TECHNOLOGY? WHO
NEEDS IT?
Remember when?
Growing up watching films from the 60’s and70’s as a kid I
remember first seeing such blockbusters as Jaws and Star Wars and like a
million other kids of the era I was awestruck. I stayed up late and watched UHF
transmissions of the now well known Toho films, watching with eyed enthusiasm
as Godzilla, the brown and green Garguantuas, Rodan, Mothra and their kin stomped
the hell out of Osaka and Tokyo (or their miniature equivalent) and an army of
H/O scale tanks.
Realism wasn’t necessary to draw you into the fantasy back
then. All you needed was an open mind and an interesting premise. At that time,
computers and digital high tech solutions weren’t available as a tool for
filmmakers. Spielberg and Lucas first started making names for themselves in
the early 70’s but the success of their work became the harbinger of the technology,
which has raised the stakes with every passing year.
Ray Harryhausen created most of his amazing illusions single
handedly with a rear projector screen, footage of the day’s dailies and one or
two of his stop motions models. Harryhausen’s films were created at a time when
fantasy wasn’t really the king of the roost. Science fiction and fantasy were
considered aberrations and B-movie drivel by critics and audiences alike up
until the mid 70’s. Occasionally a big studio production would emerge that
would receive positive notice from the America’s top critic’s. George Pal’s War
of The Worlds and Forbidden Planet were just two
examples of 1950’s A list fantasy from an era when such things were often
laughed at and ignored. Technology changed all that. Now the top grossing films
of all times are primarily in the fantasy or science fiction realm. The film
going experience is now considered akin to an amusement park ride than theatre.
The pre-digital age films had a charm to them. These films
had a handmade kind of feel to them in which the effects and matte paintings
had a wonderful aesthetic quality to them. You can’t really describe to someone
born pre 1980’s. I think it’s easy to look back at some of these older films
and laugh at their crudeness, their naïve breeziness. But when you consider the
budget and technology limitations of the pre-digital age, you begin to
appreciate the art and creativity behind them. Back then artists were really
artists. They thought of their work as art in a museum that was moving at 24
frames per second.
In the pre-digital era, so many of these illusions required
the skills of engineers, photographers and even scientists to bring them to
life. Off the shelf solutions that are common in the digital age didn’t exist.
Problem solving was always a competent of the methodology in this time. Problem
solving still exists but it seems more about software solutions than artistic
ones.
When you watch David Naughton transform himself into the
devil dog from hell in John Landis’ 1981 cult classic American Werewolf in London,
you feel every bone-crunching bit of his metamorphosis. Rick Baker and his crew
were unable to show the wolf creature full frame as a quadruped due to
restrictions of the technology at the time so the director showed the creature
running from the head to mid section only. The effects team used a “wheel
barrel” set up to move the actor in the suit so he appeared to move as a four-legged
creature. Using clever editing and quick cutting solved the issue. Problem
solving was a director’s prerogative. It kept them on their toes. Now it seems
like digital tools have made filmmakers lazy.
Sometimes the most effective effects are always the ones
that you never see. When Spielberg had difficulty with the mechanical shark
built by Robert Mattey for Jaws, he decided to shoot around it
until he began editing together with Verna Fields. He discovered that not
showing the shark in the first hour of the film was far more effective and
suspenseful. The now opening of the film is a classic example of letting the
viewer fill in the blanks for maximum effect.
Digital effects have opened the door wide open for
filmmakers and producers to create anything they can image. That can be a good
thing and a bad thing depending on your point of view. From a strictly economic
perspective, digital tools can save time and money, create imagery that can be
changed with relative ease and summon armies of digital actors to fill in crowds
without having to pay for overtime.
However, digital effects can often look mechanical and soulless. Directors can
often over do effects sequences, making them extremely overlong and redundant
simply to show off the technology. Either way, the sheen comes off fairly
quickly.
Illusions are no longer eye openers because they have become
commonplace and audiences are becoming more tech savy. They don’t make your jaw drop open like I remember so vividly when
I first viewed the “Stargate” sequence in 2001: a space odyssey at
the Cinerama dome in Hollywood. I recall
seeing Terminator 2 in a movie theatre in Boston. In the scene when
Arnold’s robotic protector blasts huge holes in the liquid metal T-1000. During the quick shot, the camera showed the holes liquefying and sealing up. I recall a loud gasp
from the woman sitting behind me. That was a sounding horn of the new age.
Digital was here to stay. Since then we have had dinosaurs, dragons, trolls,
great apes, goblins and every manner of magical creature that would never been
possible before the implementation of computers. But has all this technology made filmmakers lazy? Is the fact that they can now show you what they couldnt 30 years ago a good thing? Would Jaws have been better if the shark didn't break down during shooting and replaced with a CG shark? Ask Yourself..
But since the dawn of the digital age, nothing has made me
gasped in awe like when I first saw the fighting skeleton army of
Jason
and Argonauts, or the universe opening up in a barrage of mystical
colors in
2001: a space odyssey, or the monster from the ID breaking
through the invisible force field in
Forbidden Planet, or the alien war
ships destroying Los Angeles in
War of the Worlds. This was my eye
candy. These are the images that will stay with me forever. I can’t really remember
much of what I saw last week at the theatre.
