ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

Right, got it, sure.

The base was built inside the ice house, and the exterior shots other than the crash site were in those locations you named. Oddly enough, my edition of Warren's book doesn't say a word about any of the locations -- or I just went cross-eyed trying to find it. I don't know which.

In my edition of Warren's book (also listed as 1982, but with completely different ISBN number), page 151 is the last page about The Twonky and the first paragraph about War of the Worlds.

The write up on The Thing in my edition is on pages 48 through 55 -- none of which are listed next to The Thing from Another World in the Index -- and the pages it does list in the index have no mention of The Thing!

I've never been fond of Bill's wacky way of organizing his book. Simple alphabetization would have been much better.

But what about that crash scene location? Was it shot in 100 degree weather at the RKO Ranch in the San Fernando Valley like the IMDB trivia item says -- or not?

I find it highly suspicious that IMDB only lists the two locations you mentioned in their "Filming Locations" section. No mention of the San Fernando Valley.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044121/locations

So, where did that bit of information (or misinformation) come from?

To quote James T. Kirk in Wrath of Kahn, "This is damn peculiar."
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Randy]

Found the following tid-bits on IMDB:

Filmed in Glacier National Park and at a Los Angeles ice storage plant.

Howard Hawks asked the US Air Force for assistance in making the film. He was refused because the top brass felt that such cooperation would compromise the U.S. government's official stance that UFOs didn't exist.

Cost of the "Thing": 40,000 dollars.

This film was based on the short story "Who Goes There?" by Don A. Stuart. The credits on this film list the author by his real name, the science fiction editor/writer John W. Campbell Jr.

The opening credits are unusual in that they don't list a single member of the cast.

According to make up artist Lee Greenway, he took James Arness in his car to the home of producer Howard Hawks to show off the make up for the Thing. After months of frustration, Hawkes told Greenway to put a Frankenstein (1931) type of head piece on Arness.

It took makeup artist Lee Greenway five months and 18 sculptures of the creature before he came up with a design that satisfied producer Howard Hawks.

[Bud Brewster]

Ummm . . . yeah, thanks, Randy. And by the way, 15 minutes can save you 15% on your car insurance.

Now, when you can find me an old prospector who swears he was a-huntin' gold in the San Fernando Valley back during the heat wave of '51 and he stumbled into a freak snow storm where he saw a mess of scientists studying a crashed flying saucer . . . well, then I'll be impressed!

(Hey . . . that's a great idea for a story! )



"It was one of them dang Martians, I tell ya! Just as sure as yer born!"
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Randy]

[Bud Brewster]

Ah, yes. The wonderful colorized version. Welcome to the world of blue and brown . . .

Maybe the upcoming Blu-ray version will actually have a third color, like red or green. Gee, that would be peachy!

I just love the way the sky is exactly the same color as the ice. If we didn't have that white snow across the middle, it would look like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in Brown were walking on the bottom of the ocean!

The Thing from Another Whale!



I'm curious, Butch. You don't like Blu-ray discs because you said the color is off — Altaira's dress looked off-pink to you.

But your okay with a turquoise-colored North Pole?

Hmmm . . .
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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]

Bud,

Good analysis of the "saucer survey" scene. I would take issue, however, with your diagram of the "cyclorama" backdrop. You depict it as being concave horizontally.

[Bud Brewster]

I'll go ahead and post this tonight (at 2:00am right now) and hope it makes sense tomorrow.

I think I've gathered enough evidence to prove that the cyclorama was a semi-circle that went most of the way around the set. Here's what I found.

In the opening shot of the crash site we see a large expanse of the backdrop -- the biggest part shown in a single shot, because the camera is so far back from it. We know it's not a matte shot because the men stand in front of it, something not possible with a glass matte painting.



The green arrow in the picture below indicates the direction of the camera during the "circle" scene. (Yeah, yeah, that seems obvious, but hang on. I'm just gettin' warmed up.)



When the men form the circle, the camera moves across the set from right to left, and we see a big piece of the right side of the cyclorama.

The colored arrows indicate the direction the camera was facing in each shot. These pretty arrows will come in real handy shortly. Trust me. )

First we see Scotty get all excited, while the camera looks in the direction of the yellow arrow.



Then we get a peek between these two guys as the camera keeps turning while it looks in the direction of the blue arrow.



After moving past Dewey Martin with the Geiger counter, we see what's off in the direction of the orange arrow.



And when the men start chopping the ice to get the alien out, we see the section of the cyclorama that's between the first big area we saw, and all the other sections visible during the camera's slow turn after the men make the circle, as well as all the other times we see these background areas during the entire saucer crash site scene.

The area in the direction of the red arrow is the farthest point to the left we get to see, other than the long shot of the men in the circle.



I put all this info together and plotted the directions with the same colored arrows, applying them to the scene of the men in the circle. This is what they mean by "getting the big picture". (Wow, is this cool or what? )

The red star is where the Thing was found, and the red arrow is the direction the camera was pointed while the guys were chopping the ice.



From this we can plainly see that the camera covered a wide arc during various scenes. The only way it could have done this without showing visible junctions between flat sections of background paintings would be for the cyclorama to be a semi-circle that partially surrounded the set.

If the background paintings had been built in flat sections, the junctions between the various sections would have been painfully visible. This is why the Forbidden Planet cyclorama was a semi-circle.



On the map below, each man in the circle is represented by a colored star, and the Thing's location is shown as a larger red star. The colored arrows correspond to the pictures above and the arrows they contain. (Have fun comparing them! )

As I mentioned, the red line from the red star is the angle of the camera during the scene where the men chopped the ice -- the furthest point to the left we see during the entire scene, except for the long shot at the beginning.



The semi-circle around the crash site is the cyclorama itself. Part of the "bottle neck" was painted on the cyclorama, so it's "outside" the semi-circle.





Notice from the pictures above (the ones with all the arrows) that the men cast long shadows in every scene shown except the long shot when they're in the circle. The sun is nearly overhead in that one shot.

In several other scenes, such as the one below, the sun is quite high, and the shadows are short.



In all the shots with long shadows, they're being cast in the same direction, and the sun is located in the direction of the large opening of the cyclorama, as seen on the map. This would be the only direction the sun could reach the area when it was close to the horizon -- thereby casting those long shadows -- because the tall cyclorama would block it from the opposite side.

But this would also ensure that most of the cyclorama was lit by the sun coming in low in the morning-or-afternoon, depending on the direction the opening was designed to face.

The map shows that all the shots except the very first scene used the "upper" half of the cyclorama, and the opening at the "lower" half was aligned to catch the sun when it was low on the horizon, either in the morning or the afternoon.

I did notice, however, that Scotty's shadow in the long shot of the circled men is short (as they all are), and it's pointing towards the bottleneck. But his shadow in the close-up of him (in the picture with the yellow arrow) is much longer, and it's pointing away from the bottleneck.

Conclusion: The "circle scene" was filmed mid-day, when the sun was fairly high, as were several other scenes. Other than that, the shadows are consistent throughout the scene.

This concludes my presentation, ladies and gentlemen. It's 3:30am and I'm going to bed. Thank you for your attention. Please turn off the lights when you leave . . .
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Randy]

Chapter 22 of the book "Cheap Tricks and Class Acts" by John "J.J." Johnson

[Bud Brewster]

The Fin from Another World!



Starts Friday at a theater or drive-in near you.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Randy]

Wow!

"Look at the size of the prehistoric stingray we found frozen in the ice!"

[orzel-w]

Well, I'm at a disadvantage here because I don't have a copy of The Thing from Another World to examine to see if it looks to me like the camera is making the movements you perceive, Bud. So I can't debate the point any further. I guess it's high time I sprung for a copy.

As far as I can go at the moment is to say that your effort to map out camera directions based on the positions of the cast is doomed to failure. Actors are very mobile. Take, for example, these two frames:





Examine the (painted) cloud formations. Based on those, the blue arrow you show in the upper frame should be pointing in the same direction in the lower frame, instead of where you show it, passing right through the three actors on the right side of the frame (or maybe just a tad farther right).

In other words, what you're seeing in the first frame is roughly the area here in the green outline:


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...or not...

WayneO
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[Brent Gair]

This thread is hurting my brain!

[Bud Brewster]

Holy mackerel, Wayne, I thought for sure I'd made my case crystal clear. Your statement really puzzles me.

[Bud Brewster]

Stop the presses! I just figure it out!

Wayne's sharp-eyed recognition of the cloud pattern that appears in two separate scenes -- and in two very separate places -- gave me the clue I needed to solve the mystery of why Hawks never let us see in the direction of the saucer's slide path other than the long shots when the men approach the site and when they form the circle!

The reason the cloud patterns in these too scenes are the same, even though the clouds are over two very different spots is . . . it's the same section of the cyclorama, used in two locations!

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First they used it here, as the background for the initial approach and the scene of the men in the circle.



Then they moved it to the side of the set for the rest of the shots. Heck, why do a painting for both scenes when you can use one painting twice!



That means my map needs to be amended to look like this --



-- with the straight blue line being the background painting used for the long shots, after which it was relocated to the side and reshaped as the cyclorama.

Hot damn, I am so good at this!
_________________
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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]

I, too, was straining to find the saucer's fin in the close-up shots where it was depicted in the long shots.