Category Just for Fun

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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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