As I understand it. It wasn't a nylon stocking. "Next, the special effects director recalled from his experience as a pilot (even had his own airplane) that wind socks at airports had the classic funnel-shape of a tornado. He decided to make a tornado out of muslin (plane woven cloth) which would allow it to twist, bend and move from side-to-side. He built a 35-foot long tapered muslin sock and connected the top of it to a steel gantry suspended at the top of the stage. The gantry alone cost more than $12,000 (in 1938 dollars) and was specifically built for the tornado by Bethlehem Steel. It was a mobile structure similar to those used in warehouses to lift heavy objects and could travel the entire length of the stage. The bottom of the sock disappeared into a slot on the stage floor where it connected to a rod which came up through the base of the tornado to pull it from side-to-side. By moving the gantry and rod in different directions, the tornado appeared to "snake" across the stage. To produce the dust and debris that makes a real tornado visible, they used compressed air hoses to spray a powdery brown dust known as “Fullers Earth” from both the top and bottom of the funnel. The muslin sock was sufficiently porous that some of the dust sifted through giving a blur or softness to the material and a fuzziness to the edges so that it didn’t look like a hard surface." 9:00 AM | "Wizard of Oz" tornado scene remains a classic — Perspecta Weather
Yes, yes, yes, I know. J. A. G. visited our school and old us all about it. He got his idea from his wife's nylon stocking. Genius..
It’s not THAT old but Blade Runner. A film that won an Oscar that did deserve it for some of the matte work but mot for the horrible miniatures which looked bad in 1976 is Logan’s Run.
It's not a movie but the first scene in this clip from The Prisoner episode "The Schizoid Man" is pretty impressive for late 60s British TV.
Was just thinking about George Pal when I saw the thread. He did a lot of work in shorts to get him to this amazing point.
Logan's Run had excellent matte work but I liked the miniatures too. What never holds up well is water in miniature. You can put it in a model but it still looks like the water that it is. Titanic was the turning point for realistic SFX water.
While I think that all around, Forbidden Planet is still the best exsmple of a Science Fiction film from the 60's that holds up today, I do think that This Island Earth was the first out of the box. Although not in color, Destination Moon was the first attempt at a realistic space movie, like 2001 many years later. When Worlds Collide was the best early color Sci-Fi movie. Not a lot of SFX shots but an excellent script and a memorable closing matte painting.
Since Matte Shots have been mentioned a few times, this website is essential for a massive study of all things matte shots over the decades. Warning: once you start going through the different sections, and clicking on pictures to get a full size view, you'll be there several days. I know. When I first went there years ago, I couldn't leave it... Matte Shot - a tribute to Golden Era special fx
And the Art Clokey of the '40s (we'll just roll eyes and look the other way during the "Jasper" shorts, though...)
The thing about that site is that, over the years that I've been going there, there are so many films that had matte paintings, etc that I never knew were matte paintings. Most are so incredibly done, they look real. One of the best, of course, is "Ben Hur" (1959), but there are probably hundreds of films that contain remarkable matte paintings (background and foreground) from the 30's to the present day. Truly amazing...
Back to 1931, so simple, so amazing. The secret of the transformation scenes was not revealed for decades (director R. Mamoulian himself revealed it in a volume of interviews with Hollywood directors published under the title The Celluloid Muse). Make-up was applied in contrasting colors. A series of colored filters that matched the make-up was then used which enabled the make-up to be gradually exposed or made invisible. The change in color was not visible on the black and white film..
I think The Day the Earth Stood Still was the first "serious" science fiction film that legitimized the genre with major actors and an important director (Robert Wise), plus it had a very thoughtful script. Although Worlds is actually a very hokey movie. I think George Pal's War of the Worlds from a couple of years later was a much better film. Although I have to say, I laugh myself silly on that early scene where the preacher walks towards the aliens with a bible and says, "yea, though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death," and then PEW-PEW-PEW-PEW! he's vaporized by the evil aliens. With the nutty fans I know, the audience goes nuts laughing at stuff like that today. But of course in 1953, it was horrifying. Still a good film and an absolute classic. I know the people at Paramount who remastered it for HD, and there was talk about digitally removing the (very visible) wires on the saucers, but I dunno what their final decision was.
I dislike a lot of Bladerunner, both for story and characters (and the changes they made from Phillip K. Dick's original story), but I have to admit it's a stunning-looking film and was extremely influential in terms of art design and cinematography.
Well, they may laugh at those types of scenes, but "War Of The Worlds" had numerous very religious, and Protestant themes. Especially the very end..."God in His infinite wisdom". America was a very different spiritual country in the early 50's than it is today. But I guess that's the way it is, for better or for worse.
