I like watching old movies, before there was computer generated backgrounds and green screen.
In some of those old films they relied heavily on rear projection, whether they were driving in a car, riding on a train, or just walking down the street. I can’t help but look at those films and laugh about how fake they look to my modern eyes, but I wasn’t alive when these firms were first released. I want to believe that back then this was state-of-the-art and people didn’t realize how fake they looked.
So when rear projection movies came out did audiences think they looked ‘real’ or did people say this looks fake, but it’s as good as they can make it.
My impression, and it may be just the smaller sample size of people I knew before the Internet existed, is that nobody cared whether a movie looked real or not. It wasn’t expected to look real, any more than a stage play is expected to look real. As I child I understood that movies and T.V. were a representation of what life was like, but no more real than a 2-D photograph. It wasn’t until I got online that I learned that some people compare movies and T.V. to real life and consider them to be “fake” when they don’t match up. Obviously rear projection didn’t look the way it actually looks when you are driving in a car or riding in a train, but it provided the essential information that the characters were in a moving vehicle, which was its function.
I’ll go a bit farther and say this is what movies were *expected *to look like, and audiences would have been surprised (maybe even disappointed) if one didn’t.
Reminds me of when the first hi-fi record was produced: The executive who listened to it rejected it because “it doesn’t sound like a record!”
Like all effects, it depends on how it’s done. There’s a lot of well-done rear projection in old movies, and even front-projection (in films like 2001, which isn’t as old as what you have in mind. A lot of effects work in King Kong was done via rear-projection and innovations like Miniature Rear Projection.
What’s that? You didn’t know there was projection in 2001, or that some of those scenes in KK were rear-projected? You didn’t notice it – it wasn’t badly done.
I think you’re objecting to the badly-done stuff, and assuming that you can spot all the cases of it.
2001 front projection. Betcha thought they shot this outdoors
Thanks for the education everyone. I now know a lot more about rear projection and I agree that not everyone is as obsessed with movie realism as I am.
You’ve probably seen a lot ofmatte shots without realizing it. A painting with a hole in it was placed between the camera and the live action to create backgrounds. The paintings could be incredibly detailed in a photo-realistic style.
I love pre-CGI FX. CGI ruined a lot of film fun for me, mostly in cheesy horror films where half the fun was trying to figure out how they did it. The transformation in An American Werewolf in London is beautiful. Even the Kong mask in the 1976 version is great, even if a lot of other things in the movie sucked, Rick Baker can be proud.
The original Kong is a masterpiece, no one had dreamed of some things that happen there; ditto * The Invisible man is also btilliant
One of my favorite matte shots is the scene in The Birds when the car blows up and the camera pulls back for a “bird’s eye” view. By today’s standards it’s a really simple technique, but that aerial shot of the town erupting into chaos still packs an emotional punch. (link to “before and after” image)
Front projection can be really amazing. I remember seeing 2001 when I was a kid, and I completely believed the Dawn of Man scenes were filmed on location; then I got that Making of Kubrick’s 2001 paperback and was astounded to see that it was all done in a studio.
During the 80s and 90s, there was a remarkable front-projection system called Introvision that allowed actors to move “behind” elements of a projected image. It was quite impressive when done well (as in the train-derailment scene in The Fugitive), but was made obsolete by digital compositing. (The owner of Introvision, Tom Naud, was a hucksterish type who frequently complained that the Hollywood effects community was conspiring against him. He also refused a sci-tech Academy Award because he didn’t like the wording on it.)
Well, I would say that if CGI in a film is well executed, you wouldn’t know it was there. But I can relate to your complaint. I’ve been watching the Spartacus TV series on Netflix, and although it’s an enjoyable (if sometimes silly) show, the green-screen stuff is not even remotely convincing. There are numerous outdoor scenes, and it’s painfully obvious that there’s not a single photon of natural light anywhere.
I can’t find the youtube link now, but those Law & Order scenes on the courthouse steps were amazing green screens. I really thought they were filming outside.
There’s some incredibly good CGI today that is next to impossible to detect. It’s just that the physics in superhero movies is rarely done well. People like the unrealistic look of superhero CGI (despite the clamor for “realism”), so the movies stick with the look.
The Terminator (the first one from 1984) used a lot of rear projection, the whole film looks to be actors in front of a screen for much of its running time. Very noticeable and distracting on modern “too revealing” TV screens.
