NOVA cameras go behind-the-scenes to reveal the new art of illusion, Hollywood-style, focusing on three blockbuster films—Return of the Jedi, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and 2010: The Year We Make Contact.
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00:00This is the fantasy world of the Star Wars trilogy, a whole universe that doesn't really
00:16exist, where astronomically expensive spacecraft fly at impossible speeds, and battles are
00:29fought that mere mortals could never survive.
00:38Back on Earth, Indiana Jones and friends routinely face dangerous, if not literally impossible
00:43situations and escape with barely a scratch.
01:02While we're watching, we believe what we see, but later we can't help but wonder, how do
01:07they do that?
01:08They do it with the magic of special effects.
01:19Major funding for NOVA is provided by this station and other public television stations
01:23nationwide.
01:25Additional funding was provided by the Johnson & Johnson family of companies, supplying healthcare
01:30products worldwide.
01:35And Allied Corporation, a world leader in advanced technology products for the aerospace,
01:40automotive, chemicals, and electronics industries.
02:04In 1903, a French magician named Georges Méliès made this remarkable film.
02:10It was the first space fantasy, called A Trip to the Moon.
02:17He made fanciful scenes of lunar life with simple camera tricks, stop-action photography
02:22and multiple images.
02:25He combined mechanical gimmicks, live actors, and playful painted backgrounds into single
02:30shots.
02:31Méliès' innovations created a new visual language, and they gave rise to an unexplored
02:37frontier in the film industry.
02:39The world of special effects.
02:47Modern special effects films, like 2010, have a more sophisticated and realistic look to
02:52them.
02:55Today, computers and electronics dominate the technology of special effects.
03:03But the magic is still brought to life by the ingenuity of craftsmen, using techniques
03:08developed by Méliès almost a century ago.
03:16This is Industrial Light and Magic, or ILM, the special effects company based outside
03:21San Francisco.
03:27It is the most extensive, innovative laboratory of special effects in the world.
03:34These are the modern masters of the art and science of special effects.
03:40Their job?
03:41To create illusions or simulate events that would be too difficult, dangerous, or expensive
03:48to film in real life.
03:50That's the definition of special effects.
03:54They use ultra-modern equipment and old-fashioned inventiveness to breathe life into the fantastic
04:00plots, creatures, and characters created by directors like Steven Spielberg and George
04:05Lucas.
04:06E.T., Indiana Jones, Darth Vader, R2-D2.
04:11By technical sleight of hand, the wizards at ILM make real-on-film the figments of others'
04:16imaginations.
04:21Industrial Light and Magic was set up by George Lucas in the mid-1970s, specifically to make
04:26his Star Wars trilogy.
04:28He wanted to create special effects that everyone else in Hollywood thought were impossible.
04:33But Lucas persisted, and the rest is history.
04:37One extraordinary example of his radical approach to special effects is from Return of the Jedi.
04:43It's the rebel attack on the nuclear reactor at the heart of the Death Star.
04:51The rebels are being hotly pursued into the artificial planet, the ultimate machine of
04:56destruction of the evil empire.
04:59The heroes are going in to destroy this Death Star by exploding the nuclear reactor at its
05:04very center.
05:07As with all special effects sequences, the attack is first planned as a set of detailed
05:11sketches or storyboards.
05:14For this sequence alone, there were more than a thousand storyboards.
05:18The storyboard for Shot 14 shows the first fighter entering the Death Star.
05:23It lists all the components that will be separately filmed, then painstakingly assembled
05:27into the final shot.
05:30Once the storyboards are complete, the models of the Death Star and the spaceships are constructed
05:35exactly as they are drawn.
05:37Then they are filmed.
05:44The computer-controlled robot camera is programmed to shoot the Death Star's surface precisely
05:49as it is drawn, following the path that the fighter planes will take, and creating the
05:54illusion of the speed of light.
05:58The star background, planes, lasers and gunfire are separately filmed, all as they were first
06:04drawn in the storyboards.
06:08Then, one layer at a time, the shot is photographically assembled so that all the elements combine
06:16smoothly into the final sequence.
06:20This precise and expensive process is repeated for each scene that requires special effects
06:25throughout the film.
06:32Over 500 shots, more than 15% of Return of the Jedi involves special effects.
06:38The effects alone took a year and a half to complete and cost many millions of dollars.
06:43Nothing like them had ever been seen before.
06:54Not all special effects are used in outer space to create worlds that don't really exist.
07:00Steven Spielberg used them extensively in the spine-tingling Indiana Jones films, in
07:05scenes that would have been far too dangerous for actors or even stuntmen, like in the mine
07:10chase sequence from the Temple of Doom.
07:14Live action footage shot on location and in studios in England was dangerous and tension-filled
07:19to begin with.
07:21But Spielberg used the magic of special effects to really wow the audience.
07:25Scenes like this one could never have been done without special effects.
07:45Let's look at it again to see exactly what they did.
07:49This is live action.
07:51These are miniature models in a special effects shop.
07:55Special effects.
07:57Live action.
07:58Special effects.
08:00Live action.
08:01Special effects.
08:03Live action.
08:05Special effects.
08:06And ILM is Dennis Muir.
08:09This sequence was pretty much of a challenge because it had to intercut our work so precisely
08:18with the work that was being shot in England.
08:22And it was just effect shot cut right with live action shot cut with effect shot with
08:27live action.
08:29Here's a miniature here.
08:31That's real.
08:34This is miniature.
08:35Miniature.
08:36Real.
08:37Miniature.
08:38Real.
08:39All real.
08:40Miniature.
08:41Real.
08:42Miniature.
08:43Miniature.
08:44And miniature.
08:45And miniature.
08:46And it goes on like that.
08:47Steven and I were in England shooting.
08:49He was doing the directing.
08:50I was watching what was going on during the mine chase live action scenes.
08:57It was an exciting shooting.
09:00They're actually pushing a cameraman along on dollies at five or ten miles an hour with
09:05telephoto lenses trying to follow the action.
09:08And all that is sensed.
09:10It's all there.
09:11It's all there.
09:12It's all there.
09:13It's all there.
09:14It's just the action.
09:15And all that is sensed when you see the shots.
09:18You can see the energy in the shots.
09:20That sort of thing.
09:21They're trying to get the figures, keep them in frame, stuff's racing by.
09:26And the cameraman, you can sense, is trying to find them, trying to keep them in frame.
09:31We had to really accurately duplicate this environment.
09:36Back at ILM in California, Murran and his colleagues built the mine set at one-eighth
09:41scale.
09:42Accuracy was essential.
09:44Director Spielberg had to be sure that the miniatures would intercut smoothly
09:47with the live action he shot in England.
09:51A sequence like this is very difficult for a director to direct when
09:56half of the work he's never going to be can't even see on the set
09:59it's going to be added later on and back here Joe Johnston or Mike
10:05Callister were shooting some ideas that he'd had
10:08for the sequence that we'd already storyboarded and we were shooting these
10:11in video. The rough video sketches were
10:15transferred onto film and sent to London where Spielberg was
10:18shooting with the live actors. The film editor could then intercut the
10:22live action footage with a model shot in California.
10:27We made no attempt to hide rods holding up anything it was simply a moving
10:31storyboard is what it was and Stephen would be directing scenes
10:35over there and the guys back here would be shooting
10:38these video versions of the storyboards and sending them right over and he'd cut
10:41them in and say hey that looks good but let's do
10:45another one of this angle it looks like I see something I didn't see before
10:48and phone them back here and they'd shoot another angle like he'd asked for
10:52and maybe come up with a new angle too that
10:54that was just an idea off their heads because again it was very very simple to
10:59shoot and that sort of back and forth process
11:04essentially developed the sequence before we'd even started
11:07spending big money on shooting our sequence.
11:12We'd know what the live action characters were doing you know when they
11:16had the tug of war over the lava pit or the lava trench we would know
11:21exactly what Indy and the bad guys had to be
11:24doing and which way short round was being yanked this shot and which way in
11:29the next shot we'd know if the bad guys were pointing
11:32their guns trying to kill the good guys or whatever so that by the
11:37time we got over to the stage to shoot them we'd
11:40already made most of the mistakes that were possible to make.
11:48The final filming of the models required a technological innovation.
11:52They needed a special small camera just for these shots.
11:56The bulky vista vision camera ordinarily used for special effects
12:00filming wouldn't fit down the narrow miniature
12:02mine tunnel. So Mike McAllister modified a standard
12:0635 millimeter Nikon for the mine chase miniature.
12:09He added two accurate guide rails to hold the movie film steady
12:13and new springs on the back pressure plate and he devised a magazine that
12:17held about 50 feet of motion picture film
12:20enough for just 15 seconds of action. Because the miniatures would be filmed
12:25one frame at a time the high precision Nikon drive train
12:28mechanism was already ideally suited for the work
12:31and McAllister came up with a way for the little Nikon to give the illusion of
12:35hair raising speed. Initially the idea was to to have the
12:39camera just locked off as though it were mounted on one of the
12:42mine cars. I had an idea that perhaps it would be
12:47nice to pan and tilt the camera as we were going through the caves and
12:50so in talking with Dennis about this we sat down and tried to figure out what it
12:54was about roller coaster rides that made them so exciting for the the
12:59riders and I decided to take a little home video
13:04camera and go down to Disneyland.
13:12I shot a couple different variations with the videotapes. I shot first a
13:16version where the camera was locked, locked
13:19straight ahead. I'd remembered chase scenes that I'd
13:22seen when I was younger that I was always frustrated to
13:26see a shot where the camera was mounted to
13:29the fender of a car and you could never see around the corner until the car was
13:32actually making the corner and it never seemed natural to me.
13:41And then I would do a second version where I would anticipate the curves
13:45because I had a feeling that part of this the danger and the suspense of this
13:49sequence would be created by trying to look ahead into the curves,
13:55trying to see what was around the curve before you were actually there.
14:00There were a few things that I captured on videotape while I was down there that
14:04I really hadn't anticipated. One of the things we learned
14:08you're going straight up this this really steep incline and you can't see
14:11anything but sky and then as you go over the top of this
14:15rise you see the horizon starting very low in the frame and it just wipes up to
14:19the top of frame. It gives you a real feeling that you're
14:22about to plunge down into some sort of abysmal situation.
14:33And this is the result in the final film.
14:38In slow motion we can see the techniques he used. The spotlights in the center
14:42create a visual horizon. We feel the perilous height. The camera
14:47tilts down to show us the drop before we plunge.
14:53And we see the dangerous corners looming ahead before we get to them.
15:01In the miniature sequences the characters of Indy and his friends were
15:04played by tiny articulated puppets. They were carefully positioned according
15:09to the scene's action and then a single frame of film exposed.
15:13Then they were advanced down the tunnel and repositioned for the next frame.
15:17Each frame took nearly five minutes to set up.
15:20Two hours of tedious work for one second of finished film.
15:24Each puppet had a flexible metal skeleton with joints arranged so that
15:28the body positions were always realistic. But it took great skill and patience to
15:33manipulate them so they looked convincing in every shot.
15:38This was a very difficult sequence coming up.
15:43And the shot in the middle was a very tough one. This one right here. This took
15:46an awful lot of takes animating these figures to get them to
15:51look like they were real figures doing the right thing.
15:56Harrison's grabbing on here to the side to keep from falling over. She's flailing
16:00back because of the gravity's knocking her over to the side.
16:03And short rounds also falling back to the side.
16:07And there's lava down here. So when the whole thing plays together
16:11it goes by like that. And this middle scene I'd say we probably spent
16:16at least a week on this shot alone. At least one week.
16:19Which is quite a bit for this sequence. And it goes by in
16:23you know less than two seconds.
16:32Shorty, come up here and take the frame.
16:36This is an example of how we would use the lighting
16:40to help some of our models not look like models.
16:43So as they get closer to the camera we have these figures go into a shadow.
16:50So you can't see them. And then you just barely see them lit here.
16:54Just backlit a little bit. So your impression is that you're seeing a lot
16:57more than you're really seeing when you see the shot.
16:59And then we cut right away to a real shot. And that sort of trickery is what's
17:03going on through the whole sequence in one area or another.
17:08At this point they've dropped the log down in front of the other car.
17:15And as it's going along it's kicking sparks up in the air.
17:19And these sparks are animated and added by our animation department
17:23frame at a time. You just barely see them popping on here.
17:29Popping off. They're just sort of like peekaboo.
17:33The sparks are actually still photographs. Pictures made of a sparkler
17:37in a blast of air.
17:42The pictures are projected onto large clear sheets of celluloid called
17:46animation cells and positioned to match where the wheels touch the rails.
17:51Then they're refilmed. There's the first frame. Now the train has moved ahead a
17:54little bit in that time. So the second cell takes
17:58account of that. And the spark is going to be a little
18:01bit more fully developed in its life cycle here.
18:08The third frame and so forth.
18:14There. Now that is the one four frame spark element on this scene.
18:20The sparks we added in these shots mainly to show the
18:25obstacle. To show the problem. Without the sparks in here you didn't know whether
18:28to look at the log. To look at the other car up there or
18:31whatever. But with the sparks your eye goes right down there
18:34and you say hey I remember that. That's a problem. And later on in the sequence
18:39it's such a problem that it actually causes the car to flip like you see
18:42there and crash.
18:47Many of the most memorable locations in the movies never really existed at all
18:51except as fantastically detailed paintings on large sheets of glass.
18:56Glass painters create what budgets a reality would otherwise make impossible
19:00to film. The process is called matte painting and
19:04it's been around since 1915. See if you recognize this cliff in the
19:09next scene.
19:21How did they do that? They began with the background.
19:27This vast painted landscape looked totally realistic
19:30except for a gaping hole. A clear space in the glass which here appears black.
19:37The painting was filmed black hole and all.
19:41The action of Indiana and his friends was filmed in a safe
19:44padded studio.
19:49Then the two elements were photographically assembled for the final
19:52result.
19:55This matte painting is the background for the Ewok celebration at the end of
20:02Return of the Jedi. When the three black holes are filled
20:06with scenes of dancing Ewoks the still life teems with activity.
20:12Let's take a closer look at exactly how the special effects wizards at ILM
20:16accomplish this. As with almost all special effects they
20:20combine images filmed separately. Here they use a technique more than 60
20:25years old called rear projection. They prepare for
20:28filming by carefully lighting and framing the painting.
20:32Then they film the whole painting for exactly 78 frames,
20:35a little more than three seconds, the precise duration of the final shot.
20:40The unprocessed film is rewound in the camera and the black cloth from behind
20:44one of the three holes in the painting is removed.
20:49The projector behind the painting is the key to adding action to the scene.
20:56The glass is carefully cleaned and the first action scene filmed weeks
21:03earlier in the studio is loaded into the projector.
21:08Then the new image is projected from behind the painting
21:12through the hole toward the camera. It is precisely lined up with the
21:19hole it's going to fill.
21:31The film in the camera in front of the painting is then exposed again.
21:35But this time only the new action scene in its precisely accurate place is
21:39recorded on the film. 78 frames worth one frame at a time.
21:49The film in the camera is rewound again
21:52and the process repeated for the second hole with its action
21:56and finally for the third.
22:00Then the film is processed and here's the final result in slow motion.
22:10Like the cliff and the background for the Ewok celebration,
22:13the rebel docking bay from Return of the Jedi was never a real place.
22:18It too is a matte painting brought to life by carefully placed areas of action.
22:23When the scene was first filmed the action was concentrated in the lower
22:27right hand corner in a way that looked unrealistic. So two
22:30areas of action were added here to balance the shot.
22:33There was so many people and so much activity in that one corner that the
22:37rest of the shot looked dead and it didn't really look real for that
22:40reason. So at that point we said we have to go
22:43and shoot some additional people and insert them
22:46in the dead areas of the painting in order to bring those up to the
22:49active area. Seemingly insignificant action was added to the final composite
22:55and it made the vast scene come alive.
23:01We do tests, we paint things out, we try new things, we get feedback from people
23:06within our department. So it's a constant ever-changing
23:11character of the shot and what how it ends up is sometimes a
23:13surprise to us. Even the final shot in Raiders of the Lost Ark was a matte
23:19painting. The shot coming up is kind of a classic
23:21matte painting. This took us about three months to paint
23:25because we as we started off very very tight on the
23:28painting the details had to hold up. Everything that is painted on this
23:34is from this line down this corridor here
23:37all out here. All these hundreds of hundreds of boxes which took months to
23:41paint is all is all fakery up in here
23:45and the man just walks up the corridor here turns to the left and he disappears
23:49behind the painting. I think what really sells this too as a
23:54matte painting is these pools of light that go back in perspective here and it
23:58forces the eye back and creates a lot of depth.
24:02This shot from Return of the Jedi is also a skillful blend of live action and
24:06matte painting. This is about 90 percent painted in here
24:09and what's basically real is the ramp, the man
24:13and just a bit of the floor here so that's the only
24:16real part of it. The rest is this whole area right in here is just all painted.
24:21This is the live action shot in the studio
24:26and here it is combined with the painting.
24:35Painting backgrounds on glass is effective when the action is limited
24:39but when the action in the foreground and the presence of the background have
24:42equal weight a different technique is called for.
24:45It's called the traveling matte process and it's been around since 1910.
24:50Special effects magicians use it to seamlessly place a foreground object
24:54over a background as here when this Star Wars spaceship
24:57flies into the frame and on into an infinite background of
25:01stars.
25:04When Luke and Darth Vader fight perched on a bridge
25:07over a perilous precipice
25:12and in the speeder bike chase in Return of the Jedi.
25:16As with other special effects we've seen they film the elements separately
25:19and then optically combine them. They film the background first
25:24then they isolate the foreground action and film it in front of a luminous blue
25:28screen that's lit from behind. Then they marry the two elements for
25:33the final result.
25:36Let's see exactly what goes into the making of this shot the escape of the
25:40rebel ship from the explosion of the empire's barge.
25:43Step one the master shot a miniature model of the ship filmed against a blue
25:48screen. All that matters is the ship in the frame
25:51everything else will be blocked out later. Step two
25:55the shot is re-photographed through filters which make the blue background
25:59appear black but which render the detailed image of
26:01the ship clearly.
26:05During this step masks cover up the so-called garbage
26:09the assistant lights and stand.
26:15The re-filming takes place a few frames at a time and isolates the motion of the
26:19ship from everything else.
26:28So the master shot and the masks are re-photographed onto a new piece of film.
26:33The result is a transparent detailed outline of the ship against black
26:37called the foreground matte.
26:42The image of the ship on the master shot above can now be completely isolated
26:46when it is re-filmed in later steps of the process.
26:49The foreground matte shown directly below it will cover the ship's image
26:53exactly as it moves across the frame. Only the accuracy of today's optical
26:58printers now computer controlled and aligned
27:01allow this degree of precision every time.
27:08In step three they make the background matte shown here as the third strip of
27:12film. It's a solid black silhouette of the ship
27:15a reverse image of the foreground matte above it.
27:18It will allow the background explosion the bottom strip of film
27:22to fill the whole frame of the final shot without overlapping the image of
27:25the ship. All four pieces are needed to assemble
27:29the final shot onto a single piece of film.
27:34The device used for the assembly is an electronic drive optical printer
27:38of ILM's own design. Its registration and precision are so exact
27:43it can align frames of movie film within one one thousandth of an inch
27:47and its lenses are individually made to ILM's own specifications.
27:52It shines a light through two separate pieces of film so their images are
27:56combined and that new composite image is
27:59re-photographed. The background and foreground mattes are
28:03first loaded into the projector to check that the alignment of the
28:06film elements is precise.
28:10Then the background matte comes out and the master shot of the ship is loaded in
28:15with the foreground matte.
28:23The operator punches in the instructions on the printer's computer
28:26and now the reason for the mattes becomes clear. During this pass while the
28:30printer is running the foreground matte holds back the
28:33light from everything but the ship. So the only image being recorded in this
28:37first pass through the optical printer is that of the ship alone.
28:43The red knob indicates that the film is advancing through the printer as it
28:47records the ship flying by.
28:51The film just exposed is not developed yet. While the background matte and
28:55explosion are threaded up the film is rewound to its start mark for a second
29:00pass, a second layer of images.
29:05Now the explosion is being re-photographed.
29:08The ship's black silhouette on the background matte prevents any light from
29:12falling in the latent image of the ship.
29:17Now the film is processed and printed and this is the result in extreme slow
29:21motion. Misalignment or imprecision would show
29:25up in the final composite as black lines around the edges of the ship
29:28or as the explosion peeking through the ship's image.
29:32But the efficiency of ILM's printer makes this old technique a modern
29:37technological triumph.
29:43The suspension bridge scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
29:46is a classic of its kind.
29:55The good guys and the bad guys meet face to face over a rocky gorge
29:59500 dizzying feet above an alligator filled river.
30:10Special effects made danger seem terrifyingly real
30:14especially in the final shot.
30:30Howie Stein, supervising editor.
30:35We'll start off here looking at the original VistaVision plate which was
30:39shot in England at the studio on location.
30:44We realized for compositional purposes it would have been a little better
30:49to have the direction of the shot rather than going in the direction of the
30:52shot. So we decided to go with the original
30:55would have been a little better to have the direction of the shot
30:59rather than going down into the corner to go a little more
31:02across the frame. So we then did a slight tilt on it
31:05as you'll see in the black and white version here
31:09where we're going a little more across frame.
31:13We then had to put the river element into the shot. This piece of film
31:19represents the river that we shot in Montana.
31:25Our next step was to make a composite of the live action
31:29and the river.
31:32So our matte artist can then create the painting which is going to blend the two
31:36elements together. This strip of cliff is the painting
31:40that they made.
31:44They also made a foreground matte and a background matte to be used in the
31:47optical printer.
31:51When they looked closely at the shot they saw a problem.
31:54Indy's legs were swinging where the painting was to go.
31:57Somehow they had to put his legs in front of the painting.
32:01They had to make a hand-drawn mask called an articulate matte.
32:05For each frame of the shot the outline of the overlapping legs and dangling
32:09bridge is drawn. The animation artist works directly
32:13from the film enlarged to a predetermined size on the
32:16animation stand. She draws the exact outline of the legs
32:20onto an animation cell. One for each of the 92 frames that makes up this shot.
32:27Then she painstakingly fills in the outlines of all 92 frames
32:31using special opaque ink.
32:38When all 92 cells are finished she films them in sequence.
32:43The animation stand used to enlarge the film doubles as a camera.
32:49A magazine of fresh black and white film stock goes into the same gate
32:53and is held by the same pins that align the original film footage.
33:02The 92 hand-drawn cells are filmed in sequence.
33:05One film frame for each cell. Precision registration of the cells on the light
33:10table ensures a perfect articulate matte.
33:18And here it is all 92 frames of it.
33:33Again in slow motion.
33:41To see it work watch for Indy's white trousers way down at the bottom of the
33:46dangling bridge. Swinging in front of the painted part of
33:48the cliff. There. But flailing legs weren't the only
33:53special effects problem in this shot. They also had to make the bad guys seem
33:58to fall into the abyss without actually killing anyone.
34:01They did it with puppets. Dennis Muren.
34:06We're supposedly a few hundred feet above the water
34:09but in fact the suspension bridge the bottom of was about 10 feet above
34:14cushions to protect people in case anybody fell and for the stuntman to
34:18fall on. So what we needed to do was to extend
34:22the cliff so it appeared to go down a few
34:25hundred feet more and then add a river down below it.
34:28So we had to change the figures from real stuntmen to puppets.
34:33Well the little figures when they fall down they have to fall down to what I
34:37call the gravity point. Which is where if you're looking down
34:41at something is where gravity takes an object and that's something that
34:44everyone senses but as you think about it you don't know where it is.
34:48So all these figures that are falling had to be plotted
34:51we call and lined up to all fall toward a real specific point.
34:56And we did that by stop-motion puppets that were manipulated
35:00frame at a time and animated to tumble as they fell down
35:05and appear to fall down three or four hundred feet.
35:09Finally there were the alligators. So our next step was to shoot the miniature
35:13alligators in a little puddle of milk and water.
35:16If you look carefully you might even see a stage hand
35:20dragging a chicken leg around this little pond to attract the alligator's
35:25attention. They're very uncooperative.
35:30And then we took all these elements the live action plate
35:34the river the painting the painting mat the articulate mat
35:39the three falling dummies and the three alligator elements and we then
35:43composited that series of elements together with this result.
35:51Now in this stage of compositing we haven't done the final color corrections
35:55that's why these gentlemen here appear a bit on the
35:58blue side and this appears a little on the bright side.
36:02None of that final color correcting has been done at this stage of the shot that
36:07will be done later when when all the elements are combined.
36:14First into the printer goes the river element
36:17together with a mat to protect the cliff and a mat to make holes for the puppets.
36:25These three images are re-photographed onto a new piece of film.
36:33Then the first falling puppet together with a mat to protect everything else is
36:39printed into its hole
36:47and similarly for the other two falling puppets.
36:52Then the painted cliff with its mat and the articulate mat for indiana's
36:57dangling legs.
37:05Then the main live action now with the legs over the painting.
37:12And finally the alligators are exposed in as simple black silhouettes.
37:20So after passing the film seven times through the printer
37:23it's finished. All that for about two seconds on your screen.
37:29Technical tour de force are almost commonplace in special effects,
37:33but none has so revolutionized the industry as the motion control camera.
37:37Developed in the mid-1970s for Star Wars, it's a great way to show off the
37:42technology and the power of the camera.
37:45It's a great way to show off the power of the camera.
37:49It's a great way to show off the technology and the power of the camera.
37:54Developed in the mid-1970s for Star Wars,
37:57it's a computer-driven system that can repeat movements with extreme precision,
38:02allowing special effects artists to choreograph complex shots
38:05and repeat them exactly over and over again.
38:09The movements of the subject, in this case a helicopter model in the film
38:13Explorers, are controlled by the same computer that
38:16controls the camera. This is a dress rehearsal, a test of the
38:20computer program to see how well the cameramen have translated the story
38:23board's action into the movements of the camera and
38:26helicopter.
38:29At night, a police helicopter is surprised by seeing a strange little
38:33spacecraft. The police swing around it and finally
38:36hover to look. This is their black and white test.
38:39Here they're on their way, see it, swing around,
38:48and then hover to look.
38:51Based on this successful test, they decide to film the final master shot
38:55against the blue screen. The camera is programmed to shoot at
38:58only about one-tenth of the normal speed.
39:01The motion of the helicopter and its blades are slowed down too.
39:06The equipment is heavy and it would be difficult and dangerous to move faster.
39:11For part of the shot, a small blue screen is slid behind the undercarriage
39:15to block out the rod that supports the model.
39:21This is the film from that take, the master shot projected at normal
39:34speed. This shot records the helicopter's
39:37whole shape and movement. This complicated maneuver will be
39:41repeated exactly as many times as are needed
39:43to create all the layers for the final composite.
39:47Only the motion control camera makes this possible.
39:51This next pass is for the searchlight. The studio is filled with smoke to make
39:55the beams stand out and the whole shot is done again,
39:58this time filming only the searchlight. This is how that pass looked.
40:12When the two are combined, you can begin to see the way the shots build up.
40:16See the searchlight beam catching the helicopter as the computer moves it.
40:21These superimpositions create magic. This is the master shot from Return of
40:27the Jedi for Darth Vader's ship landing at night
40:30with its navigation beacons and landing lights from below.
40:34All of them were superimposed on a matte painting that had the Death Star
40:38high in the night sky.
40:42And this was the final result.
41:01Space battles became more amazing with each new Star Wars film.
41:08By the time this scene was put together, one man had become
41:12the specialist in choreographing shots like these.
41:17Ken Ralston. Obviously, I've flown more spaceships than anyone alive, I think, as
41:22far as, you know, movies are concerned. Ralston created most of the space
41:28battles in Return of the Jedi. He and Bill Kimberlin, his editorial
41:33assistant, put together the single most complex
41:35special effects shot ever made. It's the 19th shot in the space battle
41:40called SB-19. Lucas wanted it to be spectacular.
41:45It did get more complex just because George wanted a more wow
41:48shot at that moment, you know, just something just to take your breath away.
41:53This is SB-19 in slow motion.
41:58There are 63 separate spaceships on the move.
42:01To fit these ships together took 170 separate little rolls of film.
42:06It was Bill Kimberlin's job to organize the ships into a convincing scene.
42:10Each piece of film represents a different ship,
42:13whether it be an enemy ship or a good guy's ship,
42:18and each one has to be dealt with and choreographed
42:22with the next one beside it. The idea is to try and make them fly
42:28in some type of formation. So when you have this many
42:34different elements, this many different spaceships,
42:37the way that I decided would be best to approach it
42:40is to take one particular element and then
42:44draw a cell of it.
42:48And I'm going to run the moviola one frame at a time
42:53and take a cell
42:59and draw out the pattern of the ship's movement
43:06by drawing each frame of the ship where it makes a significant
43:12move to give me some idea of the position of the ship as it moves
43:19away.
43:21Okay.
43:24I forgot to number that frame.
43:28About there. He plots the path of the ship into the distance.
43:34Getting very small now. So that would probably be good enough to show
43:42where it's going.
43:46If I make a number of these
43:50of different ships, then I can plot it out. We probably were on it
43:57three months off and on. Probably would take maybe three weeks to get all the
44:01elements by one camera crew. We actually had like, I had four camera
44:04crews working on other shots. But four weeks just for that.
44:09Then a great deal of time to, like with Bill, to start layering it in
44:13and see what worked, what didn't work. I then draw out every ship that's going
44:19to be in the shot. I build up a whole series of waves of
44:23ships so they can start to get a handle on
44:26what kind of choreography is going to work.
44:30The fighters attack in waves of eight.
44:34Be able to see what the pattern is like of a bunch of ships
44:39running all at the same time. Here he's about to check his pattern for the first
44:4416 fighters. The 16 black and white work prints of
44:47those fighters have been superimposed on this test film.
44:54I have to deal with all the garbage that's in the frame other than the ships.
45:05So just concentrating on the ships,
45:09I kind of like the movement. These are the ships
45:15and these are various flags and light stands.
45:23Now I can change these relationships if I want,
45:26or I can go with this. I kind of like the way this works.
45:30That leaves 47 ships still to add. Then it's time to send all the negative
45:36elements to optical to make a color composite. And this represents,
45:43as far as I know, the largest special effects shot that's ever been done.
45:47It has a total of 63 elements and all of these x's indicate
45:54areas where one ship might cross in front of another.
45:59It's about a 10-hour job just to print this one particular shot.
46:03There is a mistake in it, but you would never see it in a movie theater.
46:07In slow motion you can see it for just an instant.
46:10Look for two small marks like the letter H in the center of the picture against
46:14the big ship. Now it's something that you would only
46:19see if you laid the film out and looked at a
46:23frame at a time. So we don't get them all perfect.
46:29Most of them we do. It's all this effort and blood, sweat, and tears by me and
46:35everyone who worked on that stuff. What I do, that one shot
46:40represents an awful lot of people here and time. And then when it comes
46:44up and the music's going and the context of the film is flying by, it's almost
46:49it's like it's hard to believe that's even the shot you had worked on.
46:53Well, I wonder who did that? It's real nice, but
46:57what we did was a lot harder than that.
47:04Light is coming in.
47:15This is The Starchild from 2001, Stanley Kubrick's 1968 masterpiece.
47:25The special effects of 2001 were unprecedented in their innovation,
47:29complexity, and expense.
47:35When they wanted to make a sequel to 2001, MGM knew that it needed to have
47:39outstanding special effects of its own. The effects in 2010, the year we make
47:45contact, were designed to be detailed, realistic,
47:48and meticulously precise.
47:52Special effects artists had to completely recreate the Discovery,
47:56the spaceship abandoned near Jupiter at the end of 2001.
48:00Records of the Discovery miniature from 2001
48:03were all destroyed after the completion of that film production.
48:07Mr. Kubrick was concerned about the Discovery appearing in later science
48:12fiction films. We had the models destroyed,
48:14all the plans and drawings were destroyed. We contacted the production
48:17designer for the film and he told us this, and we have located
48:21some still photographs from illustrators and people that were connected with the
48:24film, but our main source of information is
48:28is a print of 2001 itself. It's not a situation where one person
48:33gets to put this model on his bench and build it
48:36from start to finish. It's more like we have specialists in
48:38engineering and mechanics to build the basic armature frame for the ship.
48:43We have specialists in electronics to build the
48:45power boxes to drive all the lighting circuits for it and all the miniature
48:49lights that we put into the ship. We have some people that are excellent
48:52at model detailing that will spend their
48:55best hours working on applying the final finish
48:59detail to the ship once it's assembled. The model of the Russian ship, the
49:03Leolov, that is sent out to find the derelict Discovery
49:07is every bit as detailed as the Discovery itself.
49:102010 special effects from models to walks in space
49:14needed to be as realistic as possible, however expensive they turned out to be.
49:19People know what real astronauts in real outer space look like
49:22and they demand authenticity, so the movements would be very slow
49:27and graceful.
49:31The lighting was to be harsh as from a single source,
49:34the sun.
49:37Exactly as it would be on a real expedition to Jupiter.
49:43At this point of the story, the American team is about to leave the Russian ship
49:47and cross over to the Discovery for the first time.
49:50Dear Caroline, the first part of this journey is coming to an end.
49:55We are about to rendezvous with the Discovery. The race will be on now.
50:00We're going to send a boarding party over to climb inside this
50:03800 foot long shipwreck floating over Io to see if she can be rescued before her
50:08orbit gives up. There are nine years of secrets inside,
50:13including a sleeping computer who knows the answers.
50:16My past is also inside and I want those answers.
50:20Temperature's good. Yeah, you know I hate heights.
50:25All right, you picked a good job.
50:33Filming the astronauts journey over to the Discovery presented a unique
50:37challenge to special effects artists at MGM.
50:40How to achieve the convincing illusion of weightlessness.
50:45The difficulty was how to get the floating movements of the actors that
50:55the storyboard called for. For some scenes they could use puppets
51:00or models and intercut them with shots of the astronauts faces.
51:04But for the close-ups, the weightlessness had to be real,
51:07or at least it had to appear to be real. To hire a NASA spaceship and crew would
51:12have cost 75 million dollars. MGM settled for a somewhat less expensive
51:17solution, special effects.
51:22They brought in a wire flying expert.
51:26The man who developed the technique of speed flying for the Superman films.
51:31He'd also worked on Return of the Jedi, The Alien, and Dark Crystal.
51:35His name is Bob Harmon.
51:39All right, you're gonna go right.
51:43In Hollywood, they made special harnesses to his designs.
51:49And he developed this chair so that an actor suspended on wires could be made
51:53to turn while traveling forward. I really started off in scaffolding
51:58back in England, and I traveled around England and Europe
52:01and Africa lifting objects up quite often on wires.
52:05You know, specializing on that side of the field and lifting objects up
52:09like computers and safes and bringing them where a crane couldn't reach.
52:13Harmon rehearsed his Hollywood team so that they could continue with a smooth
52:17forward movement, while at the same time make an actor twist.
52:21It was like playing with large-scale living marionettes.
52:25Their goal was to make the movements of the astronauts look real.
52:29It's all manual. We don't use anything mechanical at all. I mean, it's all wire
52:33rigs operated by men. I don't use motors or anything like that
52:37because you can't feel if anything's going wrong, whereas
52:39if you're doing it by hand, you can feel if something's jamming on you or you can
52:42feel if something doesn't feel right. With a motor, you don't. It just keeps
52:45pumping away and can do, you know, a lot of damage.
52:48Not necessarily to the set, but to the artist.
52:54After weeks of rehearsal, they were ready to load the camera and begin filming.
53:03During the actual shooting, the flying was done in front of a special
53:08kind of blue screen. A bright blue light was projected from
53:12the front onto a highly reflective white surface.
53:16And then the astronauts floated into studio outer space.
53:22When the studio shots are printed with the background and sound effects added,
53:26the realism of the actor's weightlessness is totally convincing.
53:33A simple but ingenious technique creates
53:39the illusion of another world.
53:49As with all special effects, these seemingly impossible marvels are
53:53figments of imagination, made real by the manipulation of film
53:57materials, people, and props, and brought to life by human ingenuity.
54:02Don't close your eyes. Look at the middle of discovery.
54:05The middle, not the ends. Look at the part where it's moving the least.
54:08Don't take your eyes off it.
54:1440 meters.
54:19Special effects today are a powerful mix of old techniques,
54:23new technology, and creative vision.
54:37Their potential, first defined by Méliès nearly a century ago,
54:41has reached a pinnacle. Almost anything that can be imagined
54:44can be created by special effects.
55:08The speed, the action, the danger, and the thrill seem so real.
55:14And this is how they do it.
55:19In a far-off galaxy, spaceships seem to race at the speed of light.
55:23And this is how they do it. Over a yawning chasm,
55:27only the bad guys seem to plunge to a horrible doom.
55:31And this is how they do it. Imagination, technology, hard work, and a
55:38lot of money create the magic of special effects.
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