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FEATURED THREADS for 4-28-22

 
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Bud Brewster
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Joined: 14 Dec 2013
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 28, 2022 12:11 pm    Post subject: FEATURED THREADS for 4-28-22 Reply with quote



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A machine that can record your thoughts, your emotions, and your physical sensations would revolutionize the world! And that's the premise of "Brainstorm".

Just think — never again would you forget where you left your car kess. Shocked

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Should stop motion look so real it's indistinguishable from CGI? Of course not! That's like wanting an oil painting to be so detailed that it looks just like a photograph.

Where's the "art" in that? Confused

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Want the ultimate entertainment center? Don't just turn ylour living room into a "home theater" — turn your entire house into a mini-cinema, complete with a marquee out front! Very Happy




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Brainstorm (1983)

IMDB has 24 trivia items for this movie. Here’s a few of the ones I found the most interesting, in the blue text. Very Happy
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~ When Natalie Wood died near the end of principal photography, studio executives tried to kill the film and claim the insurance, saying that director Douglas Trumbull could not complete the film.

However, Trumbull's contract gave that decision to him, and he insisted on completing it, using a stand-in and changing camera angles for the few remaining shots of Wood's character. The resulting hostility between Trumbull and the studio executives meant that this would be Trumbull's last Hollywood film. He has since devoted his efforts to effects work for IMAX films, theme park rides and the like.


Note from me: This contradicts what I posted earlier about how Natalie Wood's death did not cause problems for the production, although it would seem there weren't a large number of unfinished shots that included Miss Wood.

~ The tape used in the tape machines is a variety of decorative tape made by 3M. 3M only sold it in four-inch widths, so it had to be slit by hand to two-inch widths to fit in the tape machines.

When filmed, they were astounded at how gaudy it looked, so to dampen its brightness, the prop crew wound the tape back and forth across a sander to dull its brilliance. "One of those things that actually looked a lot better on film when we finished with it," Douglas Trumbull commented.


Note from me: The tape with the shiny bands looks perfect for what it's supposed to be; a way to store massive amounts of data per inch. I'm impressed with that they chose to use in the movie. Clever. Cool

~ Douglas Trumbull originally wanted to film this movie in "Showscan", a 60-frame-per-second widescreen process he'd developed, but the costs of retrofitting theaters to show it proved prohibitive.

If the "Showscan" version had been made, each non-"Brainstorm" frame would have been printed twice to create a 30-frame-per-second "normal" film rate to complement the cropped, non-widescreen shots. The intent was to create an experience similar to what the onscreen characters were "viewing."


Note from me: This would have made the segments of "recorded experiences" much sharper than the "normal" scenes. What the item doesn't mention is that the image on the screen would be large as well during the recorded experiences. This next item confirms this.

~ The film was conceived as an introduction to Douglas Trumbull's Showscan 60 frames-per-second 70mm film process. "In movies people often do flashbacks and point-of-view shots as a gauzy, mysterious, distant kind of image," Trumbull recalled, "And I wanted to do just the opposite, which was to make the material of the mind even more real and high-impact than 'reality'."

However, MGM backed out of plans to release the experimental picture in the new format. Trumbull instead shot the virtual reality sequences in 24-fps Super Panavision 70 with an aspect ratio of 2.2:1. The rest of the film was shot in conventional 35mm with an aspect ratio of approximately 1.7 to 1.


Note from me: This next item states this in a different way, although I'm not sure if the reference to the wider aspect ratio is correctly stated.

~ When the film was shown in the UK it was advertised as being in "Dynamic Expanding Frame", which meant that, although much of the film was in the conventional 35mm format, for the subjective camera scenes of people using the helmet, the image would suddenly expand into a huge 70mm wide-screen aspect ratio.

Note from me: 35mm film and 70mm film can both be the same aspect ratio. if just depends on the anamorphic lens used. But 70mm is much more fine-grained, so the image is sharper, making it possible to project a larger image on the screen without loosing the clarity it needs to look "real".

~ The corporate board demo is seen to be taking place over an acoustic coupled modem, using a then-standard telephone handset. Such connections were limited to about 300 bits per second, or less than 40 characters of text per second. Such a speed is barely adequate for a text-based 80x25 terminal screen without any graphics. A fax transmission at the lowest usable resolution over such a line would require many minutes for a single image.

Note from me: The movie makes this mistake in several scenes when Christopher Walken is running the Louise Fletcher death experience. It's always through a phone line.

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The Thing from Another World (1951)

Pow wrote:
If you look at an excellent print of the scene of the battle between Sinbad & the skeleton in 1958's "The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad" it is an amazing blend of live action & stop~motion animation.

Sir, I must respectfully (and strongly) disagree with your assertion that the skeleton fight in Sinbad (or any another Harryhausen scene) could be described as "an amazing blend of live action & stop~motion animation."

Naturally, seeing the two elements together is wonderful. But those two never really "blend". They co-exist in beautiful contrast . . . Cool


___________Sinbad VS Evil Magician's Skeleton


__________


Those of us who love animation take great delight in watching what is quite obviously a stop-motion model on a table, with a rear projection screen behind it showing us an actor pretending to fight with the skeleton.

Knowing how it's done and what awesome skills are required to do it are what makes it so amazing! The very fact that it's not realistic is why this is art. Harryhausen himself has stated in interviews that his animation is not supposed to look realistic.

It's supposed to be a "fantasy on film".

Please forgive me, guys, but the point I keep harping on is that in a story like Who Goes There?, the audience needs to believe that the hideous, shape-shifting alien is right there in the room with the terrified humans . . . not perched on an animation table in front of a rear projection screen while the actors cringe convincingly.

That's what made Carpenter's The Thing so shocking. Everything we saw was right there with the actors — pulsing with life, glistening with goo, dripping all over the place! Shocked

In other words, the creatures were doing all the things that stop motion cannot do . . . by it's very nature. Sad

Gentlemen, I haven't forgotten that we're talking about film-making in the early 1950s, so what I'm suggesting is the use of elaborate creature FX like those done in Them! — but much better. A creepy alien being, manipulated by operators who bring it to life in brief scenes which tease the audience and convince them that this unholy creature is very close to the terrified people . . . oozing with goo, throbbing with life, pulsing with evil! Shocked

I hate to say it, but this is not a story which needs stunning stop-motion by Harryhausen, using beautifully designed creatures similar to this one.






It needs something tangible and repulsive and shockingly real . . . like this one!





And the creature needs to be right there on the set, fighting with the characters, frightening the audience, threatening the people in the movie we've come to care about! Shocked

Gentlemen, please understand that I respect your opinions. Nobody on Earth loves stop motion more than yours truly — which is why I spent many hours in my youth creating short 8mm movies with little clay models.



_ __


Howard Hawks knew that the alien had to be right there with the actors — not separated by FX techniques and obvious edits which shattered the audience's suspicion of disbelief.

After all, a technique like stop motion is supposed to yank the audience out of reality and plunge them into fantasy! Harryhausen told us this himself.

But a movie based on Who Goes There? is supposed to envelope the audience in a non-stop nightmare which pulls them deeper and deeper into a horrible experience . . . one from which there is no escape! Shocked

And that, guys, is the whole problem with using stop motion in a movie like this. Harryhausen's animation is intended to be an escape from reality, a doorway into an enjoyable fantasy world. It is NOT supposed to convince us that what we're seeing is real!

In fact, it's exactly the reverse . . . it's supposed to present us with images which are miraculously unreal!
Cool

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Strange Invaders (1983)

IMDB has 15 trivia items for this movie. Here’s a few of the ones I found the most interesting, in the blue text. Very Happy

~ Second part of an incomplete trilogy, known as the "Strange Trilogy", by writer-director Michael Laughlin. The first part had been Strange Behavior (1981).

Note from me: I looked up Strange Trilogy to see if we should have a thread for it, but it's listed as a horror film, so I guess not.

~ The movie is a homage to the the golden age of science fiction films of the 1950s particularly Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958).

Note from me: Knowing this before I watched a rented tape of this movie on a special "movie night" with a group friends in the 1980s, I had high expectations. Unfortunately the movie was a big disappointment. The story was confusing and forgettable, the photography was poor, and the acting was unremarkable. Sad

But I did have a good time that evening, because this movie was part of a triple feature, and with the help of my friend and fellow artist, Jim Peavy — the guy wearing the yellow Georgia Fine Arts Academy T-shirt (click on his name to see Jim's artwork) — we created a cardboard marquee to go over the old steel awning above the front door of the small house I owned in those days! Cool



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Yes, I know . . . I spelled Paramount wrong. The Typo King of All Sci-Fi was alive and well, even back in the 1980s . . . Rolling Eyes

~ Two stars from the cult classic sci-fi series Lost in Space (1965), Mark Goddard and June Lockhart, appear in this film, which is a homage to cult sci-fi.

Note from me: I appreciate the various elements of this movie which were intended to be an homage to the classic sci-fi of the 1950 and 1960s, but the film itself just doesn't succeed. Sad

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