Superman
"You'll Believe a Man Can Fly."
After the opening week of "Superman Returns," it seems only fitting that I return to writing for this blog by writing about the original Superman movie(1978).
Among this film's accomplishments was receiving an academy award for it's effects. Director Richard Donner apparently said, just before the film was released: "If we don't believe Christopher Reeve can fly, we don't have a picture."
And so the visual effects team was handed this daunting task, of owning up to the film's moniker, and making us believe a man could fly. To accomplish it, several then-state-of-the-art technologies were employed to make our hero fly. Three main technologies were used: Bluescreen, Wire (rig) removal, and the Zoptic Process.
For the Bluescreen shots, one of the challenges faced was the fact that Superman's costume included lots of BLUE. A Blue costume on a bluscreen shot will disappear into the background, and that is precisely the problem they faced. In the end, the costume department had to create a new set of costumes with blue-green replacing the blue portions, so that the costume would not disappear into the background. If you watch the movie again, and look closely, you can always tell which shots are bluescreen because Christopher Reeve's costume changes from blue and red to Blue-green and red. These shots, even with the latest optical compositing technology of the time, still had blue-spill, and edge artifacts that can certainly be spotted by today's audiences. Regrettably, these shots don't stand the test of time very well, but the two other processes I'll be talking about are a different story.
For some shots, Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder were suspended by wires on set, and those wires were usually meticulously removed optically. It was an incredibly laborious task, involving using an optical printer or projector to rotoscope the wires (draw around them frame-by-frame), photographing those rotoscope mattes, and using them in the optical printer to print clean frames over top of the wires. The process could take take hours, sometimes days, just for a single shot. Each shot might involve shifting previous or subsequent frames to match the current frame, and using the hand-drawn mattes to print those clean-frames over the current frame wherever the wires appeared. I must say, even after nearly 30 years, these shots certainly hold up.
Another process, and the focus of this article, are the Zoptic shots. Rear Projection had been known and used for decades at the time and front projection was in it's infancy. Front projection is a more complicated procedure (than rear-projection), requiring that a projector bounce it's image off of a half-silvered mirror onto a scotch-light screen. What's a Scotch-light screen? Basically, any light that hits it will be reflected directly back to it's point of origin. If you've ever noticed a bicycle at night because of the reflection of your car's lights in the pedals, you've seen the effect of a scotch-lite-like material. If the camera is set up at JUST the right spot, the light rays from the scotch light screen will bounce back through the beam-splitter to only one spot, DIRECTLY into the lens of the camera. Now, put something, or someone, in front of the screen, light them JUST RIGHT, and it appears that the plate shot, projected by the projector, is happening behind them.
If rear projection and front projection seem antiquated technologies, remember that rear projection was used as recently as Terminator 2 and The Matrix, and front projection created the incredible shot of Harrison Ford jumping off the bus just as a train hit it in The Fugitive.
Back in the late 70's, while the pioneers of Front projection were still working out it's intricacies, a man by the name of Zoran Perisic had bigger plans. He realized that if he locked the zoom lenses of the projector and the camera together, he could create a very special illusion. Not only did the actor in front of the screen seem to be inside the projected shot (the "plate shot"), s/he also could appear to be coming towards, or receding from the camera, all without the actor even moving...
The applications of the Zoptic process may have been few, but Zoran Persic realized that they could help Director Richard Donner create the illusion that a man could fly. For instance, take a camera on a helicopter, point it at the ground, and fly straight up into the sky. What do you get? You get a plate shot, looking down, in which the camera flies up. Speed it up a little, and now project it, through the Zoptic process, to appear behind our hero, and it appears that he has started on the ground, and flown up at great speed along with our camera.
As another example, take a camera on a helicopter, and shoot out the side of the helicopter as it moves past a bunch of skyscrapers. Then project that through the zoptic process to appear behind our hero as he is suspended, facing the direction of the helicopter movement, and he appears to be flying along, among the skyscrapers.
So far this is just plain old Front Projection, but now we add the magic of the Zoptic process. Shoot (from a helicopter) a shot as if we, the camera, were moving backwards. Now project that behind our hero. So far he's staying still on-camera while the background flies away from him. It still looks like he, and the camera, are flying, but his size on camera never changes. Now comes the magic bit. Zoom in with the camera, while at the same time, zooming the projected image to match. As far as the camera is concerned, the projected image has not changed size, but the ACTOR seems to be getting closer and closer (because we're zooming IN on him). On the Zoptic set, the actor has never moved, but through the lens of the camera, he seems to be getting closer and closer to us, and all the while, the background projected image seems to stay the same size.
One of the many compliments I can give the film is that even to this day (nearly 30 years later), the Zoptic shots still look VERY impressive. I know I will be heckled to no end about this, but to my mind, these shots even look better than most current digital shots, which to my eye still look rather fake.
One of the many lessons to be taken from Superman the Movie begins with a quote from a technician, one of the many people involved in the creation of the Zoptic process Shots, speaking of Christopher Reeve:
"Nobody else can fly. When you put stand-ins and stunt men... [in front of the camera]... they look nothing. They just lie there. When he gets up there, he flies. You believe he can fly, because he believes it. He's prepared himself in his own mind because he's an actor. No matter how long the shot takes, he's so patient. It's really hot and uncomfortable up in that thing. He's amazing that guy."
As we enter an era in which an entire movie can plausibly be shot on a blue-screen stage (it was done for the movie Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow), it will become increasingly difficult for actors. They now have nothing to which they can react. They are merely told by a director "OK, the dinosaur is running after you now..."
Remember that once you get into the post suite, what you see on film (or High-Def Video) is what you get. There's no dial in the visual effects suite labeled "acting" that can turn up it's quality. We saw Christopher Reeve fly as Superman because he SOLD it. Because HE believed it, and he made us believe it.
The lesson for directors is simple: get actors who can ACT. I love Visual Effects (as you can no doubt tell), and I will tell you this: the fanciest, most spectacular visual effects in the world cannot rescue a movie with a bad plot, bad writing, or bad acting (no matter what Joel Schumacher tells you).
The lesson for future actors: practice reacting to nothing. Find the child in you, the one who remembers play-acting as though a dragon were chasing you, and let that child play again.
If you're intersted in the zoptic process, read an excellent article about it on supermancinema.co.uk
THE MOVIE ITSELF:
What can I say? It's superman... Wonderful, magical, simply excellent. I admit on viewing it again recently that there are parts that drag a little, but how else do you develop the plot and characters? About my only criticism is the "Can you read my mind" voice-over, which I always thought didn't work.
After the opening week of "Superman Returns," it seems only fitting that I return to writing for this blog by writing about the original Superman movie(1978).
Among this film's accomplishments was receiving an academy award for it's effects. Director Richard Donner apparently said, just before the film was released: "If we don't believe Christopher Reeve can fly, we don't have a picture."
And so the visual effects team was handed this daunting task, of owning up to the film's moniker, and making us believe a man could fly. To accomplish it, several then-state-of-the-art technologies were employed to make our hero fly. Three main technologies were used: Bluescreen, Wire (rig) removal, and the Zoptic Process.
For the Bluescreen shots, one of the challenges faced was the fact that Superman's costume included lots of BLUE. A Blue costume on a bluscreen shot will disappear into the background, and that is precisely the problem they faced. In the end, the costume department had to create a new set of costumes with blue-green replacing the blue portions, so that the costume would not disappear into the background. If you watch the movie again, and look closely, you can always tell which shots are bluescreen because Christopher Reeve's costume changes from blue and red to Blue-green and red. These shots, even with the latest optical compositing technology of the time, still had blue-spill, and edge artifacts that can certainly be spotted by today's audiences. Regrettably, these shots don't stand the test of time very well, but the two other processes I'll be talking about are a different story.
For some shots, Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder were suspended by wires on set, and those wires were usually meticulously removed optically. It was an incredibly laborious task, involving using an optical printer or projector to rotoscope the wires (draw around them frame-by-frame), photographing those rotoscope mattes, and using them in the optical printer to print clean frames over top of the wires. The process could take take hours, sometimes days, just for a single shot. Each shot might involve shifting previous or subsequent frames to match the current frame, and using the hand-drawn mattes to print those clean-frames over the current frame wherever the wires appeared. I must say, even after nearly 30 years, these shots certainly hold up.
Another process, and the focus of this article, are the Zoptic shots. Rear Projection had been known and used for decades at the time and front projection was in it's infancy. Front projection is a more complicated procedure (than rear-projection), requiring that a projector bounce it's image off of a half-silvered mirror onto a scotch-light screen. What's a Scotch-light screen? Basically, any light that hits it will be reflected directly back to it's point of origin. If you've ever noticed a bicycle at night because of the reflection of your car's lights in the pedals, you've seen the effect of a scotch-lite-like material. If the camera is set up at JUST the right spot, the light rays from the scotch light screen will bounce back through the beam-splitter to only one spot, DIRECTLY into the lens of the camera. Now, put something, or someone, in front of the screen, light them JUST RIGHT, and it appears that the plate shot, projected by the projector, is happening behind them.
If rear projection and front projection seem antiquated technologies, remember that rear projection was used as recently as Terminator 2 and The Matrix, and front projection created the incredible shot of Harrison Ford jumping off the bus just as a train hit it in The Fugitive.
Back in the late 70's, while the pioneers of Front projection were still working out it's intricacies, a man by the name of Zoran Perisic had bigger plans. He realized that if he locked the zoom lenses of the projector and the camera together, he could create a very special illusion. Not only did the actor in front of the screen seem to be inside the projected shot (the "plate shot"), s/he also could appear to be coming towards, or receding from the camera, all without the actor even moving...
The applications of the Zoptic process may have been few, but Zoran Persic realized that they could help Director Richard Donner create the illusion that a man could fly. For instance, take a camera on a helicopter, point it at the ground, and fly straight up into the sky. What do you get? You get a plate shot, looking down, in which the camera flies up. Speed it up a little, and now project it, through the Zoptic process, to appear behind our hero, and it appears that he has started on the ground, and flown up at great speed along with our camera.
As another example, take a camera on a helicopter, and shoot out the side of the helicopter as it moves past a bunch of skyscrapers. Then project that through the zoptic process to appear behind our hero as he is suspended, facing the direction of the helicopter movement, and he appears to be flying along, among the skyscrapers.
So far this is just plain old Front Projection, but now we add the magic of the Zoptic process. Shoot (from a helicopter) a shot as if we, the camera, were moving backwards. Now project that behind our hero. So far he's staying still on-camera while the background flies away from him. It still looks like he, and the camera, are flying, but his size on camera never changes. Now comes the magic bit. Zoom in with the camera, while at the same time, zooming the projected image to match. As far as the camera is concerned, the projected image has not changed size, but the ACTOR seems to be getting closer and closer (because we're zooming IN on him). On the Zoptic set, the actor has never moved, but through the lens of the camera, he seems to be getting closer and closer to us, and all the while, the background projected image seems to stay the same size.
One of the many compliments I can give the film is that even to this day (nearly 30 years later), the Zoptic shots still look VERY impressive. I know I will be heckled to no end about this, but to my mind, these shots even look better than most current digital shots, which to my eye still look rather fake.
One of the many lessons to be taken from Superman the Movie begins with a quote from a technician, one of the many people involved in the creation of the Zoptic process Shots, speaking of Christopher Reeve:
"Nobody else can fly. When you put stand-ins and stunt men... [in front of the camera]... they look nothing. They just lie there. When he gets up there, he flies. You believe he can fly, because he believes it. He's prepared himself in his own mind because he's an actor. No matter how long the shot takes, he's so patient. It's really hot and uncomfortable up in that thing. He's amazing that guy."
As we enter an era in which an entire movie can plausibly be shot on a blue-screen stage (it was done for the movie Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow), it will become increasingly difficult for actors. They now have nothing to which they can react. They are merely told by a director "OK, the dinosaur is running after you now..."
Remember that once you get into the post suite, what you see on film (or High-Def Video) is what you get. There's no dial in the visual effects suite labeled "acting" that can turn up it's quality. We saw Christopher Reeve fly as Superman because he SOLD it. Because HE believed it, and he made us believe it.
The lesson for directors is simple: get actors who can ACT. I love Visual Effects (as you can no doubt tell), and I will tell you this: the fanciest, most spectacular visual effects in the world cannot rescue a movie with a bad plot, bad writing, or bad acting (no matter what Joel Schumacher tells you).
The lesson for future actors: practice reacting to nothing. Find the child in you, the one who remembers play-acting as though a dragon were chasing you, and let that child play again.
If you're intersted in the zoptic process, read an excellent article about it on supermancinema.co.uk
THE MOVIE ITSELF:
What can I say? It's superman... Wonderful, magical, simply excellent. I admit on viewing it again recently that there are parts that drag a little, but how else do you develop the plot and characters? About my only criticism is the "Can you read my mind" voice-over, which I always thought didn't work.
posted by haloeffects at 3:17 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home