Archive for the history of visual effects in media
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Stuart Freeborn-Unsung visual effects artist
You know the characters. You know their sounds and their faces. But many do not know about the creative minds behind their favorite fictional creations. It wasn't well known that a Mexican immigrant named Marcel Delgado was the man who sculpted and built the model for King Kong or that a near blind Japanese art director named Al Nozaki was responsible for the menacing martian warships in War Of the Worlds. So I suppose it came with little surprise to many when last week some headlines announced the passing of Stuart Freeborn. Most people shrugged their shoulders and said "who"? Like most great artist Freeborn was represented in public light by his creations and his creations were most memorable to fans of movies everywhere. Perhaps his greatest contribution to cinema were the creation of the photo-humans in the Dawn of man sequence in 2001: a space Odyssey (some of these suits still survived the years and are touring with a traveling exhibit on Kubrick). His realization of the ancient Jedi wizard Yoda was said to have been based loosely on his own appearance with the edition of Albert Einstein's eyes. Whenever I would would see his work I always marveled at how expressive it was. I never stopped and wondered what the creation was made out of. I was too busy being awe inspired.
Stuart freeborn working on Yoda
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Interesting post. I just saw his obituary in the paper today. As an audience member, we tend to associate ourselves with the movie star and even the director in some cases. The special effects teams are important cogs in the machine.
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ReplyDeleteIts stories like this that bring meaning to your blog. With the death of publishing, stories like this are lost on the interwebs. Thank you for giving a film geek like me a place to feel right at home.
See Cool? Look at the response when you make it your own. With your credibility, your take on the story is much better than any link. You could go even deeper. You give a sentence to two of the greatest films of the time. You never stopped to imagine? Well then imagine now. Go back and look at the opening of 2001. Go back and watch The Empire Strikes Back with your expert eye. Critics still say Irving Kershner’s Yoda was the best Yoda. Why do you think? How does puppet Yoda compare with digital Yoda? Great rewrite though. Thanks for posting this.
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