ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

Just to get a thread going for This Island Earth, here's the debate we had about whether the saucer had "port holes" or "gun ports".

Fortunately I placed a copy of my post on that subject at the Classic Horror Film Board and was able to copy and paste it here!
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Until recently I'd always thought the round shapes that encircled the upper and lower sections of the saucer were either view ports or gun ports -- probably the latter, because when it fires its weapon, the plasma beam seems to be coming from the holes in the side.



But I learned from orzel-w that the round shapes aren't holes at all -- they're actually indentations or dimples. You can tell from the way the hi-lights and shadow are formed when the light hits them.

In this picture, the saucers is lit from two separate directions -- but the light source coming from the left is low, only shining on the bottom, while the light source coming from the right is high, only shining on the top.



As a result, the highlights and shadows for the dimples on the top are the reverse of those on the bottom -- and each set is consistent with the direction of the light source.

It's exactly the way craters are illuminated. If the sun is on the left, the inside shadow is also on the left, and the inside highlight is on the right.

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Therefore, no matter what they're supposed to be in the movie, the miniature doesn't have view ports or gun ports.

Just lots of cute little dimples.



This explains why the "port holes" are never illuminated in the movie!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

There's a discussion on the CHFB about the dimples around saucer, and one CHFB member suggested the Metalunans stole Earth's golf ball technology to make the pattern -- to which I replied with this.
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Well, all right! It's about time some of those aliens started stealing our technology for a change! And that explains why the surface of their saucer looks like a freshly mowed baseball field!

They're sports fans!




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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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An interesting question from a Classic Horror Film Board member.

[orzel-w]

Those screen grabs of the neutrino ray firing on the fleeing woody are good examples of why I think the ray effect was accomplished by scratching the emulsion or applying a bleach directly to it.

Back in the days of Super8 film, I experimented with these types of effects. Unfortunately, the very small size of Super8 magnified any flaws in the technique. Scratching the emulsion created a U-shaped trough with the displaced emulsion piled up along the sides. The displaced emulsion appeared onscreen as black outlines, while the U-shape of the film base acted like a lens to disperse the light passing through it, making the "ray" darker than the expected effect. Larger formats like 16mm and 35mm wouldn't have the same problem. I eventually discovered that regular household bleach would dissolve the emulsion so that it could be wiped off, leaving a clear, flat film base, with just a small fringe of blue at the edges of where the bleach was applied. Then the only problem was finding the optimum tool for applying the bleach precisely.

The final neutrino blasts that take out the woody have a smeared appearance, as though a bleach or solvent approach may have been used for them.
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...or not...

WayneO
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[Pye-Rate]

Just how did the beams come DOWN?

They were bounced off the Heaviside layer! (Properly the Kennelly—Heaviside layer.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennelly%E2%80%93Heaviside_layer

Anyone besides me and Butch remember the Heaviside layer?

[orzel-w]

[Pow]

Interesting film & considered by many as a more intelligent sf movie from the 50s.

And yet Mystery Theater 3000 had fun with it.

[Maurice]

The shot is flopped, obviously, and the wheels on the far side aren't off the ground... they're downright missing!
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"The absence of limitations is the enemy of art."
― Orson Welles

[Bud Brewster]

[Krel]

I think that the wheel is there, you just can't see it because of the angle of the car in the shot. I also think that the whole car is airborne as it comes over the hill in that scene.

David.

[Eadie]

[Bud Brewster]

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I was all set to agree with Eadie about the car bouncing, thinking perhaps the wheel bounced up towards the wheel well, which is why we can see dirt being kicked up by the front tires in this new screen grab I took tonight.



Then I noticed that a split second later -- in the bright red picture on the earlier post that started this controversy -- the dirt in the air had disappeared!

And this is when the tire suddenly looks odd.



So I made a new screen grab that shows the car just as the explosion starts, a split second later. It's basically the same shot as the "red one" -- but without the red.

Guess what I noticed?

In this newest picture we can see that the real car has been replaced by a superimposed image taken from the shot in the top picture -- but without the dirt.



Notice the color of the sky through car's windows: it's suddenly light blue, and it doesn't match the color of the sky around it like it did an instant before.

And notice the faint light-colored matte line between the ground and the sky -- especially visible between the ground and the rear tire. The portion of the frame that showed the real car sitting on the ground (kicking up dirt) is now an image matted in, so they could remove it during the explosion.

You can see the difference between the real car and the matted image in this side-by-side comparison.



Also notice how far to the left the car goes in the first picture, but it's gone an instant later in the second picture.



So, we were all tricked by a special effect, folks. The car doesn't look like it's sitting on the ground . . . because it isn't! The car and the ground "below it" are two parts of a composite shot.

Ta-daaa! Mystery solved.

(Damn, I'm good! )
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Randy]

The only thing that I ever noticed was that the "beams" coming down at the car caused the steering wheel and the driver to switch sides from the wheel and driver on the left side of the car to wheel and driver on the right side of the car. I wonder if the driver's heart also switched from the left side to the right side of his body.

Those beams must be more potent then we realized!

[Bud Brewster]

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Don't be silly, Randy. Russell Johnson just slide over to the right real fast 'cause he could tell which side of the car the beam was aimed at.

He was right. Look where it hit!


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[orzel-w]

Here's my drawing of the Interociter, which I had posted previously on the old site.


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...or not...

WayneO
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