American Cinematographer - September 1998 - 130

We've

Never

Been

Licked, which

featured the

wizardry of famed visual
effects cinematographer John P. Fulton,

ASC. A wealth of detail includes several
"Zeros"

(fighter planes), anti-aircraft

guns and nine-inch figures of crew
members. Fred Knoth's pyrotechnics

is

prepping the ship for destruction
by torpedoes, bombs and a suicide plane.
Fulton added more reality to the effect by
staging live-action elements and printing
them onto the deck of the ship. The two
smaller ships are actually speedboats
crew

from which concealed

cameramen

could

capture varied angles of the action.
In the

photo of the ship raging in

flames, Fulton is the man in the outboard
motorboat, heading in for some close
views. Camera
In

cranking speeds for such

pioneer French producer
Georges Melies staged his own version
of

1987,

a sea

battle in the Greco-Turkish War,

using toy-size ships in a tiny ocean. A
few months later he used miniatures to
stage the destruction of the U.S.S.
Maine in Havana Harbor and the naval

seige of Manila. At about the

same time
in New York, artists Albert E. Smith and

J. Stuart Blackton, the founders of Vita-

graph Pictures, produced the Battle of
Santiago Bay in miniature. The "bay"
was actually one of Blacktons mounted
canvasses

turned face down and filled

with water, while the

photos
pulled
with strings. Explosions were simulated
by setting off black powder with a wire
taper, and the "smoke of battle" was
rendered with cigar and cigarette smoke
mounted

on

blown into the
and

office

ships

were

wooden bases and

scene

by Mrs. Blackton

boy.
primitive efforts seemed
real enough to the film patrons of that
time, but it's a giant step removed from
the sinking of the Titanic in last year's
mind-boggling, blockbuster production.
The intervening century has seen many
strikingly realistic depictions of catastro¬
an

These

128

September 1998

phes at sea, crafted with increasingly
sophisticated techniques. Long before
the dawn of digital effects, large minia¬
tures
if you'll pardon the contradiction
in terms
were employed for sea
action. The ships had to be fairly big
because water, flames and explosions do
-

-

not lend themselves to miniaturization.

The

a

ranged from six to

as

much

as

15

this kind

was

filmed in shallow water in

studio tanks, with the

ships moving

on

rails, but Fulton preferred natural bodies
of water and motorized
sequences were

ships. These
executed in the bay at

Santa Barbara. The

cameraman

also

built to order in 1942

utilized Lake Tahoe, the Salton Sea and
other locations for further marine scenes.

medium-budget Universal picture,

-George Turner

Japanese aircraft carrier

shown above

for

action

times normal frame rates. Most action of

was



American Cinematographer - September 1998

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