Albert Whitlock: "The River" (1984)
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- Опубліковано 8 вер 2024
- Albert Whitlock's Matte Department provided two establishing shots for the 1984 film "The River" starring Mel Gibson and Sissy Spacek. This video also highlights a very special optical printer commissioned by Bill Taylor for the matte department that was used later at Illusion Arts.
According to Bill Taylor in a 2016 interview, "The camera head was approximately four feet long. That meant that even the slightest vibration was visible as a soft image as optical printers tended to expose at low frame rates. This problem led me to endless focus tests. I finally realized that it wasn't out-of-focus. The heads were moving relative to each other. The proof in the pudding was when I took a film can and filled it with water and put it on the rails of the camera. As a truck drove by in the street in front of the matte department at Universal, you could see water vibrations. Fortunately, I knew that lasers used so-called laser tables which were giant honeycombed tables, ranging in thickness. Those tables are, themselves, suspended on hydro-pneumatic jacks. The laser table provides all the stiffness you could want and the jacks soak up all the low-frequency vibration from passing trucks, etc. And, suddenly, these very expensive lenses that I had commissioned got a lot sharper. My English lens designer David Grafton said, 'you know it helps a lot if you don't move them!' And he was right. So we threw away the angle-iron base for the printer and George Randall refabricated it to a much shorter base that we just bolted to the laser table. The laser table was threaded with quarter-inch holes at two-inch intervals. It solved that problem."
Keep em coming! Wonderful stuff!
Thank you, Steve, for your feedback! Wind for the traditionally matte painted sails!
@@thomashigginson2807 I was fortunate to meet Albert and Syd on a job in Munich years ago, and grilled Albert about his work for hours which he loved, and heard some amazing anecdotes, then met Bill years later in LA, another seriously nice and talented guy... They've created a phenomenal legacy, and glad I met them..
Loving these videos! Your efforts are amazing 👏
Thank you, Glen! Syd is so understanding as we fumble our way to putting these videos together!
@@thomashigginson2807 Bless your hearts. The work you guys are doing is phenomenal and inspiring.
I couldn't understand the process from Mel Brook's description until I saw this, but I still didn't see the hole-in-the-matte trick he talked about.
Our channel assumes most are familiar with traditional matte shots (shooting both live-action and painting on the same original negative), but it will be helpful for us to put up a video that walks through the entire process for new fans to this lost art form. We've got one coming up!