The 1940s — An overview of special effects

At the beginning of the 40s, most of Hollywood’s leading effects people had over a decade of experience in studio production behind them and were masters of the various techniques available to them. Rear projection, optical printing, matte painting, etc, played a key role in the majority of studio productions, and were considered as a part of the normal film production process.

The rise of color photography as a viable option production in the 1940s, brought significant changes to the industry. For effects technicians, color was a challenge. Rear projection in color was at first a vivid but unattainable dream. The background images projected on to a screen behind actors in the studio were not bright enough to be re-filmed in color. Nonetheless a powerful new projection system devised at Paramount helped to overcome this problem in the early 1940s.

Travelling matte techniques (techniques which convincingly combine images that have been filmed at different times or locations) also needed modification to accommodate colour. The first new method was pioneered and used in the 1940 version of The Thief of Bagdad.

The Caliph enjoys an airborne horse ride over his city in one of the first-ever Technicolor blue-screen travelling mattes for The Thief of Bagdad. The film won the Academy Award for Best Special Effects in 1940.

Blue-screen separation process, employed for the first time in The Thief of Bagdad (1940).

The technique that was most affected by the arrival of color was matte painting. In black-and-white the painter and the photographer only had to worry about matching the greyscale tones of painting and filmed action. In Technicolor, however every color and shade of painting had to match exactly those of the original footage after both had been combined under different lighting conditions. The first major display of Technicolor matte painting was Gone with the Wind (1939).

A screenshot from the epic Gone with the Wind, a successful blend of painting and live action.

Despite the success of Technicolor, however, it was both an intensive and expensive system, and so was generally reserved for prestige productions. Thus the majority of films in the 1940s continued to be shot in black-and-white.

After the United States entered the war in 1941, Hollywood began to mass-produce war films. Many of the American war films in the early 1940s were designed to celebrate American unity and demonize the enemy. Thus the re-creation of battlefields, destroyer-prowled oceans and fighter-filled skies fell to the effects technicians ; and so war films relied heavily on models and miniature photography.

Films such as Ships with Wings (1942) relied on model ships, planes and miniature pyrotechnics for their portrayal of war.

Special effects in Citizen Kane ?

Citizen Kane (1941), directed by Orson Welles, has been hailed by many as one of the greatest film ever made. Its narrative structure, acting, editing and cinematography have provoked tons of praise. It also demonstrates the most impressive array of special effects of its time : it was a tour de force of matte paintings, miniatures and ingenious optical printing techniques. However, perhaps due to their invisibility, the film was not even nominated in the special effects category of that year’s Academy Awards.

The entire film is indeed littered with subtle optical effects made by Linwood Dunn and matte painting created by Mario Larrinaga. Dunn and Larrinaga, who both previously worked on King Kong (1933), are considered as the two key-men of the special effect staff for Citizen Kane.

The rally scene — virtually all paint except for the stage area.

Special effects are everywhere in Citizen Kane, but in most cases are hard to identify. Thus, matte paintings enlarged the interiors of Kane’s house and the exterior of the Kane newspaper offices. Clever optical printing multiplied the crowds at a political rally and combined live action and models to exaggerate the size of an opera house. Hanging miniatures were used to add ceilings to sets, and stop-motion animation created the movements of vehicles on the Xanadu building site. Convincing make-up effects made Welles look both younger and considerably older than his real age.

A FX technique consisting in combining a matte painting for the background with a miniature mountainside with dozens of stop motion trucks and machinery. This unfinished frame still lacks the foreground component which will be added during process projection.

Linwood Dunn with an optical printer

The optical printer was widely used during the production of Citizen Kane. Linwood Dunn estimated that over fifty percent of Citizen Kane was optically improved. Optical printer was used to combine elements in many pre-planned shots : when all the elements of a special effects shot have been produced — models, animation, live action, travelling mattes — the separate pieces must be reassembled to form a single, completed image inclusion in the final version of the film. This technique which combines multiple images in order to create a final composite image is called “optical composition“.

Principle of composition technique with a four-head optical printer

The 1930s — An overview of special effects

For the ones who are not “initiates“ it would be interested to know general purpose about special effects during the 30s.
The period of the 30s known actually a greatest technical development with the coming of sound — the “talkie“ — and in the mid-1930s, the big studios were producing all their major film in sound.

With films being made exclusively on studio lots, effects technicians had to find ways to bring any location to the set. The technology that was developed enabled the first practical use of rear projection, a process enabling background scenery to be projected on to a screen behind actors while filming in the studio. Over the next twenty years the technique would be perfected for use in almost every Hollywood production, providing backdrops for ocean-going romance, tropical adventures and journeys in cars !

For The Invisible Man (1933), the FX team used mechanical systems and wires to make doors open, chairs move and items float around as if the unseen hero of the film was actually interacting with them. In the above scene, the presence of the invisible man indicated by the appearance of his footprints in fresh snow is achieved thanks to a floor with foot-shaped holes in it which are opened sequentially during the filming causing the effect of snow compressed by invisible feet.

Technicians stage an indoor sea battle for Jack Ahoy (1934).

By the middle of the decade, special effects had advanced so much that a single department under the name of “special effects“ was not enough, and each studio’s effects department had several subdivisions : special effects departments were responsible for rear projection, miniatures, physical and mechanical effects, optical departments were responsible for matte paintings and optical printing,… Special effects became an integral aspect of movie making during the decade. There were good investments in technology and leeway for innovation. For example, in 1932 the construction of Universal’s first dedicated special effects stage was ordered ; and 1939 marked the first year of the creation of the Best Achievement in Special Effects Academy Award.

The impressive twister scene in The Wizard of Oz (1939), the tornado was made using a huge funnel-shaped bag coiling by a blowing fan and emitting a cloud of dust.

King Kong — The FX masterpiece of the 30s —

King Kong (1933) is the greatest effects film of the 30s. It is such a boundary breaking classic that I have to talk about it !

King Kong was undoubtedly the most extraordinary technical achievement of its time. It used actually every technique available at the period, including animation, miniatures, matte paintings (painted artwork, usually of a location, combined with live-action footage), travelling mattes (techniques which convincingly combine images that have been filmed at different times or locations), rear projection (a method combining live-action foregrounds with pre-filmed background scenery), and miniature rear projection.

Matte paintings were used to portray many locations including the established shots of Skull Island and the New York skyline.

Willis O’Brien, who previously directed the FX for The Lost World in 1925, brought the story to life by supervising the special effects. He called Marcel Delgado (a sculptor and model maker he worked with on The Lost World) to create the marvelous model creatures of the film. At this time the team composed of Delgado and O’Brien was one of the most respected special effects crews in Hollywood, particularly for their special skills in building miniature creatures and sets as well as in stop-motion animation.

The mighty Kong was portrayed by a 46 cm puppet made of an assemblage of metal, rubber and fur. For Kong, Delgado even stretched rubber tendons between joints to give the ape a realistic sinewy appearance. A full-size bust, arm and leg were built for close-ups. Stop-motion was used for animating the Kong puppet, just as the Skull Island dinosaurs, and the attacking aircraft sequences.

A nice behind the scenes photo revealing the detail of the model miniatures and the size of the matte painting backings.

For King Kong, O’Brien needed to mix real-life actors with his animated wonders. He used a FX process called “rear projection“ which greatly developed in the early 1930s. After much experimentation, O’Brien and his team perfected a method of miniature rear projection. Small jungle sets were built with small areas where images could be rear-projected on to miniature screens. Before each shot was filed, many tests were made in order to match the lighting of the miniature set with the exposure of the rear-projected images. During animation, the model creatures were manipulated fractionally, the rear-projected image was advanced by one frame, and a frame of the composite image photographed before the process was repeated.

Miniature rear projection process.

A model dinosaur through O’Brien’s atmospheric forest settings. The bottom of the image has been matted out to receive a live-action element.

The animation of Kong took over a year to complete. Some animation sessions turned into marathon events. Once started, the animation of a shot continued until it was finished ; the animation team quickly learned that shots begun one working day and completed the next one because of the stop-motion process shooting one frame at time… There were other unexpected hitches in the animation process. On one occasion an animator was halfway through a shot when he noticed that a pair of pliers left on the set was just visible in the bottom of the frame. Not wanting to start the sequence afresh, the animator slowly animated the out-of-focus grey shape out of the shot, hoping that it would look like a passing jungle creature !…

While a team of animators achieved much of the animation of Kong in long-shot, O’Brien animated particularly emotional scenes and close-ups himself. As a result, Kong remains perhaps the most emotive creature to have been created for the screen and deserves its nickname : the “Eight Wonder“. King Kong was a sensational hit on its release and again when re-released in 1952. The public flocked to see the film, thrilled by both the story and the wonders of a lifelike giant ape.

A short overview of special effects before the 30s

Before talking about special effects in the films of the 1930s and the 40s, it would be interesting to know where was exactly the development of FX techniques at the late 20s.

Actually, American film making flowered in the 1920s. Film makers began to branch out beyond the artistic and technical boundaries established by the pioneers of the previous decade, and relied increasingly on special effects. The first studio departments dedicated to the creation of special effects were created at this time. Either way, the term “special effects“ received its first screen credit in the 1926 Fox picture What Price Glory ?

The 1920s knew the beginning of the wide-sprayed use of small models in the film making industry (models, objects or locations that were too big, expensive or impractical to be filmed in any other way). At this time, Hollywood was the world’s leading film factory, but the special effects of German film makers, with their mechanical expertise, was technically far superior (particularly the ambitious and expensive productions directed by the German film maker Fritz Lang).

Screenshot of The Lost World (1925), this ambitious American version of Conan Doyle’s novel used startling stop-motion animated dinosaurs miniatures created by Willis O’Brien (who will manage the special effects in the 1933 version of King Kong).

Fritz Lang’s effects masterpiece, Metropolis (1926), a visionary science-fiction fable that made stunning use of more than 200 matte paintings and models.

Thus, German films were a major influence on American film makers of the 1920s. The spectacular The Thief of Bagdad (1924) used opulent sets and the best effects Hollywood could buy in an attempt to compete with German films of the time. Moreover Ben Hur (1925) required the creation of a full-scale Circus Maximus and a fleet of seven huge Roman galleys on location in Italy. But a number of incidents — including the burning of the galleys (!) — combined with bad weather and Italian labour disputes, brought the production back to California. The film was completed rebuilt sets with significant use of miniatures.

Douglas Fairbanks on a flying carpet suspented by unseen wires above hundreds of extras on the set of The Thief of Bagdad (1924).

From off-camera, the miniature components of the arena used for Ben Hur (1925) is clearly visible. When filmed from the correct angle, the combination of full-scale set and miniature is seamless (bottom). The foreground miniature film technique used is succinctly explained by the sketch below.

The foreground miniature is exactly what its name suggests : a small model that is carefulled designed and placed in front of the full-scale film set (so their line of perspective match seamlessly together). This technique (therefore often called “hanging miniatures“) will be frequently used in the 1930s and 40s film productions.

Welcome to the FX Making Of Blog !

Welcome to the FX Making Of Blog. I’ll be posting various articles of interest covering the history, development and technique of the cinema special effects (often simply abbreviated as “FX“) during the 30s and the 40s. Be sure to check in regularly to keep up with the latest scoop !