain did it first, Yeah, a year
before huh yep, every bit of that was. It was
a green screen movie.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
I never saw it. Was he good?
Speaker 2 (04:20):
It was interesting, Like the look of it was amazing
and very much ahead of its time.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Like real art deco.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Right, Yeah, for sure, I call it black and white,
but it wasn't. It was just this really washed out color. Yeah,
but it looked awesome and was not bad.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Nice. I'll have to check it out.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
And I think the dudes that made that kind of
quit making movies after that. It's very unique story.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Have you ever seen This has nothing to do with anything,
but have you seen the Changeling?
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Yeah? Sure, Oh my god, did you just see that? Yes?
Speaker 1 (04:48):
And I have to tell you, I don't think I've
ever gotten chills more frequently from a movie than I
did with that one.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Changed.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
It is great, genuinely, it's a genuinely scary ghost story. Yeah,
like it is wonderful.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Yeah. I miss Georgie Scott too.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Yeah, he's a good actor. And I don't remember who
the female lead was in there, but she was great too.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
It's been a while. I haven't seen it in many,
many years.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
So anyway, special effects, let's try this again. Yeah, we're
gonna get derailed like every five sets. Okay.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Effects are divided, and this is by the Grab story
helped us out with this. AD's a big movie guy
and horror movie sci fi guy. Sure, so he probably
enjoyed writing this one up. 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
(05:42):
that's happening.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
I think that's what most people think of when they
think special effects. You think, sure, okay, by most people,
I mean me.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Right right, So with like practical effects, that's things like
makeup and prosthetics, like ed uses, the example of David
Lynch's The Elephant Man, like the prosthetic makeup that was
used to turn John Hurt or John Hurd which one
(06:19):
hurt into Joseph Merrick. Yes, that's a special effect. An
explosion on set, that's a special effect, a blood packet
to make it look like somebody just got shot in
the chest. A squib 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
(06:41):
on film. That's a practical special effect.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Yeah. And the other one I wanted to mention there
that you might not think of as stuff like if
there is a fire like a fireplace in a scene,
and then you flip the camera around to show that
people and you see that fire shimmering on the wall.
That's a practical effect too.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Little things like that, But it's lighting. It's a lighting effect, yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Or it's a fire like you know, those aren't real fires. Yeah,
I mean it's real fire.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Somebody should put that out.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
But it's not like someone lights a bunch of wood.
They put fake wood and they have these fire bars
that it's like what you have under your grill basically, right,
Or they hide those and then that's your fire. Sure,
because that's 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.
(07:30):
They are kind of dreamy they're so good.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
So in camera effects is just basically messing with the
way the film is being produced inside the camera, not
what's going on in reality the film is capturing, but
how the film is actually capturing this stuff.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Yeah, slow motion is a special effect in camera special effect.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Yeah, or fast motion too, which is ten times more
hilarious than fast motion. If you ask me, like, where
would the monsters be without fast motion? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Or Benny Hill for God's sake, sure that lived and
breathed on fast motion? 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.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Like Bewitched appearing out of nowhere.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Yeah, that's a special in camera special effect.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
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 whole industry, not even the industry before the
industry existed, but basically after the invention of motion pictures,
(08:41):
and that it stayed virtually the same until the nineties. Uh. Yeah,
people refined it and got better at it, and techniques
got more.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
The same general crafts. Ye were used very much, so,
which is why craft service is called craft service. Oh yeah,
because of each department is their own craft. I didn't
know they're there to serve them pizza rolls.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Yeah, man, or whatever. You can put on some weight
and film in something. I'll tell you that for you can.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Oh my god, so stop motion animation. That is an
in camera effect. You're moving a little clay figure or whatever,
a doll or a King Kong, a raisin one a
California raisin, one frame at a time, twenty four frames
per second.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Can you imagine? Didn't you do that with your brother
with g I Joe?
Speaker 2 (09:25):
I did? And then years later I did a little
Star Wars thing when I got a high eight video
camera and spent like three days working on something that
ended up being nine seconds long, and I said, I'm done.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
What's funny is you're going to get a seasoned desist
later from Lucasfilm after talking about us in the podcast Night.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
And then we have post production effects, and that is
I think that's what a lot of people think of
as special effects these days, really, because that's all the
CGI stuff that you will see is all happens in post.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Production Okay, all right, Yes, these days I got youa like,
almost all special effects happen imposts these days. Right.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Well, no, they still combined some of the old crafts
as well. But yeah, surely a lot of it is CGI.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
I mean, computers can do some amazing stuff.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
They can.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
I mean, stuff that used to take months to do
a computer can do in hours now and do it
a million times better. Yeah, So depending on your taste,
I should say, that's right. So those are the big
three practical in camera and post production. And like I
was saying, like the basis of special effects was founded,
(10:34):
like in the nineteenth century, 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
cool stuff that you could do messing around with cameras,
something like double exposure, where you take a picture of
one thing and then take a picture of another thing
with the previously exposed film, and all of a sudden,
(10:55):
it looks like there's a ghost looming behind you. Stuff
like that. So out of the gate, when motion pictures
were started to become a little widespread and people could
afford them and try messing around with them. They had
a basis 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
(11:17):
figured this out right away.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Yeah. That first guy who's credited as the first special
effect is Alfred Clark. And they don't have the year
exactly right. It's either ninety three, that's eighteen ninety three, yeah,
or eighteen ninety five. He made a short film called
The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scott's, and he did
that little stop trick, like I was saying, you shoot something,
(11:40):
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, right.
And in his case, did you look at it?
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Did you want to? Did you see that one?
Speaker 2 (11:53):
It's he uses a stop trick with Mary getting beheaded,
and right when the ax 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 eighteen ninety three.
He did a really good job.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Yeah, and the key to that is just making sure
that no one touches the camera or even breathes on it,
don't move, and then getting the dummy in the same
position as the actor.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
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 dumb dumb pa bumps into
it like me.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
So Alfred Clark is credited with the first special effect,
but a guy named George may leise did they get it? Maylee?
Speaker 2 (12:51):
We should go ask Casey Pegram.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Oh yeah, he would know.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
I think it's uh milia, Oh nice.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
I think he just nailed it. At any rate, this
guy is known as the father of special effects.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
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.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
And none of the five people did.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
But he was an illusionist and he said, oh man,
I can really do some amazing tricks with this camera.
And he really put it to good use. From a
very early, like I mean, turn to the last century.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Yeah, he actually stumbled upon that little stop trick by
accident when he was shooting a street traffic scene in
Paris in eighteen ninety six. The camera jams while I
think a bus was coming across frame. He's like, mad,
fixes the camera.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Can we say that? Sure? All right? We don't have
any French people sitting?
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Yeah, that's true, 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 kind of just
stumbled upon this weird little substance tution splice that became
part of filmmaking.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
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.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
And he said, wait till they get a load of
Bewitched seventy something years from now. So or no, I
guess what was that in the fifties, sixties, sixties, all right.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
So you may not recognize George Meliaise, oh I got
at that time, I think so name, but you probably
have heard of his work like a Trip to the Moon. Yeah,
what's very widely sighted is like one of the first
actual movies. I think it was in the twenty something
minute range. But it was about some explorers in the
Victorian era getting into a rocket and traveling to the
(14:43):
moon and the rocket lands and the man in the
Moon's eye. Yeah, everybody's seen that. I don't care who
you are. If you say you haven't, you have. This
was the guy who made that. And this is a
very early movie. It was from nineteen oh two, but
he was doing all sorts of a maze using stuff.
He was using extensive costuming, masks, all sorts of in
(15:06):
camera techniques.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
His painting on film frames.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Yeah, and this is nineteen oh two, and like I
was saying, this stuff was refined, but it was the
basis of special effects for the next century to come.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Should we take a quick break?
Speaker 1 (15:20):
I think so.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
All right, let's take a quick break and we will
talk a little bit about the MAT technique right after this.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
I'm actually pretty psyched about this, all right, Chuck. As
(15:54):
I said, I'm very psyched about the MAT.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Yeah. So this isn't This is a little confusing the
way it's laid out here, because what Ed's talking about
here with Norman Don is called original negative matte painting.
If you hear of a matte painting, that is a
piece of glass where you have and I'm going to
(16:19):
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 scape on it, like really realistic,
and then you put that in a scene and shoot it.
So it's instead of having someone in front of a
city and this was pre blue screen and green screen technology,
(16:39):
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 matte painter.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Oh, I didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
That was like his first job.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
It's Nate like, if you, if you even if you
do know what Chuck's talking about, go to the internet
and just look up like great matte paintings.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
It's amazing.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
There's a lot of really wonderful ones. One you've seen before,
ones you haven't. But basically, anytime you've seen a movie
pre nineteen ninety three, maybe nineteen ninety where somebody walks
into this enormous place or this amazingly elaborate future city
or something like that. What you're actually looking at is
(17:22):
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 or there. But it's really it's a painting.
It's a painting that some amazing human being painted by hand.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Yeah, and we should point out they still do this today.
They just do it digitally. And digital matte painters are
super talented as well. Sure, but it's kind of neat
to think about that old craft and James Cameron painting
a piece of glass, yeah, and sticking that behind Kurt Russell.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
And I mean it was used in everything like I
for my money, matt painting is the single most important
and widespread special effect ever. Maybe hard to argue that,
thank you, like it was in Mary Poppins. When Mary
Poppins is coming into the City of London float, that's
a Matte painting. When Superman walks into the uh, where's
(18:18):
the what's the name of the place where he's from?
The Crystal Cave.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Where Fortress of Solitude.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Yeah, is that where he talks with with Marlon Brando
his dad? Uh yeah, I think so, Okay, that's a
matte painting, and.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
I think the Fortress of Solitude are the remnants of Krypton. Okay,
I'm boy, Superman. People are so mad at me right now.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
People still I thought everybody's on the marble train.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
No, people love Superman the comics.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Oh okay, because I was gonna say, I mean, you've
seen what they've done Superman lately, right and Batman?
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Yeah? So, uh, that's the matte painting. And what that
is it's called set extension. So that basically means you're
just sort of extending the real life set to make
something bigger and more opulent, or maybe not more obvious,
just bigger and more.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
But here's the.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
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 matte painting was developed by Norman Don and
that is when nowadays he'll use what's called the mat box,
(19:30):
which is 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 painting away. It was early
(19:52):
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.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
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 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
(20:23):
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
onto a screen so you see where the actor is, yes,
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
(20:46):
that you originally wanted.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Right. The only difference there, which is something that wasn't
quite right here, is they don't like project it. They
just develop a few frames of it and project it
like a slide gotcha. So it's not like the camera
the film was moving through on the wall, right, because
in the article here says and then you just stop it,
and what happens if you do that is the bulb
(21:08):
burns the film. Okay, So you can't just stop a
mooty projector.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
You produce like a slide of and project that.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
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. Yep, pretty neat.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
You just open your trench coat. There you go.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
And the big innovator with the original negative matte painting
was Norman Down and he really like really led the way.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
But I mean again, most of the stuff 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 watch them today and you're like, god,
it looks terrible. But if you stop and think about
the effort that they were going to they were inventing. Yeah,
it's just mind boggling that they managed to get it,
(21:57):
you know to this point.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Yeah, Norman don I had 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.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
There are some other stuff too. There's like rear projection
in front projection, which is basically like projecting the background
and moving background onto a screen behind the actors. Yeah,
basically you know all those hokey driving scenes. Yeah, yeah,
the person's great, the car is being rocked or whatever
the road behind him, that's front of rear projection.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Yeah, and 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. Yeah,
and 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
(22:49):
actually having to look up what it's called. When you're
in a car scene but you're not doing a rear
screen projection, so what happens here is you're sitting in
a car, in a still car on the set, but
they're not projecting anything behind you. What you've got is
two people shaking the car at a frame.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
What do they gripped?
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Yeah, usually a grip. But 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 there was a faked subway train
and the hydraulics broke early on and they're like, bring
out the PA's you're gonna shake this train for twelve hours.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Like you got rhythm, get in there.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Yeah. Oh, we couldn't have too much rhythm because we
got yelled at for that because it looked too rhythmic.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
Gotcha.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
So we're like, I don't know what, I don't know
how to do this.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Who are you working for? Oh?
Speaker 2 (23:37):
It was just a commercial director that said that our
movement of the train looked to rhythmic and not believable.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
So anyway, this Fruit of the Loom's commercial was totally unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
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 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 is sometimes like six seven
eight people working in concert to make it look like
(24:10):
you're driving at night in the rain or something like that.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Right, So there's really like an obvious background trees or
rode or whatever. But maybe there's headlights coming up behind
you just dark.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Yeah, but there are people with a spotlight.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
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.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
The shaken shimmy.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
I'm gonna be so mad later on.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
What was this called the shake and chimmy? Okay, that's right.
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, yeah, which would actually
mess with the yellow exposure on panchromatic film, and my
(25:00):
I started bleeding out of 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 figured out that again,
if you if you film in black, the film is
(25:23):
not going to be exposed. So anything you go and
re expose it to it will cover over that stuff
like it's transparent. So for example, in The Invisible Man
from I think nineteen thirty thirty thirty three, yeah, Claude
Rains wore a black bodysuit and the background was black.
It was a black screen, like a black green screen.
(25:46):
But he wore clothes and everything in bandages and sunglasses
and I think he smoked a cigarette or whatever. But
when he took the bandages off and he took his
sunglasses and closed off, there was nothing there. It 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
(26:08):
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.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
That's right, And that's called the 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 synced up.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Yes, so this is to me, the optical printer is
the second most widespread and useful special effect technique in
the history of film.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
You just waved your hand.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
They suddenly had an ass gotten a er a on.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
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 prevalent or less use I
think so. Probably maybe the blue was because you know what,
you don't want anything close to that color will disappear
(27:08):
against the green screen.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Anyone who's ever done the weather on the newscast I
can tell you.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
That, Yeah, there have been. There are blooper reels of
weather people disappearing when they wear like a green jacket
or something.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Right, it looks like the weather's going on through their body.
Same thing. So I want to say one more thing
about optical printers, or another little bit about it. Sure,
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.
(27:39):
And you could do all sorts of stuff with that.
So let's say you have a shot where you have
one mat in the foreground and live actor and then
another mat in the background that has a bunch of
different people in it or something like that, or stormtroopers three. Okay,
so you've got three different elements to that shot. What
you would do is using the same film film each thing.
(28:00):
So you go film that, like the actor, the live
action actor, You've got that on the film, and you
project that, and you 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 ohn, No, it's worse than that. Was it?
(28:22):
False false positives? Do you remember that time where I
was like, I took a pretty simple thing and just
completely walk the dog with it. Yeah, okay, well I'll
just do that again. Everyone. I want you to go
look up optical printers, read a little bit about them,
and then you'll say, oh, Josh is.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Right, Yeah, this tough stuff.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
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 it look like all these things that
you film three separate times are all happening together in
one space.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Yes, you're marrying separate images together onto a single piece
of film.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Right. You couldn't do that with before optical printers, which
is a projector in a camera working together.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
That's right, Okay, I think I needed that We should
mention briefly motion 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 DOLLI, there is
not a person moving the camera. It is a machine
that is programmed to move a camera through space very
(29:33):
very precisely and exactly the same every single time.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Yeah, So you can do the exact same motion over
and over again.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Over and over and a lot of times. 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's 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 in post. And
that's the whole reason for emotion control, is to replicate
(30:03):
moves with exact precision.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
So 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.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
I'm not confirming or denying anything. I'm just gonna let
that stand.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Episode four is the first Star Wars movie that ever
came out.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Correct, The Star Wars A New Hope is the first
episode okay, that I ever saw in a movie theater, because.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
It'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, we're
gonna get murdered everything. All of the ships and Star
Wars were models, yes, fairly small models. Actually they were.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
At that base, Okay, I think it was episode four,
I'm almost positive.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Okay, So those models were not moving in these shots
and these enormous like huge panoramic shots where like there's
tie fighters flying around shooting everything and 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
(31:15):
shot around the model and make it look like the
model was moving, and plus it was moving the shot
through space.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
Right.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
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 run it through an
optical printer so that you can get all of them,
all five shots onto the same strip of film. But
(31:46):
that's one of the ways that 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 Star Wars.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Can you name five Star warships.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Tie Fighter, X wing Fighter.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
You already said one my tie fighter too.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
Uh uh the deuce is what the people in the
no call it.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
The Uh you already said star destroyer. So star destroyer
was right, Yeah, there's a Star Destroyer. Okay, you made
a face like I just was just totally off. You
can make the case that Indoor was a ship even
though it was a planet.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Uh. There was the the the forest Speeder, uh huh,
the the pod racer, Yeah, and.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Doctors as that's right, he's a final ship. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Do you know many people, boy, their calf muscles just
popped right out of the back to their legs.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Ollie Fry is like hyperventilating somewhere in the office and
she doesn't know why. So, as I said earlier, it's
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 scene with
(33:13):
the veloscer raptors in the kitchen, a great great sequence
when it was playing cat and mouse with those children. Yeah,
there were puppets, there were actors in costumes, there were
animatronic raptor heads, and there were full cgi raptors and
you throw this all in a hat, mix it all up,
and it comes out to be like a really believable
(33:35):
looking scene.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Yeah, it comes out as an oscar.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Yeah. I'm sure they won oscars, right, but.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
They had two of I don't know, but there's just
no way.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
It was groundbreaking. I remember being just gobsmacked in the
movie theater. Yeah, when I first saw those dinosaurs walking
across the screen.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
And that was nineteen ninety three, I believe, for the
first Jurassic Park, right, Jurassic Park, New Hope, the first
one that came out. So, but that was five years
after the first oscar had been awarded for special effects.
As far as I know, h really, I believe that
The Abyss was the first one to win an OSCAR
for special effects. Maybe or they're no, No, I'm sorry,
(34:18):
I'm way off, way off. The Abyss was the first
movie to win a special effect for a CGI effect. Okay,
remember the.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Water Sure still looks pretty good.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
It looks amazing. Yeah, this is nineteen eighty seven we're
talking about.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
Wow was that when that came out?
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Yeah? I was surprised to see that too, because that
holds out. I thought it was. Yeah, it's a good movie.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
I really liked that movie.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
How do you not like Ed Harris? You don't like what?
Did you not like it? Hair? No?
Speaker 2 (34:46):
I like 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.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
I've never heard that, I believe it.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Sure he looks like he could yell somebody down, didn't he.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Sure, But he also keeps a cool head when he's
an actor as a seventies or sixties NASA guy.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Hey, I love that, Harris. All right, let's take another break, okay,
and we're going to come back and talk a little
bit about Star Wars episode whatever right after this. Okay,
(35:41):
we're back, and we should talk. We should mention the
garbage Matt real quick, because that is a big deal.
A lot of times you have wire work or you
have 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 got to
get rid of those wires unless you're ed.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
Would you can't have fishing line, No, you're supposed to not,
but yes, Or if.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
You're Charlie's thrown in mad Max Ferry Road, you got
to get it rid of that arm. Or if you're
in Forrest Gump, you got to get rid of Lieutenant
Dan's legs.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
Man. That was amazing. That was the first time anybody's
ever done really something like that throughout.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
Yeah, I have my problems with that movie for sure,
and one of them is I think he way over it.
He was like a Kidney candy store and way over
did the like and now Forrest is in the White
House and using archival footage and sticking Forest in it.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Yeah, that whole half hour dialogue he has with Peter
Cushing's ghost, it was uncanny.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
But I get it. I get why these filmmakers get excited,
these really technical wizards. Well, you get a new technique
and they just hammer it.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
The guy from Industrial Light and Magic when they made
the first Star Wars call it what you will. His
name was I think John Dykstra, and this motion controlled
camera assembly that they created was called Diystra Flex super
groundbreaking and they really did amazing stuff with it. Well,
he's like a legend in this industry now, and I
(37:13):
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 it really, really well. I think it's an embarrassment
of riches, you know, like it can be done, so
(37:34):
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
Stern's prosthetic arm or missing army compared with Lieutenant Dan's
missing legs, looks different. It does, So it's getting better.
(37:57):
There's just too much of it, I think is the
point just to be all ed harrisy on this now.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
I have long predicted a return to practical effects, really,
and it's starting to happen a little bit more and more.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
Yeah, I could see starting with indie filmmakers, Yeah, for sure,
which is funny because finally computer generated effects have trickled
down enough. Yeah, 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've lost five hundred thousand dollars
(38:29):
to set up a rig like that.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Yeah, And that's how some young filmmakers have gotten noticed
is by making these short films with like zero money
on their computer that get a lot of action on
YouTube because it looks so amazing, and the studio will
be like, sign that person up. Yeah, I can't remember
the guy's name, but that's happened a couple of times
in recent years, Ed Harris, we should talk about a
(38:53):
few of the groundbreaking people over the years. Oh yes,
we'll go through these a little quicker than what we
have in front of us, I think, but we should
mention Lon Cheney. Sure, one of the original superstars of
film in the Silent era, the Man of a thousand Faces.
He was. He was very talented doing his own makeup
(39:14):
and changing his face. That's why he's called the Man
of one thousand faces.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Right, He's like, here's nine hundred and ninety seven.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
What about Willis O'Brien.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
He was one of the pioneers of stop motion photography. Again,
if you're a California Racins fan, you have a lot
to thank Willis O'Brien for.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
He also this dude, the stuff 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.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
Yeah. Again, many processes coming together to create that nineteen
thirty three version of King Kong. And that fight looks
good still, I mean it DOESN'TOK realistic, No, consider the year,
it looks awesome.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
It does. And it's about three and a half minutes
long King Kong fighting the Tyrannosaurus recks. But it took
seven weeks to film, Yeah, because there's twenty four frames
shot per second in a film, and for every frame,
they moved the models a little bit here or there. Yeah,
(40:22):
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.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Yeah, that's impressive.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
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.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
Yeah. Ray Harry Housen continued the work of Willis O'Brien
and very famously in like the fifties and sixties with
movies like Jason and the Argonauts.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
And Clash of the Titans. Yeah, I remember Medusa sure,
Scary Lady.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
Yeah, that had to be toward the end of his career,
I guess, because that was in the eighties.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Yeah, I think like eighty one maybe remember the Minute
Tar two Man. That was cool movie.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
That was a big movie for me as a kid.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Yeah, and I was like when La Law came along,
I was like, I know that guy. That's right, there's
the Titans guy.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
We we should shout out Millicent 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 gill Man from Creature from the Black Lagoon in
the mid nineteen fifties and was unceremoniously fired.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
Not just fired, stricken from the credits.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
Yeah, this guy named Bud Wes Moore, he assisted her
and then basically had her fired rather than give her
the credit for the mask, which he would take credit for.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
Because I think he was the supervisor in charge of
effects or costume or something.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
Oh I thought, I guess he assisted her, but he
was her boss.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
Yeah, okay, but like she very clearly on her own
came up with the gill man for yeah, the creature
from the And this has.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
Only come out in the last few years. They've kind
of dug up the original stuff. And yeah, sexism just
basically pushed her out of the industry altogether. Yeah, very sad.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
She's starting to get her due now though, which is good.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Yeah, that is very good.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
There's Dick Smith was amazing.
Speaker 2 (42:15):
He created the squib.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Oh really, yeah, he's a he's a very famous makeup artist.
He's really good at making people look aged.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
Yeah. He made forty seven year old Marlon Brando look
much over five than The Godfather. Oh yeah, yeah, he
was only he was a year younger than me. Brando.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
I never thought about that.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
That nuts.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
Wow. He really is good. He also did Death Becomes
Her which is one of the all time great movies, yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
For sure. And The Exorcist yep, and.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
Scanners and have you ever seen Ghost Story from nineteen
eighty one? Oh yeah, yeah, very scary movie. The old
dudes he did, he did that?
Speaker 2 (42:50):
What else? Very famously aged Dustin Hoffmann little big Man
by many many years.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
And then in the last like twenty five thirty years,
Rick Baker and Stan Winston.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
Stan Winston's He's got my vote.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
Yeah, I mean these two guys were both just creative
leaders in the industry and trailblazers in the industry. And
as Ed says in here, like mentored a generation of
special effects employees, employees, creators, artists.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
Sure, all three of those Lord gig workers.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Rick Baker American Werewolf in London in nineteen eighty one,
which still holds up. The thriller video in nineteen eighty three,
star Wars Moss Isley Cantina.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
He made all those Yeah, did you know that about
the Moss Eisley Cantina. Sure, I didn't know that. He
was almost single handily respondib Yeah, for all of them.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
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.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
Stan Winston also did the makeup for what I think
is maybe the best slash film of all time, Friday
the Thirteenth Part two.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
Yeah, two was when Jason comes along, right, Yes.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
It's Jason before he got his mask. He gets his
mask in three. I think the Fria thirteenth franchise is
as good as it gets for horror movies.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
I dropped off at a certain point. Did you see
all those?
Speaker 1 (44:18):
No? No, I still haven't seen all of them, but
even just putting like the first five or six up. Yeah.
I think it's like watching him again as an adult.
I'm like, these are really good. Yeah, Fisher films like
even better than I remember for Me and a kid. Yeah,
And the reason Stan Winston filled in for Friday the
Thirteenth Part two is because the guy who did Friday
(44:39):
Thirteenth the first one, Tom Savini, was unavailable. He was
off doing Creep Show, I believe. But Tom Savini's another legend.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
I think they're redoing creep Show, are they Okay? I'd
watched that different stories? Oh even better, I think, if
I'm not mistaken. Nice, But yeah, Savini is well known
for being sort of the godfather of Gore.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
Yeah, he did Maniac Do you everous see that?
Speaker 2 (45:02):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (45:02):
That was off the Rocker movie.
Speaker 2 (45:06):
And then these days there are companies ILM and WETA.
ILM Industrial Light and Magic is Lucas's company, and they're
cool because they invented this stuff because Lucas needed stuff
to be done that couldn't be done right, and he
was like, go figure out how to do it, and
they did, they really did. And then WETA is Peter
(45:28):
Jackson's company, and he's the one that has really pioneered
the mo cap the motion capture techniques.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
Where a person's wearing like a suit and the suit
has a bunch of different kind of like almost ping
pong balls all over it. Yeah, at like joints and
crucial places where the body moves and the actor, stunt
person or dance or whoever wearing the suit goes through
the motions and.
Speaker 2 (45:52):
Then they're just going through the motions.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
Sure, and that those motions that what's captured is fed
into a computer and the computer generates a character doing
all those same motions, creating the performance. But it's a
computer generated character. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
I don't think he was the first, but the Gollum
character in those Lord of the Rings movies was really
one of the first, really terrific looking fully CGI character.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
Yeah, I found, from what I could tell, the first
full CGI character ever in a movie. You want to guess,
you'll never guess.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
Well, I mean it's touted as Indiana Jones and the
Last Crusade. Wrong, Really, what is it going to be?
Speaker 1 (46:31):
It's another Spielberg movie. Okay, it's young Sherlock Holmes. Well,
do you remember the Stained Glass Night that comes to
life and tries to slash one of them with his sword?
First full CGI character in a movie. Well why, I
don't know, but that's what I could find. And that
one's from nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
Well it says maybe there's it's in the nitpicky language
because in the Last Crusade, when Walter Donovan's face melts
and turns to dust when he drinks from the jalice.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
That's in. That's in Writers of the Lost Arc, isn't it.
Oh no, you're right, you're right.
Speaker 2 (47:09):
It says here it was the first ever digital composite
of a full screen live action image.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
There's something in the language there.
Speaker 2 (47:17):
It was a full screen or something. This was the gotcha.
Speaker 1 (47:20):
This was the first CGI, but it wasn't the first
CGI image. This is the first moving CGI image. The
first CGI image was in Looker. Remember that movie.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
I totally saw Looker. Yeah, that was a big HBO movie.
Speaker 1 (47:36):
For me for sure. Same here. It was Looker Runaway.
Speaker 2 (47:39):
Uh huh, Kroll Runaway. It's Tom Selleck, yeah, and Gene
Simmons in the bad Guy's right, that's all Kroll a
lot too. Oh yeah, Looker had Albert Finnie, right, if
I remember correctly.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
Albert Finnie and Susan Day.
Speaker 2 (47:51):
Yeah, Susan Day.
Speaker 1 (47:53):
Yeah, written by Michael Crichton.
Speaker 2 (47:54):
I think that 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, were used
to replicate computer screen. So whenever you would see a
computer screen in like Westworld or Aliens or Star Wars,
and they were like, what is the computer going to
(48:16):
look like? You know?
Speaker 1 (48:17):
Not?
Speaker 2 (48:17):
Now, that was the first time they used computer generated
imaging was to yeah, make a fake computer screen.
Speaker 1 (48:24):
And the first full CGI scene ever done was in
The Wrath of Khan, which I believe came out in
nineteen eighty two. But there's a genesis like Earth being
you know, like cooling and turning into the Earth, and
there's this amazing shots around it. That's all CGI. And
that was the first one, and Tron I thought for
(48:45):
sure Tron would have been among the first. Apparently most
of that was animated by humans, not computers. That's right,
The like all the glowing lines, all that stuff animated,
which makes it nuts that they were able to create that.
Speaker 2 (48:59):
Yeah. Now the big thing is this de aging technique
that they're getting better and better.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
Yeah, they really are.
Speaker 2 (49:06):
Yeah, So the new Scorsese picked the Irishman I think
d ages and it has taken a long time to
get out because it's the d aging didn't look good
enough for Scorsese, so they have d aged de Naro.
And then I saw this new Angle movie Gemini Man,
where Will Smith of now he plays an assassin and
(49:26):
he has to go kill his younger self Looper. Uh yeah,
sort of like Looper, I guess. But this Gemini Man
script has been in development for like twenty five years
with various people attached, but they could never do.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
It because of the technology.
Speaker 2 (49:39):
Yeah huh, it's finally here. But here's the thing I
didn't know. Like, I've seen this trailer and I'm like, man,
that the aging looks great. They didn'td agent. It is
a fully cgi Will Smith.
Speaker 1 (49:50):
Oh and it looks that really the younger.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
Version is yeah wow. So I was like, man, they're
getting so good at the dh that's amazing. So he
mowcapped his whole performance motion captured and they just used
fresh prints photos.
Speaker 1 (50:02):
And they just basically deep fake them.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
Sort of have you seen the Bill Hayter deep fake
that's going around now. It's pretty cool. Yeah, because he
goes from Hater to Tom Cruise, to seth Rogan back
to Tom Cruise. It's like kind of all over the place.
Speaker 1 (50:19):
It really well done.
Speaker 2 (50:21):
And then you know, like we said, they use CGI
for so many movies, little mistakes that can be corrected,
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 CGI whatsoever, and it's cheaper
to put a plate of food in the background digitally
than cook the food and put it on set, which
(50:43):
is that's a bad example. Or you can color grate
a movie you completely change like the movie Oh Brother,
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.
Speaker 1 (50:56):
They used to have to like film it at some
weird exposure, then projected at another exposure to some filter,
and then re the whole thing on an optical negative. Yeah,
now they can just do it all with a computer, easypasy.
Speaker 2 (51:10):
It's great. Anything else, I'm kind of looking around, but
this is like one eighth of this topic.
Speaker 1 (51:18):
Yeah, hopefully it made you appreciate movies more. Yeah, you
specifically me, I know you love the movies. Sure, if
you want to know more about movies, go listen to
Chuck's podcast movie Crush. You'll love it. Hey. Thanks, And
since I said movie Crush, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 2 (51:38):
And actually, since you said movie Crush, we're about to
release an episode on the Matrix. Oh, I hadn't seen
that movie. It's been twenty years since it came out.
Speaker 1 (51:45):
You've never seen The Matrix.
Speaker 2 (51:46):
No, I hadn't seen it in a long time. Gotcha,
But I didn't realize this is the twenty year anniversary.
Watched it last night. Still totally holds up, really looks great. Fun. Yeah,
well acted by most of the cast.
Speaker 1 (51:59):
Members who didn't act well.
Speaker 2 (52:02):
Oh, you know Ken't who always gets picked on. I
love that guy, I know, kung Fu. He's perfect in
that role. Though.
Speaker 1 (52:10):
Yeah, he's great. I can't imagine anybody else and it'd
be too just too serious. I think, like, imagine Tom
Cruise in that in the Matrix.
Speaker 2 (52:17):
Yeah, you're right. He adds a little like something light,
doesn't he.
Speaker 1 (52:21):
Yeah, it makes it a little more every man, almost
a little more believable in a weird way.
Speaker 2 (52:25):
So do you see those John Wick movies?
Speaker 1 (52:29):
I've seen some of it. It's just like a little
too video gamy for me. Yeah, but I mean it's fine.
I respect that people like it.
Speaker 2 (52:36):
Sure, here we go. Okay, it's about three D three D.
It's about solar panels.
Speaker 1 (52:43):
I got movies on the three D.
Speaker 2 (52:45):
Got the well they are in three D. I guess
I got movies on the brain. Hey, guys. Being a
roof for my entire life, I 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 before installing solar panels.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
Oh that's a good point.
Speaker 2 (53:02):
A new residential shingle roof should last about thirty years.
But if the roof isn't nearly new, I would not
suggest installing solar panels.
Speaker 1 (53:09):
And definitely don't install it if the roof the roof
is on fire.
Speaker 2 (53:14):
Once the panels are installed, roof repairs or replacement is
very difficult and much more expensive. If the life of
the roof ends before the solar panels die, you can
easily add fifty to seventy five percent or more to
the cost of the reroofing due to the added labor
costs to remove and reinstall the panels. Yeah, don't you
think about that? So you should align it ideally with
(53:37):
your new roof. Sure, 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
panel specialists should have this roof conversation with a potential
customer before installing the panels if I'm afraid it doesn't
always happen or customers underestimates the added reroofing cost once
(54:02):
they're installed.
Speaker 1 (54:03):
Man, this is a great PSA.
Speaker 2 (54:05):
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 easier on Tuesday through Thursday. I want
to have a new stuff you should know and that
is from Owen Sinsinik.
Speaker 1 (54:18):
Great name first and last. Yep, love the name Owen.
Stephen King's kids name them Yeah, Owen King. Thanks a lot, Owen.
We appreciate that big time. That was a great email.
I would have never thought about that.
Speaker 2 (54:33):
And he didn't even send his business in to be plugged.
So just google his name and roofing and if he
happens to live near you, use him.
Speaker 1 (54:40):
That's how dedicated this guy is.
Speaker 2 (54:42):
He sounds honest.
Speaker 1 (54:43):
Well, if you want to be a cool person like Owen,
you can get in touch with us. You can go
on to stuff you Should Know dot com and check
out our social links. You can also send us an
email to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you
Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
(55:04):
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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