Category Just for Fun

A world rodeo champion, ‘Yakima’ Canutt became one of Hollywood’s most famous stuntmen – specialising in working with horses. He began his career in the silent era. At that time, studios liked audiences to believe the stars did their own stunts.

Canutt’s most celebrated feat was in John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939), when he leap from his war pony onto one of six horses pulling the coach. Shot by the hero John Wayne, Canutt fell between the horses and was dragged, before finally losing his grip. The stagecoach thundered over him, its wheels passing on either side, and Canutt struggled to his feet, proving it was no dummy in a trick shot. The stunt has been imitated many times since. Canutt won an Oscar in 1966 for his lifetime stunt achievements and developing protective safety devices for stuntmen.

Even the best-planned horse stunts carry element of danger. Former doyen of British stuntmen Bob Simmons described how his friend Jack Keely was killed during the desert adventure film Zarak (1956): ‘All appeared to be going well. Both our horses fell beautifully. The call came, “Cut!” And then the familiar, “Everyday all right?” I looked around for Jack. I saw that he had gone down just short of the camera pit. He didn’t get up. He was lying there motionless. Tragically, his horse had fallen on top of him and broken his neck.’

Training a horse to fall is done by strapping up one of its forelegs so that it stands on only three legs, then tugging the reins to the opposite side.

The animal, off-balance, with fall. After constant repetition, the horse will fall to order while galloping or cantering when it feels the bit being jerked sharply to one side. The technique is called falling ‘on the hit’. So that the animal is not injured, the spot where it will fall is dug up and filled with sand or peat moss.

In the early days of the cinema, trip wires were used, rigged to the horse’s foreleg, with the other end firmly tethered. But the cruel technique was banned because it could injure a horse’s back or neck and the animal would have to be shot.

 

Picture Credit : Google

Because ordinary flames tend to appear transparent on film, chemicals are added to enhance movie blazes.

In the early 1970s, the British special-effects expert Cliff Richardson and his son John developed the ‘Dante’ fire machine – a device which enabled him to produce spectacular fires that remain perfectly under control. A car engine mounted on a two-wheel carriage drives a pump through which two 200 litres drums of fuel mixtures can be squirted. Jet primers ignite the fuel and the machine can create a 60ft (18m) wide wall of fire.

City Hall ‘blaze’

Dante machines were used in the James Bond movie A view To A Kill (1985) when John Richardson was required to set fire to San Francisco City Hall – without causing any damage. He fireproofed the roof with insulation boards, corrugated iron and sand. He also fireproofed window frames through which the Dante units which spout flames to give the impression that a fire was raging inside. Powerful flares created a large aerial glow overhead.

Richardson ‘set fire’ to the City Hall 25 times during three nights of shooting, with city fire-fighters standing by.

 Los Angeles Fire Department was also on standby during the blaze sequences of The Towering Inferno (1974). Officials insisted that each blaze – created by propane pumped from valve-controlled hoses – lasted only 20 to 30 seconds.

Some 57 sets were built, including a five-story, full-scale section of the tower, and a 110ft (33m) tall model of the whole building. Four camera crews shot the movie in only 70 days, and no one was hurt except a studio fire chief who cut his hand on broken glass.

London firemen stood by when Cliff Richardson rigged a Thames-side warehouse with 50 liquid propane gas burners to re-create a Blitz scene for The Battle of Britain. Richardson described it as ‘one of upon to do.’ The disused warehouse, already damaged by a real fire, was flanked by others still in use.

The illusion of an entire city ablaze was created for the 1936 Clark Gable movie San Francisco. It also featured a spectacular and realistic earthquake, for which an entire set was built on a rocking platform. It shook up and down and shifted to and fro up to 3ft (1m). Houses and walls collapsed, roads cracked open and furniture smashed around in a 20 minute quake.

Of 400 extras who were required to stand on balconies which crashed down at the touch of a button, none was injured.

 

Picture Credit : Google

Violence has been a feature of movies almost from the beginning – starting with the first silent film to tell a story, The Great Train Robbery (1903), a Western.

In the early days, bullets hitting walls, bottles or fences were actually fired by a marksmen using live ammunition. But it was potentially dangerous and other techniques to be developed.

For bullets splintering a wooden wall, detonator caps of gunpowder were inserted and exploded to synchronise with the gunshot. For bullet hits on people, a similar cap was attached to a metal plate that the actor wore under his clothing. The cap was electrically denoted by wires leading to a technician’s ‘keyboard’. But it could result in burns or lacerations from fragments.

So effects men developed the ‘squib’ – a small, smokeless, non-metallic, explosive charge. It can be denoted by small batteries strapped to the actor, by wires from a control board, or by radio control.

For her ‘death’ in Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Faye Dunaway had scores of squibs concealed beneath her clothing. The effects man Danny Lee arranged them in sequences, and they were wired to an off-camera battery which detonated them in sequences. The car in which Bonnie was machine-gunned was first punched with holes into which squibs were inserted and then painted over. Faye Dunaway’s body shook with convulsions as the bullets peppered her. The scene was shot at high speed which played back normally gave the killing a slow, dreamlike quality.

The Wild Bunch (1969) made use of lots of fake blood. The effects man Bud Hulburd attached latex ‘blood bags’ to the squibs. The bags were filled with bright red, gelatine-based fluid. When the squibs burst the bags, the ‘blood’ spurted.

To create the effect of a spear, arrow or knife striking someone, the most common technique is to fire the projectile, which is hollow, along a wire from a compressed air device. The wire is attached to a metal plate strapped under the actor’s clothing. The spear speeds along the wire and thuds into a cork pad fixed to the plate.

 

Picture Credit : Google

Whether they involve ancient galleys hurling balls of Greek Fire or Second World War battleships with blazing guns, naval scenes are usually filmed in a studio tank. The tank at 20th Century Fox studios in Hollywood, for example, is 360ft (110m) square. It was just for the Pearl Harbor sequences in Tora! Tora ! Tora! The effects supervisor, L.B. Abbott, won an Oscar for his work.

He explained: ‘To create the sequences where the Japanese fleet is seen battling a violent storm on its way to Pearl Harbor, we used just about every fan we could get our hands on.

‘To create foam for the storm-driven waves, it was necessary to add detergent to the water.

‘The conventional way of propelling models through a tank is to attach them to underwater cables. In the case of Tora! the models were fitted with engines from golf-carts. These worked satisfactorily in some scenes but were not suitable in the more violent storm sequences because the engines lacked sufficient power to drive the models through the tough water and we had to resort once again to cables.’

The giant ocean liner capsized by a huge wave in The Poseidon Adventure (1972) was a model. But for the chaotic scenes that ensued in the ship’s dining salon, a huge set was built. It could tit 30 degrees, while tilting cameras completed the illusion of the capsize. For the scenes in which the room appeared upside down, the same set was reversed from floor to ceiling.

 

Picture Credit : Google

Explosions on screen come in many sizes – from the blowing up of models to the destruction of full sized buildings. The most common in war films are stimulated bombs and shells. Since actors and stunt men are usually involved, it is crucial that the explosions are safely carried out.

According to the British special-effects expert Cliff Richardson: ‘It’s surprising how close you can stand to a hole in the ground with several pounds of gelignite in it, which will blow a ton of earth into the air.’

One of Richardson’s biggest explosive jobs was during the making of The Battle of Britain (1969), when he and his team had to blow up a huge, sturdy aircraft hangar.

‘inside the hangar we had the partition walls knocked down to weaken the structure and this virtually left the roof of the hangar supported on 30 brick piers,’ Richardson said. ‘One hundred and fifty shot holes were drilled into the piers to receive the cartridges of explosives which were all lined together with Cordtex detonating fuse.

‘It was necessary to add a number of extra effects to make the shot spectacular. These included two “fougasse charges”, which are a type of mortar made, in this case, with 50 gallon drums of petrol which can be fired horizontally or vertically. I used one vertically to create a fireball effect through the roof of the hangar.

‘The hangar doors were taped with Cordtex and a mock-up Spitfire was suspended just inside. A horizontal fougasse was then positioned to produce the wall of fire which carried the Spitfire and the shattered doors across the roadways outside.’

In science-fiction movies, effects men are often called upon to blow up entire planets – as in Star Wars and Superman. A model of the planet is hung from the ceiling of a shooting stage and the camera shoots from below. When the charge goes off, the pieces fall towards the camera, creating the illusion of an explosion in space.

 

Picture Credit : Google

Miniatures – often easier to build, manipulate and film than the real thing – can be anything from model cars and aircraft to entire cities and landscapes. The model battleships used so effectively in Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) were 40ft (12m) long.

Moving miniatures are usually filmed with high-speed cameras, so that when the film is played back at normal speed, the movement looks more realistic. The movement of model ships in tanks of water, for example, is difficult to capture realistically. The same applies to ships’ wakes and ocean wave patterns. Slowing down the projected film helps to make models look more cumbersome, ponderous and realistic.

‘hanging miniatures’ are models suspended close to the camera to create the illusion that they are full-sized and being photographed from a distance. In the James Bond film The Man With The Golden Gun (1974), the villain’s jet-powered, flying car was, in long shots, a model bout 5ft (1.5m) long, with a wingspan of around 10ft (3m).

Many of the ‘outdoor’ scenes in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), such as an Indiana landscape over which superimposed UFOs appeared, were meticulously constructed miniatures, with houses less than 1in (25mm) high.

 

Picture Credit : Google

In the science-fiction thriller Alien (1979), the actor John Hurt has a sudden fit of violent coughing – and a hideous ‘baby’ alien bursts bloodily from his chest.

The illusion was created by the special-effects man Roger Dickens thrusting a puppet through a hole in a dummy torso.

Puppets have became popular with film makers to create terrifying creatures. Many are sophisticated pieces of engineering.

For Jaws (1975), three 25ft (7.6m) long sharks were built. One was pulled through the water on a type of sled, with scuba divers guiding it and working the fins and tail. The other two models were merely the left and right sides of a shark, to be filmed from only one side. They ran on an underwater rail and a hidden pivot arm enabled them to dive and surface.

The most endearing alien of all, ET (1982), was in fact several different ETs- three full-scale working models, a separate head and torso for close-ups and a midget actor in a costume.

 

Picture Credit : Google

In the 1957 science fiction film The Incredible Shrinking Man, the actor Grant Williams had to appear to shrink in size daily. Part of the film were made by building giant-sized sets, complete with outsized armchairs and tables. But in some scenes, as when Williams is chased by his cat – gigantic in comparison to him – a process called travelling matte was used.

In a similar way to a stationary matte painting, travelling matte involves creating a ‘hole’ in a film background, so that separately filmed action can be superimposed. But the travelling matte ‘hole’ has to shift position or change in size from frame to frame, to match the area wherever the actors or vehicles are required to move.

The system was used extensively in the Superman films, especially when Superman was required to fly long distances o to recede to a very small size.

The most commonly used method is the ‘blue screen’ process. actors, miniatures or other objects are filmed before a blue screen and the colour negative is then printed onto a black-and-white master, which captures only the blue area. The result is a film in which the background is clear, while the foreground action appears in silhouette.

This is the travelling matte. It is then run through an optical camera to mask the unwanted foreground, while the background film is exposed.

Thin blue line

This process is next reversed to mask the background when the foreground action is added to the negative. The film then contains both foreground and background footage combined on each frame.

Sometimes, a thin blue line or fringe is visible around the outline of the actor or model. But modern optical-effects technicians can now eliminate the line, which was caused by reflected light from the blue background screen.

Another – yet more laborious – method of creating a travelling matte was used by Stanley Kubrick for his spectacular film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

To superimpose film of space vehicles on that of backgrounds of stars would have resulted in the stars also showing up the images of the spaceships. To solve the problem, Kubrick needed to have spaceship-shaped holes that would move backgrounds – holes that would move around to match the movements of the various craft.

The oldest, most time consuming and costly method of creating travelling mattes was resorted to: painting spaceship silhouettes onto hundreds upon hundreds of frames of film.

 

Picture Credit : Google

Any scenery, from the skyline of ancient Rome to an alien landscape, can be added to a film background by a matte painting – a technique used to mask part of a scene which will be added later. The technique evolved from glass painting, invented in the 1930s.

A scene was painted on a sheet of glass, placed in front of the camera so that it merged with the action being filmed. Later silent-film makers developed ‘in-the-camera’ matte. It involved shooting live action with part of the scene ‘matted out’ by black paint on a glass sheet in front of the camera.

The partially exposed film was rewound and transferred to another camera.

A frame of the film was projected onto an easel and an artist added what was required to the matted-out area, leaving the live action area black.

The two segments – painted scenery and live action – were then combined, using a special ‘optical printer’, invented by a Hollywood technician, Limewood Dunn, around 1930. A type of film copying machine capable of superimposing and blending different portions of film, it can create a variety of effects. They include dissolves (in which one scene seems to ‘melt’ or fade into another), wipes (a shot which sweeps off the screen to be simultaneously replaced by another), freeze frames (a pause in the action on one shot) and the combining of several, separately shot sequences.

 

Picture Credit : Google

In 1922, the author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – creator of Sherlock Holmes – showed a film of model dinosaur animation to the Society of American Magicians. It made headlines in The New York Times. DINOSAURS CAVORT IN FILM FOR DOYLE.

Conan Doyle did not explain to its astounded audience that the film had been shot using a technique which had already been used somewhat unconvincingly in other silent pictures – but greatly improved upon by the American effects technician Willis O’Brien. It was a sequence fro the movie of Conan Doyle’s novel The Lost World, which was released in 1925.

Models are made to move by exposing a single frame of film at a time and adjusting the model to a new position between each shot. When the film is projected at the normal speed, the model – a brontosaurus, giant ape or some other creature – seems to move naturally.

 

Picture Credit : Google