SYSK’s Summer Movie Playlist: Special Effects: A Short History

Summary

Stuff You Should Know – Episode: SYSK’s Summer Movie Playlist: Special Effects: A Short History

Hosts: Josh Clark & Chuck Bryant
Release Date: June 27, 2025
Production: iHeartPodcasts

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Introduction to Special Effects

The episode kicks off with Josh Clark welcoming listeners to the Summer Movie Playlist, focusing on the evolution of special effects in cinema. Josh emphasizes the transition from practical effects to modern CGI, highlighting the craftsmanship involved in early special effects techniques.

Josh Clark [02:25]: "This episode is all about special effects. We tried to cram as much as we possibly could into this episode..."

Types of Special Effects

Josh and Chuck delve into the three primary categories of special effects: practical, in-camera, and post-production. They discuss how these techniques interplay to create believable cinematic experiences.

• Practical Effects: Physical elements on set, such as makeup, prosthetics, explosions, and blood packets (squibs).
• In-Camera Effects: Manipulations during filming, including slow motion, fast motion, and stop-motion techniques.
• Post-Production Effects: CGI and digital enhancements applied after filming.

Chuck Bryant [07:03]: "Effects are divided into three general categories... practical, in-camera, and post-production."

Early Pioneers of Special Effects

The conversation shifts to the pioneers who laid the foundation for special effects in film.

• Alfred Clark: Credited with the first special effect using the stop trick in his 1893 film The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots. He seamlessly replaced actors mid-scene to create the illusion of beheading.

  Chuckle Bryant [13:17]: "He uses a stop trick with Mary getting beheaded, and right when the axe is going to fall, you know, he switches her out for a dummy."

• Georges Méliès: Known as the father of special effects, Méliès pioneered techniques like double exposure and matte painting. His iconic film A Trip to the Moon (1902) showcased elaborate sets and in-camera effects that were revolutionary for its time.

  Josh Clark [16:01]: "Georges Méliès is known for A Trip to the Moon, one of the first actual movies with extensive special effects."

Matte Painting Technique

Matte painting is highlighted as a cornerstone of special effects, especially before the advent of digital tools. The hosts explain how artists painted detailed cityscapes or landscapes on glass to extend or create new environments on screen.

Chuck Bryant [21:38]: "Matte painting is the single most important and widespread special effect ever."

Notable Example:

• Mary Poppins: The flying scenes were achieved using matte paintings to create the whimsical London backdrop.
• Superman: The Fortress of Solitude was brought to life through matte painting techniques, providing an expansive and otherworldly setting.

Projection Techniques: Front and Rear Projection

Josh and Chuck discuss projection techniques used to simulate dynamic environments, such as driving scenes. These methods involved projecting backgrounds onto screens behind actors while physically shaking props like cars to mimic movement.

Chuck Bryant [27:16]: "Rear and front projection... used in scenes like Pulp Fiction's cab ride to create immersive environments."

Advancements in CGI and Digital Effects

The episode transitions into the digital revolution in special effects, emphasizing how CGI has transformed filmmaking.

• Jurassic Park (1993): A landmark in CGI, the film combined practical effects with CGI to create lifelike dinosaurs, setting new standards for visual realism.

  Josh Clark [38:23]: "The velociraptors in the kitchen scene used a blend of puppets, animatronics, and CGI, resulting in an Oscar-worthy effect."

• Industrial Light & Magic (ILM): Founded by George Lucas, ILM revolutionized special effects with projects like Star Wars, utilizing motion control cameras to animate large-scale space battles with intricate model work.

  Chuck Bryant [35:05]: "ILM used motion control cameras to make stationary models appear dynamic, as seen in the space battles of Star Wars."

Notable Special Effects Artists

The hosts pay homage to influential artists who have shaped the field of special effects.

• Willis O'Brien: Pioneer of stop-motion animation, best known for his work on the 1933 classic King Kong. His meticulous frame-by-frame technique brought the iconic ape to life.

  Chuck Bryant [46:30]: "Willis O'Brien's work on King Kong involved seven weeks of stop-motion photography for a three-minute fight scene."

• Ray Harryhausen: Continued O'Brien’s legacy with groundbreaking work on films like Jason and the Argonauts and Clash of the Titans, perfecting the art of animated creatures interacting with live actors.

• Millicent Patrick: One of the first women in special effects, she created the famous Gill-man mask for Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) but faced sexism that led to her being removed from the credits.

  Chuck Bryant [48:33]: "Millicent Patrick was the creative force behind the Gill-man mask but was unfairly stripped of credit due to sexism."

• Dick Smith: Renowned makeup artist known for creating lifelike prosthetics, including the realistic aging effects in films like The Godfather and Death Becomes Her.

• Stan Winston and Rick Baker: Modern legends who pioneered advanced CGI and practical effects in franchises like Predator, Terminator, Jurassic Park, and The Matrix. Their work on motion capture and de-aging techniques has set new industry standards.

  Josh Clark [53:08]: "Stan Winston's contributions include makeup for Predator and motion capture advancements seen in Gollum from Lord of the Rings."

Modern Developments: Motion Capture and De-Aging

The discussion moves to cutting-edge techniques like motion capture (mocap) and digital de-aging, which have become integral to contemporary filmmaking.

• Motion Capture: Technology that records actors' movements and translates them into CGI characters, as seen with Gollum in The Lord of the Rings.

  Chuck Bryant [53:08]: "Motion capture allows for precise and repeatable camera movements, essential for integrating multiple CGI elements seamlessly."

• Digital De-Aging: Techniques used to make actors appear younger, showcased in films like Gemini Man, where Will Smith interacts with a CGI version of his younger self.

  Chuck Bryant [56:31]: "De-aging in Gemini Man involved fully CGI recreations of Will Smith, pushing the boundaries of visual effects realism."

Resurgence of Practical Effects

Despite the dominance of CGI, there’s a noted resurgence in practical effects, especially among indie filmmakers who favor hands-on techniques for their authenticity and tactile quality.

Chuck Bryant [45:29]: "I have long predicted a return to practical effects, and it's starting to happen more frequently in indie cinema."

Conclusion: The Future of Special Effects

Josh and Chuck conclude by reflecting on the continuous evolution of special effects, appreciating the blend of artistry and technology that makes modern cinema possible. They emphasize the importance of both practical and digital effects in creating immersive storytelling experiences.

Josh Clark [58:37]: "Hopefully, this makes you appreciate movies more and the incredible effort behind special effects."

Notable Quotes

• Josh Clark [07:03]: "Effects are divided into three general categories... practical, in-camera, and post-production."
• Chuck Bryant [21:38]: "Matte painting is the single most important and widespread special effect ever."
• Chuck Bryant [35:05]: "ILM used motion control cameras to make stationary models appear dynamic, as seen in the space battles of Star Wars."
• Chuck Bryant [56:31]: "De-aging in Gemini Man involved fully CGI recreations of Will Smith, pushing the boundaries of visual effects realism."
• Chuck Bryant [45:29]: "I have long predicted a return to practical effects, and it's starting to happen more frequently in indie cinema."

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Final Thoughts:
This episode provides a comprehensive overview of the history and development of special effects in film, from its early inception to modern advancements. Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant expertly navigate through the technical aspects and celebrate the artists who have pioneered groundbreaking techniques, offering listeners a newfound appreciation for the magical realm of movie special effects.

Transcript

[Chuck Bryant]

This is an iHeart podcast.

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[Josh Clark]

Hey everybody, welcome back to the playlist. It's me, Josh, and this episode is all about special effects. We tried to cram as much as we possibly could into this episode and there's a lot to talk about with special effects and there's all sorts of different kinds of special effects. Most of the stuff we think of today is all cgi, but that's built on things that people used to have to build with their own hands to make amazing movies look believable. I hope you enjoy this episode and I hope you've enjoyed this playlist.

[Chuck Bryant]

Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

[Josh Clark]

Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant wearing his Stone Tumble Pilots hat and there's Jerry over there. She's not wearing any hat. She's got really cool hair.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's not Stone Temple Pilots.

[Josh Clark]

It is too. I've seen the Stone Temple Pilots hats before and that's one.

[Chuck Bryant]

It is stp Because I bought two hats at autozone yesterday.

[Josh Clark]

I have a champion spark plug hat.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, they have good hats.

[Josh Clark]

They really do.

[Chuck Bryant]

I was getting a battery and I was like, I want these two hats. It was a Goodyear, Akron, Ohio. Goodyear hat.

[Josh Clark]

Nice.

[Chuck Bryant]

Which is where Emily's from.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

So I wanted that. And then I saw this STP hat.

[Josh Clark]

Stone Temple Pilots.

[Chuck Bryant]

But I would get a champion spark plug hat, too. Those are. That's great.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, I'll let you borrow mine anytime you want. Just gotta give it back.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know if I've ever seen you in a baseball cap.

[Josh Clark]

It's a weird jam. Is it not what you wanna see?

[Chuck Bryant]

I've seen you in shorts like twice in 12 years.

[Josh Clark]

I keep the legs covered.

[Chuck Bryant]

And I think one of them was when you came over to borrow my lawnmower.

[Josh Clark]

I remember that. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Like nine years ago.

[Josh Clark]

Sure. I've gotta mow the lawn sometimes now.

[Chuck Bryant]

Things have changed. You can buy a lawnmower.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's where we're at now.

[Chuck Bryant]

We can afford lawnmowers.

[Josh Clark]

I can wear shorts too. I actually have one of those plug in lawnmowers.

[Chuck Bryant]

I have a battery powered lawnmower.

[Josh Clark]

Do you?

[Chuck Bryant]

Look at us stupid liberal hippies.

[Josh Clark]

Well, mine's battery powered too. But you have to plug it in to charge it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

What kind do you have?

[Chuck Bryant]

I have the green one.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I think they're all green.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, there's a blue one.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, I've got the green one too. The Sun Joe.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, but I have a Sun Joe pressure washer.

[Josh Clark]

Do you really? Is it battery operated?

[Chuck Bryant]

No. You plug that in.

[Josh Clark]

I was gonna say, I'll bet it just goes like, tinkles out water.

[Chuck Bryant]

But they do make plug in lawnmowers. Like, it's not a battery. You just have a cord that you.

[Josh Clark]

Walk around with and run over with your lawnmower.

[Chuck Bryant]

I guess they're called electric.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

But yeah, I got the battery one because I have so little grass now. And we may be done period. With grass.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah, that's right. You're xeriscaping.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, we're definitely doing the front, but the back, it just got smaller and smaller. And my last lawnmower broke, so I was paying a guy to come cut it. I was like, why am I paying this guy to cut? To do a seven minute mow.

[Josh Clark]

There's just that one blade of grass that sees the lawnmower coming like mother.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. But then I went and got the battery one. Because lawnmowers are terrible for the environment.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's why I got it.

[Chuck Bryant]

They're one of the worst polluters.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. We're both also aware that we are charging our battery powered lawnmowers with coal fired power.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes, we understand that.

[Josh Clark]

We know.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm just talking about exhaust fumes.

[Josh Clark]

I don't even need one. I live in a condo. But. But I'm so dissatisfied with the landscapers that take care of the condo that I bought. Yes. I bought a lawnmower just to do the little patch out in front of our building so poor Momo doesn't get long grass against her junk when she's pottying.

[Chuck Bryant]

This is a great way to start this episode.

[Josh Clark]

So we're talking special effects.

[Chuck Bryant]

Obviously this has been lawn talk.

[Josh Clark]

We're talking special effects, Chuck.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes. Movie special effects. Which boy? I mean, we could do 10 parts on this. This is kind of a big summation because movie special effects can be everything from the movie that you walk out of saying, oh, that movie had no special effects, when in fact it did.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Wrong.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, just tiny little things that you may not even notice to things that are almost whole cloth special effects. Like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Or Sin City.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I like both of those.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. Did you know Sin City? Every single bit of the set was cgi.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And that Sky Captain did it first.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. A year before, huh?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yep. Every bit of that was. It was a green screen movie.

[Josh Clark]

I never saw it. Was it good?

[Chuck Bryant]

It was interesting. Like, the look of it was amazing and very much ahead of its time.

[Josh Clark]

Like real art deco, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. I call it black and white, but it wasn't. It was just this really washed out color. But it looked awesome and was not bad.

[Josh Clark]

Nice. I'll have to check it out.

[Chuck Bryant]

And I think the dudes that made that kind of quit making movies after that. It's a very unique story.

[Josh Clark]

Have you ever seen. This has nothing to do with anything, but have you seen the Changeling, George C. Scott?

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, my God.

[Chuck Bryant]

Did you just see that?

[Josh Clark]

Yes. And I have to tell you, I don't think I've ever gotten chills more frequently from a movie than I did with that one.

[Chuck Bryant]

Changeling is great.

[Josh Clark]

Genuinely. It's a genuinely scary ghost story.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Like, it is wonderful.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I miss George C. Scott too.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, he's a good actor. And I don't remember who that Billy, the female lead was in there, but she was great too.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's been a while. I haven't seen it in many, many years.

[Josh Clark]

So anyway, special Effects. Let's try this again. We're gonna get derailed like every five seconds.

[Chuck Bryant]

Effects are divided. And this is by the grabster. He helped us out with this. Ed's a big movie guy and horror movie sci fi guy.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

So he probably enjoyed writing this one up. They're divided into three general categories. And this all has to do with where the effect is happening.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

It can be practical, which is in front of the camera. And that means it's a physical thing that's happening.

[Josh Clark]

I think that's what most people think of when they think special effects.

[Chuck Bryant]

You think, sure. Okay.

[Josh Clark]

By most people, I mean me in.

[Chuck Bryant]

Camera effects that happen inside the camera and then post production effects. And many times you're using one or all three of these.

[Josh Clark]

Right, right. So with like practical effects, that's things like makeup and prosthetics. Like Ed uses the example of David Lynch's the Elephant Man. Like the prosthetic makeup that was used to turn John Hurt or John Hurd, which one?

[Chuck Bryant]

Hurt.

[Josh Clark]

Into Joseph Merrick. That's a special effect. An explosion on set, that's a special effect. A blood packet to make it look like somebody just got shot in the chest.

[Chuck Bryant]

A squib.

[Josh Clark]

That's a special effect. All three of those are practical effects. They're actually happening in the physical world in front of you on set, being captured on film. That's a practical special effect.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And the other one I wanted to mention there that you might not think of is stuff like if there is a. A fire, like a fireplace in a scene, and then you flip the camera around to show the people and you see that fire shimmering on the wall. That's a practical effect too. Little things like that.

[Josh Clark]

But it's lighting. It's a lighting effect.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Or it's a fire. Like, you know, those aren't real fires. I mean, it's real fire.

[Josh Clark]

Somebody should put that out.

[Chuck Bryant]

But it's not like someone lights a bunch of wood. They put fake wood and they have these fire bars that. It's like what you have under your grill, basically.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or like they hide those and then that's your fire.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Cause it has to look perfect. You can't just chance somebody not being able to start a fire or looking wonky. That's why movie fires look perfect.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Because they're fake.

[Josh Clark]

They are kind of dreamy. They're so good. So in camera effects is just basically messing with the way the film is being produced inside the camera, not what's going on in reality that the film is Capturing. But how the film is actually capturing this stuff.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Slow motion is a special effect in camera. Special effect.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Or fast motion, too, which is ten times more hilarious than fast motion, if you ask me. Like, where would the Munsters be without fast motion?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, you know, Or Benny Hill, for God's sake.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

That lived and breathed on fast motion.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, he did.

[Chuck Bryant]

What else can you do there? You can. And we'll see this in some of the early special effects, like stopping the film, changing something, starting it again.

[Josh Clark]

Right. Like Bewitched appearing out of nowhere.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's a special in camera special effect.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. One thing that struck me about all this from researching this is how the basis, the foundation for special effects was laid immediately upon, like, motion pictures being, like, created. Like the whole industry, not even the industry before the industry existed, but basically after the invention of motion pictures. And that it stayed virtually the same until the 90s.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

People refined it and got better at it. And techniques got more the same.

[Chuck Bryant]

General crafts were used.

[Josh Clark]

Very much so.

[Chuck Bryant]

Which is why craft service is called craft service.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Because each department is their own craft.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, I didn't know that.

[Chuck Bryant]

And they're there to serve them pizza rolls.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, man.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or whatever.

[Josh Clark]

You can put on some weight filming something. I'll tell you that for a second. Yeah, you can. Oh, my God.

[Chuck Bryant]

So stop motion animation, that is an in camera effect. You're moving a little clay figure or whatever, a doll or a King kong.

[Josh Clark]

A raisin one.

[Chuck Bryant]

A California raisin. One frame at a time, 24 frames per second.

[Josh Clark]

Can you imagine? Didn't you do that with your brother with G.I. joe?

[Chuck Bryant]

I did. And then years later, I did a little Star wars thing when I got a Hi8 video camera and spent like three days working on something that ended up nine seconds long. And I said, I'm done.

[Josh Clark]

What's funny is you're gonna get a cease and desist letter from Lucasfilm after talking about this in the podcast.

[Chuck Bryant]

I might. And then we have post production effects. And that is. I think that's what a lot of people think of as special effects these days.

[Josh Clark]

Really?

[Chuck Bryant]

Because that's all the CGI stuff that you will see is all happens in post production.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. All right. Yes. These days. I gotcha. Almost all special effects happens in post these days, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, no, they still combine some of the old crafts as well, but yeah, surely a lot of it is cgi.

[Josh Clark]

I mean, computers can do some amazing stuff.

[Chuck Bryant]

They can.

[Josh Clark]

I mean, stuff that used to take months to do a computer can do in hours now. And do it a million times better.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So depending on your taste, I should say.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

So those are the big three practical in camera and post production. And like I was saying, like, the basis of special effects was founded, like, in the 19th century. There were just some people who had kind of followed in a tradition of still photography. Still photographers by that time had already figured out some cool stuff that you could do messing around with cameras. Something like double exposure, where you take a picture of one thing and then take a picture of another thing with the previously exposed film, and all of a sudden it looks like there's a ghost looming behind you.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

Stuff like that. So out of the gate, when motion pict started to become a little widespread and people could afford them and try messing around with them, they had a basis of trickery to begin with. But there's a lot of stuff you can do with motion picture cameras that you can't do with still photo cameras. And they figured this out right away.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. That first guy who's credited as the first special effect is Alfred Clark. And they don't have the year exactly right. It's either 93, that's 1893 or 1895. He made a short film called the Execution of Mary Queen of Scots. And he did that little stop trick. Like I was saying, you shoot something, you stop the camera, you replace it, or you remove something and then you start the camera. And in real time, when you go to play it back, it's seamless.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And in his case. Did you look at it? Did you watch it?

[Josh Clark]

No, I didn't see that one.

[Chuck Bryant]

He uses a stop trick with Mary getting beheaded, and right when the axe is going to fall, you know, he switches her out for a dummy, then starts the camera back up and he chops the dummy's head off. And it looks pretty good. Like you can't. There's no big weird jump. He did for 1893. Did a really good job.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And the key to that is just making sure that no one touches the camera or even breathes on it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Don't move.

[Josh Clark]

And then getting the dummy in the same position as the actor.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And in fact, as we'll talk about later with matte paintings, it's so crucial that the camera not move. That one technique was they used to bury the camera tripod like a couple of feet into the earth.

[Josh Clark]

Makes sense.

[Chuck Bryant]

Just to make sure, like, no dumb, dumb Pa bumps into it. Like me.

[Josh Clark]

So Alfred Clark is credited with the first special effect, but a guy named Georges Melies. Did I get it? Melies?

[Chuck Bryant]

We should go ask Casey Peckham.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah, he would know.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think it's Milie.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, nice. I think you just nailed it. Georges Milier. At any rate, this guy is known as the father of special effects. He was very early on doing stuff that no one else was doing. You know, granted, there were very few people working in this field at the time.

[Chuck Bryant]

None of the five people did, but.

[Josh Clark]

He was an illusionist. And he said, oh, man, I can really do some amazing tricks with this camera. And he really put it to good use from a very, very early, like, I mean, turn of the last century.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, he actually stumbled upon that little stop trick by accident when he was shooting a street traffic scene in Paris in 1896. The camera jams while I think a bus was coming across frame. He's like mad, fixes the camera. Can we say that?

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right.

[Josh Clark]

We don't have any French people listening.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's true. Starts the camera back up and of course, there's different things happening. And then when he went back to look at it, he kind of just stumbled upon this weird little substitution splice that became part of filmmaking.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Because by the time the camera had started up again, the bus was replaced by a hearse. So it looked like when he went back and watched it, the bus suddenly transformed into a hearse.

[Chuck Bryant]

And he said, wait till they get a load of bewitched 70 something years from now.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, so.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or no, I guess. What was that in the 50s, 60s. 60s.

[Josh Clark]

All right, so you may not recognize Georges Melies. Oh, my God. At that time.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think so.

[Josh Clark]

Name, but you probably have heard of his work. Like A Trip to the Moon.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

What's very widely cited is like one of the first actual movies. I think it was in the 20 something minute range, but it was about some explorers in the Victorian era getting in a rocket and traveling to the moon. And the rocket lands in the man in the moon's eye. Everybody's seen that. I don't care who you are. If you say you haven't, you have. This was the guy who made that. And this is a very early movie. It was from 1902. But he was doing all sorts of amazing stuff. He was using extensive costuming, masks, all sorts of in camera techniques.

[Chuck Bryant]

He was painting on film frames. Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And this is 1902. And like I was saying, this stuff was refined but was the basis of special effects for the next century to come.

[Chuck Bryant]

Should we take a quick break?

[Josh Clark]

I think so.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, let's Take a quick break and we will talk a little bit about the matte technique right after this.

[Josh Clark]

I'm actually pretty psyched about this.

[Announcer]

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[Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

This episode of Stuff youf Should Know is brought to you by Human Footprint Season 2 on PBS and the PBS app the Emmy nominated series returns to reveal the global impact of Earth's most Ingenious and most destructive humans.

[Josh Clark]

Every coffee cup, every outfit, every glass of water connects to a global web of survival that will change how you see the world. Journey across continents with host and Princeton biologist Shane Campbell Staton and witness firsthand how our choices reshaped the planet.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. Go down the Colorado river to expose humanity's age old obsession with controlling water. Follow him from New York supermarkets to rural Thailand, discovering how grocery stores didn't just change shopping. They rewired civilization itself.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And discover Chile's textile graveyards where your shirt's true cost lies buried. Explore biotech labs and beaver ponds to uncover the species we've recruited as biological allies. And discover fossils entombed in tar and cells frozen in time, tracing the arc of extinction from prehistory to the present.

[Chuck Bryant]

See your world differently. Watch Human Footprint Season 2 on PBS.

[Josh Clark]

All right, Chuck, as I said, I'm very psyched about the mat.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So this isn't, this is a little confusing the way it's laid out here. Because what Ed's talking about here with Norman dawn is called original negative matte painting. If you hear of a matte painting, that is a piece of glass where you have. And I'm gonna talk about the most common way you might see it employed is you take a big piece of glass and you paint like a cityscape on it, like really realistic. And then you put that in a scene and shoot it. So instead of having someone in front of a city, and this is pre blue screen and green screen technology, you would just put Kurt Russell in Escape from New York in a field and there's a matte painting of New York City behind him and it looks great. And James Cameron painted that in Escape from New York. He was a matte painter.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, I didn't know that.

[Chuck Bryant]

That was like his first job.

[Josh Clark]

It's neat. Like if you, even if you do know what Chuck's talking about, go to the Internet and just look up like great matte paintings.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's amazing.

[Josh Clark]

There's a lot of really wonderful ones, one you've seen before, ones you haven't. But basically anytime you've seen a movie, pretty 1993, maybe 1990, where somebody walks into this enormous place or this amazingly elaborate future city or something like that, what you're actually looking at is an expertly painted painting that has been messed with in post production or using an in camera technique to make it look like it's alive or actually, you know, bustling or energetic or there. But it's really, it's a painting. It's a painting that some amazing human being painted by hand.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And we should point out they still do this today. They just do it digitally and digital matte painters are super talented as well.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

But it's kind of neat to think about that old craft and James Cameron painting a piece of glass and sticking that behind Kurt Russell and.

[Josh Clark]

I mean, it was used in everything. For my money, matte painting is the single most important and widespread special effect ever.

[Chuck Bryant]

Maybe. Hard to argue that.

[Josh Clark]

Thank you. Like it was in Mary Poppins. When Mary Poppins is coming into the.

[Chuck Bryant]

City of London, floating down.

[Josh Clark]

That's a matte painting. When Superman walks into the. Where's the. What's the name of the place where he's from? Like the crystal cave where.

[Chuck Bryant]

Fortress of Solitude.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Is that where he talks with. With Marlon Brando, his dad?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I think so.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. That's a matte painting, and I think.

[Chuck Bryant]

The Fortress of Solitude are the remnants of Krypton.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

And, boy, Superman. People are so mad at me right now. Are there Superman people still?

[Josh Clark]

I thought everybody was on the Marvel train.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, people love Superman.

[Josh Clark]

Really?

[Chuck Bryant]

The comics.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, okay. Because I was gonna say, I mean, you've seen what they've done in Superman lately, right? In Batman.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So that's the matte painting. And what that is, it's called set extension. So that basically means you're just sort of extending the real life set to make something bigger and more opulent.

[Josh Clark]

Gotcha.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or maybe not more opulent, just bigger and more.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

But here's the thing. Relying on that matte painter and having the glass there, and glass can break and it can, you know, onset with lighting can be weird. So that all can get a little hinky. So that's why this technique called original negative matte painting was developed by Norman Dawn. And that is when nowadays they'll use what's called a matte box, which is literally like black. I don't think it's cardboard these days, but whatever they make out of a cardboard thing that you put over the lens to block out whatever you want to block out. Back in the day, they would paint cardboard and hold it in front of the lens, or they would actually paint the lens. And what you're essentially doing is painting away. It was early green screen. You're painting away what you don't want in the frame or what you want in the future and then adding that later on.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And because it's black or because it's covered, there's light is not Hitting that part of the film. That part of the film, the actual film strip itself that you're. You're recording onto or filming onto, that's unexposed. All that gets exposed is the part of the lens or the camera that is not covered, that has, say, your actor, like, doing the herky jerky dance. Right, right. And then so what you do after that is you take that film that has your actor doing the herky jerky dance, project it onto a screen so you see where the actor is.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

And on this screen, you literally paint the background that you want, then you film the whole thing a second time, and now you have your actor in the set that you originally wanted.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. The only difference there, which is something that wasn't quite right here, is they don't, like, project it. They just develop a few frames of it and project it like a slide. So it's not like the camera the film is moving through on the wall.

[Josh Clark]

Right, right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Because in the article here, it says. And then you just stop it. And what happens if you do that is the bulb burns the film.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

So you can't just stop a movie projector.

[Josh Clark]

You produce like a slide of it and project that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And then you paint in the castle or the mountain or the. Whatever you want. And then you go back and expose it again. Yep, pretty neat.

[Josh Clark]

You just open your trench coat. There you go.

[Chuck Bryant]

And the big innovator with the original negative matte painting was Norman Dawn. And he really, like, really led the way.

[Josh Clark]

But I mean, again, most of the stuff that does this now is done by computers in post. But this is like the lengths people were going to to make movies at the time. And you watch them today and you're like, God, that looks terrible. But if you stop and think about the effort that they were going to.

[Chuck Bryant]

They were inventing techniques.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. It's just mind boggling that they managed to get it, you know, to this point.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Norman dawn tried to patent that technique as well, but they said, no, you did not invent this. You popularized it. And you can't patent something that you made super popular.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, there's some other stuff too. There's like rear projection and front projection, which is basically like projecting the background, a moving background, onto a screen. Behind the actors. Yeah, basically, you know, all those hokey driving scenes, the person's great, the car's being rocked or whatever, the road behind them. That's front or rear projection.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And people still will use that as homage, like in Pulp Fiction. Very famously, Bruce Willis, or I guess not yeah. When Bruce Willis gets in the cab after the fight. And if it looks old fashioned, that's because QT used rear screen projection for that. And there's also a technique that's not in here that I just remembered. So I'm actually having to look up what it's called when you're in a car scene, but you're not doing a rear screen projection. So what happens here is you're sitting in a car, in a still car on the set, but they're not projecting anything behind you.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

What you've got is two people shaking the car out of frame.

[Josh Clark]

What are they, grips?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, usually a grip. But I've shaken cars and trains before because I'm just a body on the set. Like, get in there and shake that thing. In fact, one job I was on, there was a fake subway train and the hydraulics broke early on and they were like, bring out the PAs. You're going to shake this train for 12 hours.

[Josh Clark]

They're like, you got rhythm. Get in there.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Oh, we couldn't have too much rhythm because we got yelled at for that because it looked too rhythmic.

[Josh Clark]

Gotcha.

[Chuck Bryant]

So we were like, I don't know how to do this.

[Josh Clark]

Who are you working for?

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, it was just a commercial director that said that our movement of the train looked too rhythmic and not believable. So anyway, this Fruit of the Looms.

[Josh Clark]

Commercial is totally unbelievable.

[Chuck Bryant]

You sit in the car, you're acting like you're driving. There's someone else shaking the car. There might be someone else off camera, like flashing a light through the car, like you're going by a street light or a headlight goes across their face and there may be fake rain in the background. And this is sometimes like 6, 7, 8 people working in concert to make it look like you're driving at night in the rain or something like that.

[Josh Clark]

Right. So there's really an obvious background, trees or road or whatever, but maybe there's headlights coming up behind you. It's just dark.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, but they're people with a spotlight. Yeah, it's really, really cool. Old fashioned, but people still use that stuff.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And I wish I could remember the full name of that technique, the.

[Josh Clark]

The Shaken Shimmy.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm gonna be so mad.

[Josh Clark]

Later on we'll just call it the Shaken Shimmy. Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

So you talked about green screen and that's actually super old too. There's a really convoluted explanation about how originally green screen employed sodium vapor lights, which would actually mess with the yellow exposure. On panchromatic film and my brain, I started bleeding out of my ear. I cannot tell you how many times I read descriptions about this. And I can't quite get it. So suffice to say that that was one technique for green screen. Really kind of changed the industry is when they figured out that again, if you film in black, the film is not going to be exposed. So anything you go and re expose it to, it will cover over that stuff. So, like, it's transparent. So for example, in the Invisible man, from, I think 1930, 1933.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Claude Rains wore a black bodysuit and the background was black. It was a black screen, like a black green screen. But he wore clothes and everything and bandages and sunglasses. And I think he smoked a cigarette or whatever. But when he took the bandages off, when he took his sunglasses and clothes off, there was nothing there. It was a black bodysuit and a black background. So when they filmed the background later on, all you could see was the background and the clothes and the bandages. It looked like there was nothing there. Because as far as the film was concerned, when they were filming it, there wasn't anything there. So the film wasn't exposed in those sections on each frame.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. And that's called the Williams process. And a key part of the Williams process is the optical printer. And that is a projector that actually prints an image directly onto the film that runs through the camera while that printer and camera are synced up.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. So this is. To me, the optical printer is the second most widespread and useful special effect technique in the history of film.

[Chuck Bryant]

You just waved your hand.

[Josh Clark]

I did. So I suddenly had an ascot and a beret on.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, hard to argue that too. But all this stuff was just precursor to what was blue screen. Early on, chroma key blue and then later became chroma key green. I'm not sure why they made the switch. Actually. I don't either. Other than maybe the green less prevalent or less used. I think so probably. Maybe the blue was because you know what? You don't want anything close to that color will disappear against the green screen.

[Josh Clark]

Anyone who's ever done the weather on the newscast can tell you that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, there have been. There are blooper reels of weather people disappearing when they wear like a green jacket or something.

[Josh Clark]

Right. It looks like the weather's going on through their body. Same thing. So I want to say one more thing about optical printers or another little bit about it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

So what you have is a projector projecting a film on to A screen. And you have a camera recording what's being projected, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

That's the optical printer. And you could do all sorts of stuff with that. So let's say you have a shot where you have one mat in the foreground and live actor and then another matte in the background that has a bunch of different people in it or something like that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or Stormtroopers.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. So you got three different elements to that shot. What you would do is using the same film that film each thing. So you go film that, like the actor, the live action actor. You've got that on the film and you project that. And you take film where you're filming the mat and you project that and film that. I just totally have screwed this up. Oh, my God. This is just like the sun. No, it's worse than that. Was it false positives? Do you remember that time where I was like, I took a pretty simple thing and just completely walked the dog with it?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, well, I just did that again. Everyone, I want you to go look up optical printers, read a little bit about them, and then you'll say, oh, Josh is right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, this tough stuff.

[Josh Clark]

It is essentially, you're filming a projection, and you can do that multiple times with the same film, and it adds up to where you have the shot you wanted, where it makes it look like all these things that you filmed three separate times are all happening together in one space.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes. You are marrying separate images together onto a single piece of film.

[Josh Clark]

Right. You couldn't do that before optical printers, which is a projector and a camera working together.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, I think I need a nap.

[Chuck Bryant]

We should mention briefly motion control cameras. This is a system that allows. It's basically taking the person out of the equation. There is not a person pushing a dolly. There is not a person moving the camera. It is a machine that is programmed to move a camera through space very, very precisely and exactly the same every single time.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So you can do the exact same motion over and over again over and over.

[Chuck Bryant]

And a lot of times, if you're on a TV commercial, as boring as that is, you will see stuff like this for, like, a food shoot. Because food shoots are notoriously tricky because everything's super close up and has to be perfect. And you can't be off a little bit with the camera because a lot of times you'll sub in stuff later in post. And that's the whole reason for motion control, is to replicate moves with exact precision.

[Josh Clark]

So I was reading about industrial light and magic, using this to really great effect with the first Star wars, which is Episode four. Right. The New Hope. That's the first one. Right? Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm not confirming or denying anything. I'm just gonna let that stand.

[Josh Clark]

Episode four is the first Star wars movie that ever came out. Correct.

[Chuck Bryant]

Star Wars A New Hope is the first episode that I ever saw in a movie theater because it's the first.

[Josh Clark]

One that ever came out anyway, when they were making this, you know, is it a Star Destroyer? The big daddy ships.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, man, we're gonna get murdered. Everything. All of the ships in Star wars were models.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

Fairly small models, actually. They weren't necessarious. Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think it was Episode four.

[Josh Clark]

I'm almost positive.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

So those models were not moving in these shots. And these enormous, like, huge panoramic shots where, like, there's TIE fighters flying around shooting everything and X Wing fighters shooting the TIE fighters. None of those models were moving. What happened was they figured out how to use motion control cameras so that the camera would go through the shot around the model and make it look like the model was moving. And plus, it was moving the shot through space. Right, Right. The thing is, is let's say you have five different ships. You film those five ships separately, but those five ships are all going to be in the same shot. So you have to film that same shot the exact same way five different times, and then run it through an optical printer so that you can get all of them, all five shots onto the same strip of film. But that's one of the. One of the ways that motion. Motion control cameras were really put to good use. And it was extremely groundbreaking because not one of those ships were moving in reality when they were filming Star Wars.

[Chuck Bryant]

Can you name five Star wars ships?

[Josh Clark]

TIE Fighter, X Wing Fighter.

[Chuck Bryant]

You already said 1.

[Josh Clark]

TIE fighter 2. The Deuce is what the people in the know call it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

The.

[Chuck Bryant]

You already said Star Destroyer you should use.

[Josh Clark]

So Star Destroyer was right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. There's a Star Destroyer.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, okay. You made a face like isis. It was just totally off. You could make the case that Endor was a ship even though it was a planet. There was the Forest speeder, the pod racer.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And Dr. Zayas.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. He's the final ship.

[Josh Clark]

Yep. See how many people.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, boy.

[Josh Clark]

Their calf muscles just popped right out of the backs of their legs.

[Chuck Bryant]

Holly Fry is, like, hyperventilating somewhere in the office, and she doesn't know why. So as I said earlier, it's usually a combination of these different Techniques to create one overall special effect using these different crafts. And a great example is Jurassic park and the scene with the velociraptors in the kitchen. That great, great sequence when it was playing cat and mouse with those children. There were puppets, there were actors in costumes, there were animatronic raptor heads and there were full CGI raptors. And you throw this all in a hat, mix it all up and it comes out to be like a really believable looking scene.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it comes out as an Oscar.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I'm sure they won Oscars, right?

[Josh Clark]

They had to have, I don't know. But there's just no way.

[Chuck Bryant]

It was groundbreaking. I remember being just gobsmacked in the movie theater when I first saw those dinosaurs walking across the screen.

[Josh Clark]

And that was 1993, I believe, for the first Jurassic Park. Right. Jurassic Park, A New Hope, the first one that came out. But that was five years after the first Oscar had been awarded for special effects, as far as I know.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, really?

[Josh Clark]

I believe that the Abyss was the first one to win an Oscar for special effects. Maybe or there. No, no, I'm sorry, I'm way off. Way off. The Abyss was the first movie to win a special effect for a CGI effect. Okay, remember, the water sure still looks pretty good. It looks amazing. This is 1987 we're talking about.

[Chuck Bryant]

Wow. Was that when that came out?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I was surprised to see that too because I thought it was. Yeah, it's a good movie.

[Chuck Bryant]

I really like that movie.

[Josh Clark]

How do you not like Ed Harris? You don't like Ed Harris?

[Chuck Bryant]

What?

[Josh Clark]

Did you not like Ed Harris?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, I like him as an actor. I think a lot of people might have problems with Ed Harris as a person. He's notoriously cantankerous.

[Josh Clark]

I've never heard that. I believe it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure. He looks like he could yell somebody down, doesn't he?

[Josh Clark]

Sure. But he also keeps a cool head when he's an actor as a 70s or 60s NASA guy.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hey, I love Ed Harris. All right, let's take another break.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

And we're going to come back and talk a little bit about Star Wars Episode whatever right after this.

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[Chuck Bryant]

This episode of Stuff youf Should Know is brought to you by Human Footprint Season two on pbs and the PBS app. The Emmy nominated series returns to reveal the global impact of Earth's most ingenious and most destructive humans.

[Josh Clark]

Every coffee cup, every outfit, every glass of water connects to a global web of survival that will change how you see the world. Journey across continents with host and Princeton biologist Shane Campbell Staton and witness firsthand how our choices reshape the planet.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. Go down the Colorado river to expose humanity's age old obsession with controlling water. Follow him from New York supermarkets to rural Thailand, discovering how grocery stores didn't just change shop, they rewired civilization itself.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And discover Chile's textile graveyards where your shirt's true cost lies buried. Explore biotech labs and beaver ponds to uncover the species we've recruited as biological allies. And discover fossils entombed in tar and cells frozen in time, tracing the arc of extinction from prehistory to the present.

[Chuck Bryant]

See your world differently. Watch Human Footprint Season 2 on PBS.

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[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, we're back and we should talk. We should mention the garbage mat real quick.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

Because that is a big deal. A lot of times you have wire work or you have, you have things hanging from wires. It doesn't have to be a person. It can be like a model plane or a TIE fighter or Whatever. You gotta get rid of those wires. Unless you're Ed Wood, you can't have fishing line.

[Josh Clark]

No, you're supposed to not. But yes.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or if you're Charlize Theron in Mad Max Fury Road, you gotta get rid of that arm. Or if you're in Forrest Gump, you gotta get rid of Lieutenant Dan's legs.

[Josh Clark]

Man, that was amazing. That was the first time anybody's ever done really something like that throughout.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I have my problems with that movie for sure. And one of them is, I think he way over. He was like a kid in a candy store and way overdid the like. And now Forrest is in the White House and using archival footage and sticking Forrest in it.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that whole, like, half hour dialogue he has with Peter Cushing's ghost, it was uncanny.

[Chuck Bryant]

But I get it. I get why these filmmakers get excited. These really technical wizards get a new technique and they just hammer it.

[Josh Clark]

The guy from Industrial Light and Magic, when they made the first Star wars, call it what you will, his name was, I think, John Dykstra. And this motion controlled camera assembly that they created was called Dykstra Flex. It was super groundbreaking and they really did amazing stuff with it. Well, he's like a legend in this industry now. And I saw an interview with him recently and he was like, I'm so tired of seeing just whole cities leveled. And like, just the most amazing stuff you can possibly think of being done just because we can do it right. He put it really, really well. I think it's an embarrassment of riches.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

You know, totally. Like, it can be done. So it's being done. Everybody's doing it. It's just, you know, like. And it makes it less amazing. Not necessarily because it looks bad. It just keeps looking better and better every time. Like, if you look at Charlize Theron's prosthetic arm, or missing arm compared with Lieutenant Dan's missing legs, looks radically different. It does. So it's getting better. There's just too much of it, I think. Is the point just to be all Ed Harris Y on this?

[Chuck Bryant]

No. I have long predicted a return to practical effects.

[Josh Clark]

Really?

[Chuck Bryant]

And it's starting to happen a little bit more and more.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I could see starting with indie filmmakers.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure.

[Josh Clark]

Which is funny because film, finally, computer generated effects have trickled down enough. Like you or I could just walk out of the studio and probably get on any one of those Macs out there and use stuff that 10, 15 years ago would cost $500,000 to set up a rig like that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And that's how some young filmmakers have gotten noticed, is by making these short films with like zero money on their computer that get a lot of action on YouTube because it looks so amazing. And the studio will be like, sign that person up.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

I can't remember the guy's name, but that's happened a couple of times in recent years.

[Josh Clark]

To Ed Harris.

[Chuck Bryant]

We should talk about a few of the groundbreaking people over the years.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yes.

[Chuck Bryant]

We'll go through these a little quicker than what we have in front of us, I think. But we should mention Lon Chaney.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

One of the original superstars of film in the silent era, the man of a Thousand Faces. He was very talented doing his own makeup and changing his face. That's why he's called the man of a Thousand Faces.

[Josh Clark]

Right. He's like, Here's 997.

[Chuck Bryant]

What about Willis O' Brien?

[Josh Clark]

He was one of the pioneers of stop motion photography. Again, if you're a California racing fan, you have a lot to thank Willis o' Brien for. He also. This dude, the stuff he did. I mean, if you look back, he did King Kong. The 1933 King Kong. And if you look back at this, you're like, this is cool. But if you research what was done to create this, you're just blown away by it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Again, many processes coming together to create that 1933 version of King Kong. And that fight looks good still. I mean, it doesn't look realistic. But consider the year. It looks awesome.

[Josh Clark]

It does. And it's about three, three and a half minutes long. King Kong fight, the Tyrannosaurus Rex. But it took seven weeks to film.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Because there's 24 frames shot per second in a film.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

And for every frame, they moved the models a little bit here or there.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So that's why it took seven weeks just for that fight scene. I think it was 55 weeks for all of the stop motion photography that was done in that movie.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. That's impressive.

[Josh Clark]

It really is impressive. Especially when you realize the trouble they went to. When you go back and watch it like, this is pretty nuts.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Ray Harryhausen continued the work of Willis O' Brien and very famously in like the 50s and 60s with movies like Jason and the Argonauts.

[Josh Clark]

Clash of the Titans.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Remember Medusa?

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

Scary Lady?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. That had to be toward the end of his career, I guess, because that was in the 80s.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I think, like 81, maybe. Remember the Minotaur 2? Man, that was.

[Chuck Bryant]

That was A big movie for me as a kid.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And I was like, when L. A Law came along, I was like, I know that guy.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

It was the Titans guy.

[Chuck Bryant]

We should shout out Millicent Patrick. This is a very interesting story. She was one of the only, well, first and only women working in special effects back in the day. And she created the very famous mask of the Gill man from Creature from the Blood Black lagoon in the mid-1950s and was unceremoniously fired.

[Josh Clark]

Not just fired, stricken from the credits.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. This guy named Bud Westmore. He assisted her and then basically had her fired rather than give her the credit for the mask, which he would take credit for because I think he.

[Josh Clark]

Was the supervisor in charge of effects or costume or something.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, I thought, I guess he assisted her, but he was her boss.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

But she very clearly on her own came up with the Gill man for the Creature from the Black.

[Chuck Bryant]

And this has only come out in the last few years. They've kind of dug up the original stuff and yeah, sexism just basically pushed her out of the industry altogether. Yeah, very sad.

[Josh Clark]

She's starting to get her due now though, which is good.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that is very good.

[Josh Clark]

There's Dick Smith is amazing.

[Chuck Bryant]

He created the Squib.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, really? Yeah, he's a very famous makeup artist. He's really good at making people look aged.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, he made 47 year old Marlon Brando look much older than the Godfather. Oh, yeah, yeah. He was a year younger than me. Brando was crazy.

[Josh Clark]

I never thought about that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Isn't that nuts?

[Josh Clark]

Wow, he really is good. He also did Death Becomes her, which is one of the all time great movies.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah, for sure. And the Exorcist.

[Josh Clark]

Yep.

[Chuck Bryant]

And Scanners.

[Josh Clark]

And have you ever seen ghost story from 1981?

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Very scary movie.

[Chuck Bryant]

The old dudes.

[Josh Clark]

He did that.

[Chuck Bryant]

What else? Very famously aged Dustin Hoffman and Little Big man by many, many years.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

And then in the last like 25, 30 years, Rick Baker and Stan Winston.

[Josh Clark]

Stan Winston, he's got my vote.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, these two guys were both just creative leaders in the industry and trailblazers in the industry and as Ed says in here, mentored a generation of special effects employees. Employees, creators, artists.

[Josh Clark]

Sure. All three of those work Lord gig workers.

[Chuck Bryant]

Rick Baker, American Werewolf in London in 1981, which still holds up the thriller video in 1983. Star Wars MOS Eisley Cantina. He made all those.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Did you know that about the Mos Eisley Cantina?

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

I didn't know that he was almost single handedly responsible for all of them.

[Chuck Bryant]

And then Stan Winston, you got to talk about movies like the Thing and Predator and Terminator and they both have set up foundations and schools and things like that.

[Josh Clark]

Stan Winston also did the makeup for what I think is maybe the best slasher film of all time, Friday the 13th part two.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, two is when Jason comes along, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yes, it's Jason before he got his mask. He gets his mask in three. I think the Friday the 13th franchise is as good as it gets for horror movies.

[Chuck Bryant]

I dropped off at a certain point. Did you see all those?

[Josh Clark]

No, no, I still haven't seen all of them. But even just putting like the first five or six up.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

I think it's like watching them again as an adult. I'm like, these are really good slasher films. Like even better than I remember from being a kid.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And the reason Stan Winston filled in for Friday the 13th Part 2 is because the guy who did Friday 13th the first one, Tom Savini, was unavailable. He was off doing Creepshow, I believe. But Tom Savini is another legend.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think they're redoing Creepshow.

[Josh Clark]

Are they? Okay, I'd watch that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Different stories. Oh, even better, I think, if I'm not mistaken. But yeah, Savini is well known for being sort of the godfather of gore.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, he did Maniac. Did you ever see that? Yeah, that was an off the rocker.

[Chuck Bryant]

And then these days there are companies, ILM and Weta. Ilm Industrial Light and Magic is Lucas's company. And they're cool because they invented this stuff because Lucas needed stuff to be done that couldn't be done right. And he was like, go figure out how to do it. And they did.

[Josh Clark]

They really did.

[Chuck Bryant]

And then Weta is Peter Jackson's company and he's the one that has really pioneered the mocap, the motion capture techniques.

[Josh Clark]

Where a person's wearing like a suit and the suit has a bunch of different kind of like almost ping pong balls all over it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Like joints and crucial places where the body moves and the actor, stunt person or dancer, whoever wearing the suit goes through the motions. And then they're just going through the motions. Sure. And those motions that what's captured is fed into a computer and the computer generates a character doing all those same motions, creating the performance. But it's a computer generated character.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I don't think he was the first, but the Gollum character in those Lord of the Rings movies was really one of the first, really Terrific looking. Fully CGI character.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I found, from what I could tell, the first full CGI character ever in a movie. You wanna guess? You'll never guess.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, I mean, it's touted as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

[Josh Clark]

Wrong.

[Chuck Bryant]

Really?

[Josh Clark]

Mm.

[Chuck Bryant]

What is it gonna be?

[Josh Clark]

It's another Spielberg movie.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

It's young Sherlock Holmes. Do you remember the stained glass knight that comes to life and tries to slash one of them with his sword? First full CGI character in a movie.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, why?

[Josh Clark]

I don't know, but that's what I could find. And that one's from 1985.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, it says maybe there's. It's in the nitpicky language because in the Last Crusade, when Walter Donovan's face melts and turns to dust when he drinks from the chalice, that's in Raiders.

[Josh Clark]

Of the Lost Ark, isn't it? Oh, no, you're right, you're right. I'm sorry.

[Chuck Bryant]

Last Crusade.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. It says here it was the first ever digital composite of a full screen live action image.

[Josh Clark]

There's something in the language there.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, like maybe it wasn't full screen or something.

[Josh Clark]

This was the.

[Chuck Bryant]

Gotcha.

[Josh Clark]

This was the first cgi. But it wasn't the first CGI image. This is the first moving CGI image. The first CGI image was in Looker. Remember that movie?

[Chuck Bryant]

I totally saw Looker. Yeah, that was a big HBO movie for me, for sure.

[Josh Clark]

Same here. It was Looker, Runaway. Krull.

[Chuck Bryant]

Runaway is Tom Selleck.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And Gene Simmons.

[Chuck Bryant]

He's the bad guy. That's right. I saw Krull a lot too.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Looker had Albert Finney. Right.

[Josh Clark]

If I remember correctly, Albert Finney and Susan Day. Yeah, Susan Day, written by Michael Crichton.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think that was the first full body 3D human. But it did not move. It was static.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And the very first computer generated effects period, funny enough, were used to replicate computer screens. So whenever you would see a computer screen in like Westworld or Aliens or Star wars, and they were like, what is the computer gonna look like? Not now. That was the first time they used computer generated imaging was to make a fake computer screen.

[Josh Clark]

And the first full CGI scene ever done was in the Wrath of Khan, which I believe came out in 1982. But there's a genesis, like Earth being cooling and turning into the Earth. And there's these amazing shots around it. That's all cgi. And that was the first one. And Tron, I thought for sure Tron would have been among the first. Apparently Most of that was animated by humans, not computers.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

All the glowing lines, all that stuff. Animated. Which makes it nuts that they were able to create that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Now the big thing is this de Aging technique that they're getting better and better.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, they really are.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So the new Scorsese pick, the Irishman, I think de ages. And it has taken a long time to get out because it's. The de aging didn't look good enough for Scorsese. So they've de aged De Niro. And then I saw this new Ang Lee movie, Gemini man, where Will Smith of Now, he plays an assassin, and he has to go kill his younger self.

[Josh Clark]

Looper.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, sort of like Looper, I guess. But this Gemini man script has been in development for, like, 25 years with various people attached, but they could never.

[Josh Clark]

Do it because the technology was.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's finally here. But here's the thing I didn't know. Like, I've seen this trailer, and I'm like, man, that de aging looks great. They didn't de age him. It is a fully CGI Will Smith.

[Josh Clark]

Oh. And it looks that realistic.

[Chuck Bryant]

The younger version is. Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Wow.

[Chuck Bryant]

So I was like, man, they're getting so good at the de aging.

[Josh Clark]

That's amazing.

[Chuck Bryant]

So he mocapped his whole performance motion captured. And they just used Fresh Prince photos, man.

[Josh Clark]

They just basically deep faked him sort of Fresh Prince photo.

[Chuck Bryant]

Have you seen the Bill Hader deepfake that's going around now. That's pretty cool.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Because he goes from Hader to Tom Cruise to Seth Rogen back to Tom Cruise. It's like, kind of all over the place.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's really creepy.

[Josh Clark]

It's really well done.

[Chuck Bryant]

And then, you know, like we said, they use CGI for so many movies. Little mistakes that can be corrected. Little things that it's just much cheaper to add digitally later on.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

It could be a movie that, like I said, looks like it has no CGI whatsoever. And it's cheaper to put a plate of food in the background digitally, then cook the food and put it on set.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's a bad example. Or you can color grade a movie. You completely change. Like the movie. Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou? Has that yellow hue for everything.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

All that stuff is green. You know, they're in the Deep south in the summertime.

[Josh Clark]

Right. They used to have to, like, film it at some weird exposure and then project it at another exposure with some filter and then record the whole thing on an optical.

[Chuck Bryant]

The negative.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Now they can just do it all with the computer. Easy peasy.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's great. You got anything else? I'm kind of looking around, but this is like one eighth of this topic. Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Hopefully it made you appreciate movies more. Yeah, you specifically.

[Chuck Bryant]

Me.

[Josh Clark]

I'm just kidding. I know you love the movies.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

If you want to know more about movies, go listen to Chuck's podcast, Movie Crush. You'll love it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hey, thanks.

[Josh Clark]

And since I said Movie Crush, it's time for listener mail.

[Chuck Bryant]

And actually, since you said Movie Crush, we're about to release an episode on the Matrix.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hadn't seen that movie. It's been 20 years since it came out.

[Josh Clark]

You've never seen the Matrix?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, I hadn't seen it in a long time, but I didn't realize this is the 20 year anniversary. Watched it last night. Still totally holds up. Really looks great fun.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well acted by most of the cast.

[Josh Clark]

Members who didn't act well.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, you know, Keanu always gets picked on.

[Josh Clark]

I love that guy.

[Chuck Bryant]

I know Kung Fu. He's perfect in that role, though.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, he's great. I can't imagine anybody else in it. It'd be too. Just too serious, I think. Like imagine Tom Cruise in that in the Matrix.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, you're right. He adds a little like something light, doesn't he?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it makes it a little more everyman almost. A little more believable in a weird way.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think so. Do you seen those John Wick movies?

[Josh Clark]

I've seen some of it. It's just like a little too video gamey for me. But I mean, it's fine. I respect that. People like it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure. Here we go. Okay, this is about 3D. 3D. It's about solar panels. I got movies on 3D. Well, they are in 3D, I guess.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

I got movies on the brain. Hey, guys. Being a roofer my entire life, I never thought I'd have much input until now. It's my time to shine. One thing that wasn't mentioned in the solar panel episode is that people really need to consider the age of their existing roof before installing solar panels.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, that's a good point.

[Chuck Bryant]

A new residential shingle roof should last about 30 years. But if the roof isn't nearly new, I would not suggest installing solar panels.

[Josh Clark]

And definitely don't install it. If the roof. The roof. The roof is on fire.

[Chuck Bryant]

Once the panels are installed, roof repairs or replacements is very difficult and much more expensive. If the life of the roof ends before the solar panels die, you can easily add 50 to 75% or more. To the cost of the re roofing due to the added labor cost to remove and reinstall the panels.

[Josh Clark]

What a nightmare.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, didn't even think about that. So you should align it ideally with your new roof.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

I do mostly commercial roofing. Can't tell you the number of customers who I talked to had solar panels on an old roof and are now paying through the nose for repairs or replacement. Reputable solar panel specialists should have this roof conversation with a potential customer before installing the panels. I'm afraid it doesn't always happen or customers underestimate the added RE roofing cost once they're installed.

[Josh Clark]

Man, this is a great psa.

[Chuck Bryant]

It is. Thanks again for what you guys do. I'm in my truck a lot driving to different job sites and it's always easier on Tuesday through Thursday when I have a new stuff you should know and that is from Owen Sinsenig.

[Josh Clark]

Great name first and last.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yep.

[Josh Clark]

Love the name Owen. Stephen King's kid's name.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, Owen King.

[Josh Clark]

Thanks a lot Owen. We appreciate that big time. That was a great email. I would have never thought about that.

[Chuck Bryant]

And he didn't even send his business into BE plugged. So just google his name and roofing and if he happens to live near you, use him.

[Josh Clark]

That's how dedicated this guy is.

[Chuck Bryant]

He sounds honest.

[Josh Clark]

Well, if you want to be a cool person like Owen, you can get in touch with us. You can go on to stuffyou should know.com and check out our social links. You can also send us an email to stuffpodcastheartradio.com.

[Chuck Bryant]

Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio for for more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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[Chuck Bryant]

Are you still quoting 30 year old movies? Have you said cool beans in the past 90 days? Do you think Discover isn't widely accepted? If this sounds like you, you're stuck in the past. Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide and every time you make a purchase with your card, you automatically earn cash back. Welcome to the now it pays to Discover. Learn [e-mail] credit card based on the February 2024 Nielsen report this is Jana.

[Josh Clark]

Kramer from Wind down with Jana Kramer. When we were deciding on our appliances for the house, Samsung was at the.

[Chuck Bryant]

Top of our list.

[Josh Clark]

And I love my Samsung appliances, especially.

[Chuck Bryant]

Because they're so reliable.

[Josh Clark]

And with my busy schedule, having reliable appliances has been a game changer. It's no wonder Samsung is the number one brand for customer satisfaction. That's why I'm excited to tell you all about Samsung's new line of smart appliances. Featuring their brand new Bespoke AI laundry combo. This incredible magic machine washes and dries in one machine, one load.

[Chuck Bryant]

No transfers, no timers, no rewashing needed. New Bespoke AI appliances.

[Josh Clark]

This is home living made simple. For more information, visit samsung.com bespoke 68.

[Chuck Bryant]

Minute cycle based on 27 inch combos based on using a super speed cycle only with a 10 pound doe load cotton 50% plus polyester 50%. Individual results may vary based on actual load content. This is an iHeart podcast.