American Cinematographer - December 1988 - 32
wrong, but it's that much easier to
troubleshoot any problems on the
Top: Eight-inch
beetle puppet in a
miniature setting.
set. Bob and I both come
Mirrors in fore¬
budget school of thinking,
a scotch
tape and rubberband
approach to solving problems."
ground bounce light
into
scene.
with
Below:
Adam's ",stretch
Short is well known for
head"
ted
from the
low
being sculp¬
by Mike Hosch.
his water related effects, such as the
mermaid tail in Splash and the dol¬
phins and cocoons from Cocoon.
"No one particular effect offered
the most challenge," says Short,
"but the sheer number and diver¬
sity of effects was staggering."
They involve the widest range of the
movie magician's art, including
shrimp cocktails attacking dinner
guests, transformations, headless
bodies running around, people
sprouting spikes, ripping off their
faces or distorting them hideously,
giant sandworms, snakes, a six foot
beetle, a fly, and a variety of walk¬
ing corpses and ghosts.
"Each effect required a
different technique and there was
hardly any overlap of application
from effect to effect," Short allows.
"Budgeting
was a
best
guess sce¬
nario, but Alan Munro's sto¬
ryboards
showed
precise and
knowledge of
to accomplish
were very
an
excellent
what it would take
the effects in terms of
camera an¬
gles and such. They were very
helpful in keeping the budget
down.
"Most of the designs were
by either Rick Heinrichs or
myself," explained Munro. "Rick
had a precise sense of what Tim
wanted and would always kind of
done
"It's
basically taking a
placing it at
a 45 degree angle directly in front of
front surface mirror and
the
camera
lens," Munro contin¬
stage with
ued. "The blacked out
whatever is
going to disappear is at
degree angle and an equal
distance from the plane of the glass
as the real set. Then, of course, they
must be lighted separately. The oth¬
er critical factor is that the object
being reflected has to be flopped,
to right hair parts, rings on the
fingers and so on. "On one particu¬
a
90
lar shot where the character Bar¬
bara is
supposed to be vanishing,
and passes his
through her body. For that I
Adam reaches up
accompanying shadow
heighten the feeling
that they are in the same physical
place. All of the elements are to¬
gether on stage, and it's easier than
trying to coordinate them at a
on
her face to
later date."
To helm the film's vast
ray
ar¬
of creature and makeup effects,
production compa¬
selected Robert Short. "Bob and
Cinematographer
ishing touches. Tim would assign
either Rick or myself to design a
specific creature, be it a transfor¬
mation, the preacher, charman, or
whatever. In
a
lot of
do the initial
cases
I would
design, then Rick
might do the final drawings. In oth¬
er cases it would be
exactly the
opposite. The only things designed
solely by one of us were the sand-
a
lot of ideas about ap¬
proach, such as always trying to
keep things as basic and low tech as
possible," Munro said. "Anytime
you over-complicate things, you
magnify the probability that some¬
number of
American
the final arbiter of the fin¬
would do
matched his hand gestures
to cast
as
ny
I share
by Geena (Davis who plays
Barbara) in front of a light and
stood
act
Munro and the
thing will go wrong. By keeping
everything simple and straightfor¬
ward, you not only minimize the
hand
30
the correct
December 1988
things that
can go
worm
some
refinements, and I
and the snake, which were
Rick's."
"One of the
things
we
prided ourselves on," Short relates,
"was being able to duplicate exactly
the designs given to us from pro¬
duction. At the director's request,
American Cinematographer - December 1988
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - December 1988
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