Speaker 1: Hello, Stuff you should know listeners, if you want to
Speaker 1: come see s Live, You've only got a couple of
Speaker 1: more cities this year that still have tickets, and that
Speaker 1: is Orlando in New Orleans. Yeah, we'll be in Orlando
Speaker 1: on October nine at the Plaza Live, and we'll be
Speaker 1: in New Orleans at the Civic Theater the following night
Speaker 1: October tent and friends like Chuck said, you better go
Speaker 1: get your tickets. Go to s Y s K live
Speaker 1: dot com for info and ticket links and everything you
Speaker 1: need to come see us. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W.
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant wearing his Stone Tumble Pilots hat, and there's
Speaker 1: Jerry over there. She's not wearing any hat. She's got
Speaker 1: really cool hair. It's not Stone Tumple Pilots. It is too.
Speaker 1: I've seen the Stone Tumble Pilots hats before and that's
Speaker 1: what it is. STP because I bought two hats at
Speaker 1: Auto Zone yesterday. I have a Champion spark Plug hat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they have good hats, they really do. I was getting
Speaker 1: a battery, and I was like, oh, on these two hats.
Speaker 1: It was a good Year Akron, Ohio good Year hat nice,
Speaker 1: which is where Emily's from. So I wanted that. And
Speaker 1: then I saw this stp hat Stone Temple pilots, but
Speaker 1: I would get a Champion spark plug hat to those
Speaker 1: are that's that's great, Okay. I'll let you borrow mine
Speaker 1: anytime you want. I just gotta give it back. I
Speaker 1: don't if I've ever seen you in a baseball cap.
Speaker 1: It's a weird jam, is it not what you want
Speaker 1: to see. I've seen you in shorts like twice in
Speaker 1: twelve years, keep the legs covered. And I think one
Speaker 1: of them was when you came over to borrow my lawnmower.
Speaker 1: I remember that, Yeah, like nine years ago. Sure, I've
Speaker 1: got to mow the lawn sometimes. Now things have changed.
Speaker 1: You can buy a lawnmore. Yeah, and now we can
Speaker 1: afford lawnmowers. I can wear shorts to actually have one
Speaker 1: of those plug in lawnmowers. I have a battery powered
Speaker 1: lawn more. Do you look at us stupid liberal hippies. Well,
Speaker 1: mine's mine's battery powered too, but you have to plug
Speaker 1: it in to charge it. Oh yeah, yeah, what what
Speaker 1: kind do you have? I have the green one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think they're all green. Now there's a blue one. Oh,
Speaker 1: I've got the green one. To the sun Joe. No,
Speaker 1: but I have a sun Joe pressure washer. He really
Speaker 1: isn't battery operated. No, you plug that in. I was
Speaker 1: gonna sail, but it just goes like tinkles out water.
Speaker 1: But they do make a plug in lawnmowers, Like, it's
Speaker 1: not a battery. You just like have a cord that
Speaker 1: you walk around and over with your lawnmark. I guess
Speaker 1: they're called electric sure, but yeah, I got the batter
Speaker 1: one because I have so little grass now and we
Speaker 1: may be done period with grass. Oh yeah, that's why
Speaker 1: you're zero escaping. Well, we're definitely doing the front, but
Speaker 1: the back it just got smaller and smaller. And my
Speaker 1: last lawmar broke. So I was paying a guy to
Speaker 1: come cut it. It's like, why am I paying this
Speaker 1: guy to cut to do a seven minute mo There's
Speaker 1: just that one bladed class grass that sees the lawnmower
Speaker 1: coming like yeah, But then I went and got the
Speaker 1: battery because lawnmowers are terrible for the environment. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: why I got it. They're one of the worst looters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're both also aware that we are charging our battery
Speaker 1: powered lawnmowers with coal fired power, and we understand that.
Speaker 1: I'm just talking about exhaust fumes. I don't even need one.
Speaker 1: I live in a condo, but I'm so dissatisfied with
Speaker 1: the landscapers that take care of the condo that I thought, yes,
Speaker 1: I bought a lawnmower just to do the little patch
Speaker 1: out in front of our buildings. Poor Momo doesn't get
Speaker 1: long grass against her junk when she's potty. It's a
Speaker 1: great way to start this episode. So we're talking special effects. Obvious,
Speaker 1: this has been law talk. We're talking special effects, Chuck. Yes,
Speaker 1: movie special effects, which, boy, I mean, we could do
Speaker 1: ten parts on this. This is kind of a big
Speaker 1: summation because movie special effects can be everything from the
Speaker 1: movie that you walk out of saying, oh that movie
Speaker 1: had no special effects, when in fact it did wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just tiny little things that you may not even notice,
Speaker 1: to things that are almost whole cloth special effects like
Speaker 1: sky Captain in the World of Tomorrow, Yeah, or Sin City. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I like both of those. Yes, did you know since City,
Speaker 1: every single bit of the set was c G I yeah,
Speaker 1: and that Sky Captain did it first, yeah, year before
Speaker 1: huh yeah, every bit of that was it was a
Speaker 1: green screen movie. I never saw it was a kid.
Speaker 1: It was interesting, Like the look of it was amazing
Speaker 1: and very much ahead of its time, like real art deco. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, I call it black and white, but it wasn't.
Speaker 1: It was just this really washed out color. But it
Speaker 1: looked awesome and was not bad. I'll have to check
Speaker 1: it out. And I think the dudes that made that
Speaker 1: kind of quit making movies after that. It's a very
Speaker 1: unique story. Have you ever seen This has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with anything, but have you seen the Changeling? Oh
Speaker 1: my god? Did you just see that? Yes? And I
Speaker 1: have to tell you, I don't think I've ever gotten
Speaker 1: chills more frequently from a movie that I did with
Speaker 1: that one changed its great genuinely. It's a genuinely scary
Speaker 1: ghost story. Yeah, like it is wonderful. Yeah. I miss
Speaker 1: Georgie Scott too. Yeah, he's a good actor. And I
Speaker 1: don't remember who that um the female lead was in there,
Speaker 1: but she was great too. It's been a while. I
Speaker 1: haven't seen it in many, many years, so anyway, special effects,
Speaker 1: let's try this thing in We're gonna get derailed like
Speaker 1: every five sets. Okay, effects are divided and this is
Speaker 1: by the grabstor. He helped us out with This adds
Speaker 1: a big movie guy and horror movie sci fi guy,
Speaker 1: so he probably enjoyed writing this one up. Uh. They're
Speaker 1: divided into three general categories. And this all has to
Speaker 1: do with where the effect is happening. It can be practical,
Speaker 1: which is in front of the camera, and that means
Speaker 1: it's a physical thing that's happening. I think that's what
Speaker 1: most people think of when they think special effects. You think, okay,
Speaker 1: by most people, I mean me, uh, in camera effects
Speaker 1: that happened inside the camera, and then post production effects.
Speaker 1: And many times you're using one or all three of these.
Speaker 1: So with like practical effects, that's things like UM, like
Speaker 1: makeup and prosthetics like ed uses the example of David
Speaker 1: Lynch's The Elephant Man, like the the prosthetic makeup that
Speaker 1: was used to term John Hurt or John Hurd which
Speaker 1: one hurt into Joseph Merrick. Um, that's a special effect.
Speaker 1: An explosion on set that's a special effect. A UM,
Speaker 1: a blood packet to make it look like somebody just
Speaker 1: got shot in the chest. Squid. That's a special effect.
Speaker 1: All three of those are practical effects. They're actually happening
Speaker 1: in the physical world in front of you on set,
Speaker 1: being captured on film. That's a practical special effect. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the other one I wanted to mention there that
Speaker 1: you might not think of his stuff. Like if there
Speaker 1: is a a fire like a fireplace in a scene
Speaker 1: and then you flip the camera around to show the
Speaker 1: people and you see that fire shimmering on the wall,
Speaker 1: that's a practical effect too. Little things like that, but
Speaker 1: it's lighting. It's a lighting effect, yeah. Or it's a
Speaker 1: fire like you know, those aren't real fires. I mean
Speaker 1: it's real fire. Somebody should put that out. But it's
Speaker 1: not like someone lights a bunch of wood. They put
Speaker 1: fake wood and they have these uh firebars that it's
Speaker 1: like what you have under your grill basically, or like
Speaker 1: hide those and then that's your fire because it has
Speaker 1: to look perfect. You can't just chance somebody not being
Speaker 1: able to start a fire or looking wonky. That's why
Speaker 1: movie fires look perfect, Yeah, because they're fake. They are
Speaker 1: kind of dreamy. So in camera effects is just basically
Speaker 1: messing with the way the film is being produced inside
Speaker 1: the camera what not? What's going on in reality the
Speaker 1: film is capturing, but how the film is actually capturing
Speaker 1: this stuff? Yeah, slow motion is a special effect in
Speaker 1: camera special effect. Yeah, or fast motion too, which is
Speaker 1: ten times more hilarious than fast motion if you ask me, like,
Speaker 1: where would the monsters be without fast motion? Yeah? Or
Speaker 1: Binny Hill for God's sake, that lived and breathed on
Speaker 1: fast motion? Um, what else can you do there? You can?
Speaker 1: And we'll see this some some of the early special effects,
Speaker 1: like stopping the film, changing something, starting it again, like Bewitched,
Speaker 1: appearing out of nowhere. Yeah, that's especially in camera special effect. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One thing that struck me about all this from researching
Speaker 1: this is how the basis the foundation for special effects
Speaker 1: was laid immediately upon like motion pictures being like created,
Speaker 1: like the the whole industry, not even the industry before
Speaker 1: the industry existed, but basically after the invention of motion pictures,
Speaker 1: and that it stayed virtually the same until the nineties. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people refined it and got better at it, and techniques
Speaker 1: got more the same general crafts were used, which is
Speaker 1: why craft service is called craft service, because each department
Speaker 1: is their own craft. I didn't know they're there to
Speaker 1: serve them pizza roles, yeah, man or whatever. You can
Speaker 1: put on some weight and film in something. I'll tell
Speaker 1: you that for you can so uh stop motion animation.
Speaker 1: That is an in camera effect. You're moving a little
Speaker 1: clay figure or whatever, a doll or a King Kong,
Speaker 1: one a California raisin, one frame at a time, twenty
Speaker 1: four frames per second. Can you imagine? Didn't you do
Speaker 1: that with your brother with g I Joe? I did?
Speaker 1: And then years later I did a little Star Wars
Speaker 1: thing when I got a high eight video camera and
Speaker 1: um spent like three days working on something that ended
Speaker 1: up being nine seconds long, and I said, I'm done.
Speaker 1: What's funny is you're gonna get a season desist later
Speaker 1: from Lucasfilm after talking about us in the podcast. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then we have post production effects, and that is
Speaker 1: I think that's what a lot of people think of
Speaker 1: a special effects these days, because that's all the c
Speaker 1: g I stuff that you will see as all happens
Speaker 1: in post production. Okay, alright, yes, these days I got you, Like,
Speaker 1: almost all special effects have and impost these days, right, well, no,
Speaker 1: they still combined some of the old crafts as well.
Speaker 1: But yeah, surely a lot of it is c g
Speaker 1: I I mean, computers can do some amazing stuff. I
Speaker 1: mean stuff that used to take months to do a
Speaker 1: computer can do an hour's now and do it a
Speaker 1: million times better. So, um, depending on your taste, I
Speaker 1: should say. So those are the big three. Practical and
Speaker 1: camera in post production and um, like I was saying,
Speaker 1: like the basis of special effects was founded like in
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, and there were just some people who
Speaker 1: had kind of followed in a tradition of still photography.
Speaker 1: Still photographers by that time had already figured out some
Speaker 1: cool stuff that you could do messing around with cameras,
Speaker 1: something like double exposure. We're gonna take a picture of
Speaker 1: one thing and then take a picture of another thing
Speaker 1: with the previously exposed film, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: it looks like there's a ghost looming behind you. Stuff
Speaker 1: like that. So out of the gate, when motion pictures
Speaker 1: were um beat started to become a little widespread and
Speaker 1: people could afford them and try messing around with them.
Speaker 1: They had a basis of of trickery to begin with.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of stuff you can do with
Speaker 1: motion picture cameras that you can't do with still photo cameras.
Speaker 1: And they figured this out right away. Yeah. That first
Speaker 1: guy who's credited as the first special effect is Alfred
Speaker 1: Clark and in uh, they don't have the year exactly right,
Speaker 1: it's either ninety three, that's eight or eight. He made
Speaker 1: a short film called the Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots,
Speaker 1: and he did that little stop trick, like I was saying,
Speaker 1: you shoot something, you stop the camera, you replace it,
Speaker 1: or you remove something, and then you start the camera
Speaker 1: and in real time when you go to play it back,
Speaker 1: it's seamless. And in his case, did you look at it?
Speaker 1: It's uh, he's just a stop trick with Mary getting beheaded,
Speaker 1: and right when the axe is going to fall, you know,
Speaker 1: he switches her out for a dummy, then starts the
Speaker 1: camera back up and he chops the dummy's head off,
Speaker 1: and it's it looks pretty good, like you can't. There's
Speaker 1: no big weird jump he did for did a really
Speaker 1: good job. Yeah, And the key to that is just
Speaker 1: making sure that no one touches the camera or even
Speaker 1: breathes on it, and then getting the dummy in the
Speaker 1: same position as the actor. Yeah. And in fact, as
Speaker 1: we'll talk about later with Matt Paintings, it's so crucial
Speaker 1: that the camera not move. That one technique was they
Speaker 1: used to bury the camera tripod like a couple of
Speaker 1: feet into the earth, just to make sure like no
Speaker 1: dumb dumb p a bumps into it like me. So um.
Speaker 1: Alfred Clark is credited with the first special effect, but
Speaker 1: a guy named George may Lee's today get it may Lee?
Speaker 1: We should go ask Casey Pegrum. Oh yeah, he would know.
Speaker 1: I think it's uh Millier, Oh nice, I think he
Speaker 1: just nailed it, Oragemillier. At any rate, this guy is
Speaker 1: known as the father of special effects. He was very
Speaker 1: early on doing stuff that no one else was doing,
Speaker 1: you know. Granted there were very few people working in
Speaker 1: this field and the time of the five people did.
Speaker 1: But he was an illusionist and he said, oh man,
Speaker 1: I can really do some amazing tricks with this camera.
Speaker 1: And he really put it to good use from a
Speaker 1: very early um like I mean, turn to the last century. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he actually stumbled upon that little stop trick by accident
Speaker 1: when he was shooting a street traffic scene in Paris.
Speaker 1: The camera jams. Well, I think a bus was coming
Speaker 1: across frame. He's like, mad, fixes the camera. Can we
Speaker 1: say that all right? We don't have any French people listening,
Speaker 1: that's true. Uh, starts the camera back up, and of
Speaker 1: course there's different things happening, and then when he went
Speaker 1: back to look at it, it's he's kind of just
Speaker 1: stumbled upon this weird little steps sitution splice that became
Speaker 1: part of filmmaking. Yeah, because by the time the camera
Speaker 1: had started up again, the bus was replaced by a hearse.
Speaker 1: So it looked like when he went back and watched it,
Speaker 1: the bus suddenly transformed into a hearse And he said,
Speaker 1: wait till they get a load of bewitched seventies something
Speaker 1: years from now. So, um, no, I guess what was
Speaker 1: that in the fifties, sixties, sixties aren't So you may
Speaker 1: not recognize George Malliers. Oh I got at that time name. Uh,
Speaker 1: but you probably have heard of his work, like A
Speaker 1: Trip to the Moon. What's very widely Side is like
Speaker 1: one of the first actual movies. I think it was
Speaker 1: in the twenties something minute range. But it was about
Speaker 1: some explorers in the Victorian era getting into rocket and
Speaker 1: traveling to the Moon and the rocket lands and the
Speaker 1: man in the Moon's eye. Everybody's seen that. I don't
Speaker 1: care who you are. If you say you haven't, you have. Um,
Speaker 1: this was the guy who made that. And this is
Speaker 1: a very early movie. It was from two. But he
Speaker 1: was doing all sorts of a using stuff. He was
Speaker 1: using extensive costuming, masks, um, all sorts of in camera techniques.
Speaker 1: Is painting on film frames. Yeah, and this is two.
Speaker 1: And like I was saying, this stuff was refined, but
Speaker 1: it was the basis of special effects for the next
Speaker 1: century to come. Should we take a quick break? I
Speaker 1: think so. All right, let's take a quick break, and
Speaker 1: we will talk a little bit about, uh, the Matt
Speaker 1: technique right after this. I'm actually pretty psyched about this, alright, Chuck.
Speaker 1: As I said, I'm very psyched about the Matt. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this isn't uh, this is a little confusing the
Speaker 1: way it's laid out here. Um, because what what Ed's
Speaker 1: talking about here with Norman Don is called original negative
Speaker 1: matt painting. Um. If you hear of a Matt painting,
Speaker 1: that is a piece of glass where you have and
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about the most common way you
Speaker 1: might see it. Employed is you take a big piece
Speaker 1: of glass and you paint like a city escape on it,
Speaker 1: like really realistic, and then you put that in a
Speaker 1: scene and shoot it. So it's instead of having someone
Speaker 1: in front of a city, and this was pre blue
Speaker 1: screen and green screen technology, you would just put Kurt
Speaker 1: Russell and Escape from New York in a field and
Speaker 1: there's a Matte painting of New York City behind him
Speaker 1: and it looks great. And James Cameron painted that and
Speaker 1: Escape from New York. He was a Matt painter. Oh
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. That was like his first job.
Speaker 1: It's neat Like if you, um, if you even if
Speaker 1: you do know what Chuck is talking about, go to
Speaker 1: the internet and just look up like eight Matt paintings
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of really wonderful ones when you've
Speaker 1: seen before ones you haven't. But basically, any time you've
Speaker 1: seen a movie pre maybe um where somebody walks into
Speaker 1: this enormous place or this amazingly elaborate future city or
Speaker 1: something like that, what you're actually looking at is an
Speaker 1: expertly painted painting that has been messed with in post
Speaker 1: production or using an in camera technique to make it
Speaker 1: look like it's alive or actually, you know, bustling or energetic,
Speaker 1: but it's really it's a painting. It's a painting that
Speaker 1: some amazing human being painted by hand. Yeah, and we
Speaker 1: should point out they still do this today, they just
Speaker 1: do it digitally and digital Matt painters are super talented
Speaker 1: as well. Um, but it's kind of neat to think
Speaker 1: about that old craft and James Cameron painting a piece
Speaker 1: of glass, uh and sticking that behind Kurt Russell, And
Speaker 1: I mean it was used in everything like I for
Speaker 1: my money, Matt painting is the single most um important
Speaker 1: and widespread special effect ever. Maybe hard to argue that,
Speaker 1: Thank you like it. It was in Mary Poppins with
Speaker 1: Mary Poppins is coming into the City of London. That's
Speaker 1: a Matte painting. When Superman walks into the uh, where's
Speaker 1: the what's the name of the place where he's from,
Speaker 1: the Crystal Cave where um Fortress of Solitude? Yes, that
Speaker 1: where he talks with um with Marlon Brando his dad.
Speaker 1: Uh Yeah, I think so okay, Um, that's a Matte painting.
Speaker 1: And I think the Fortress of Solitude are the remnants
Speaker 1: of Krypton. I'm boys Superman. People are so mad at
Speaker 1: me right now. People still I thought everybody was on
Speaker 1: the marble train. No, people love Superman, not the comics. Okay,
Speaker 1: because I was gonna say, I mean, you've seen what
Speaker 1: they've done Superman lately, right and Batman? So, uh, that's
Speaker 1: a Matt painting. And what that is it's called set extensions.
Speaker 1: So that basically means you're just sort of extending the
Speaker 1: re a life set to make something bigger and more
Speaker 1: opulent um or maybe not more opent, just bigger and more.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing, relying on that mat painter and
Speaker 1: having the glass there, and glass can break and it
Speaker 1: can you know, on set with lighting can be weird.
Speaker 1: So that's all can get a little hinky. So that's
Speaker 1: why this technique called original negative Matt painting was developed
Speaker 1: by Norman Don and that is when nowadays he'll use
Speaker 1: what's called the mat box, which is um literally like black.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's cardboard these days, but whatever they
Speaker 1: make out of a cardboard thing that you put over
Speaker 1: the lens to block out whatever you want to block out.
Speaker 1: Back in the day, they would paint cardboard and hold
Speaker 1: it in front of the lens or they would actually
Speaker 1: paint the lens. And what you're essentially doing is um
Speaker 1: painting away it was early green screen. You're painting away
Speaker 1: what you don't want in the frame or what you
Speaker 1: want in the future, and then adding that later on. Right,
Speaker 1: And because it's black or because it's covered, there's light
Speaker 1: is not hitting that part of the film. That part
Speaker 1: of the film, the actual film strip itself that you're
Speaker 1: you're recording onto or filming onto, that's unexposed. All that
Speaker 1: gets exposed is the part of the lens or the
Speaker 1: camera that is not covered that has say, your actor
Speaker 1: like doing the herky jerky dance, right. And then so
Speaker 1: what you do after that is you take that film
Speaker 1: that has your actor doing the herky jerky dance projected
Speaker 1: onto a screen so you see where the actor is
Speaker 1: and on the screen you literally paint the background that
Speaker 1: you want. Then you film the whole thing a second time,
Speaker 1: and now you have your actor in the set that
Speaker 1: you originally wanted. Right. The only difference there, uh, which
Speaker 1: is something that wasn't quite right here, is they don't
Speaker 1: like projected. They just develop a few frames of it
Speaker 1: and projected like a slide. So it's not like the
Speaker 1: camera the film is moving through on the wall because
Speaker 1: in the article here says and then you just stop it.
Speaker 1: And what happens if you do that is the bulb
Speaker 1: burns the film. So you can't just stop at produced
Speaker 1: like a slide of him project that. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: you paint in the castle or the mountain or the
Speaker 1: whatever you want, and then you go back and expose
Speaker 1: it again. Pretty neat. You just open your trench coat.
Speaker 1: And the big innovator with the original negative matt painting
Speaker 1: was Norman Don and he really like really lead the way.
Speaker 1: But I mean again, most of the stuff that that
Speaker 1: does this now is done by computers imposed. But this
Speaker 1: is like the links people were going to to make
Speaker 1: movies at the time, and you watched them today and
Speaker 1: you're like, god, that looks terrible. But if you stop
Speaker 1: and think about the effort that they were going to
Speaker 1: they were invented. Yeah, it's just mind boggling that they
Speaker 1: managed to get it, you know to this point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Norman Don tried to patent that technique as well, but
Speaker 1: they said, no, you did not invent this, you popularized it,
Speaker 1: and you can't patent something that you made super popular.
Speaker 1: There's some other stuff too. There's like rear projection in
Speaker 1: front projection, which is basically like projecting the background to
Speaker 1: moving background onto a screen behind the actors. Um, basically,
Speaker 1: you know all those hokey driving scenes. Yeah, the person
Speaker 1: is great, the cars being rocked or whatever, the road
Speaker 1: behind him, that's front or rear projection. Yeah that and um,
Speaker 1: people still will use that as homage, like in pulp fiction,
Speaker 1: very famously Bruce Willis or I guess not, Yeah, when
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis gets in the cab after the fight, and
Speaker 1: if it looks old fashioned, this because QT used rear
Speaker 1: screen projection for that. And there's also a technique that's
Speaker 1: not in here that I just remembered, so I'm actually
Speaker 1: having to look up what it's called. Um, when you're
Speaker 1: in a car scene but you're not doing a rear
Speaker 1: screen projection, So what happens here is you're you're sitting
Speaker 1: in a car, in a still car on the set,
Speaker 1: but they're not projecting anything behind you. What you've got
Speaker 1: is uh, two people shaking the car frames. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: usually a grip, but I've I've shaken cars and trains before.
Speaker 1: It's because I'm just a body on the set. Like,
Speaker 1: get in there and shake that thing. In fact, one
Speaker 1: job I was on that was a fake subway train
Speaker 1: and the hydraulics broke early on and they're like, bring
Speaker 1: out the p as, you're gonna shake this train for
Speaker 1: a twelve hours. Rhythm get in there. Yeah. Oh, we
Speaker 1: couldn't have too much rhythm because we got uh yelled
Speaker 1: at for that because it looked to rhythmic. So we're like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what, I don't know how to do this.
Speaker 1: Who are you working for? It was just a commercial
Speaker 1: director that said that our our movement of the train
Speaker 1: looked to rhythmic and not believable. So anyway, this fruit
Speaker 1: of Looms commercial is totally unbelievable. You sit in the car,
Speaker 1: you're acting like you're driving. There's someone else shaking the car.
Speaker 1: There might be someone else off camera, like flashing a
Speaker 1: light uh through the car like you're going by a
Speaker 1: street light, or a headlight goes across their face, and
Speaker 1: there may be fake rain in the background. And this
Speaker 1: is sometimes like six seven eight people working in concert
Speaker 1: to make it look like you're driving at night in
Speaker 1: the rain or something like right, so there's not like
Speaker 1: an obvious background trees or road or whatever. But maybe
Speaker 1: there's headlights coming up behind us, just dark, Yeah, but
Speaker 1: they're people with a spotlight. Yeah, it's really really cool,
Speaker 1: old fashioned, but people still use that stuff. And I
Speaker 1: wish I could remember the full name of that technique,
Speaker 1: the the shake and shimmy. It's I'm gonna be so
Speaker 1: mad later on. What was this called the shake and chimmy? Okay,
Speaker 1: that's right. Um, so you talked about green screen, and
Speaker 1: that's actually super old too. There's a really convoluted explanation
Speaker 1: about how originally green screen employed sodium vapor lights, which
Speaker 1: would actually mess with the yellow exposure on panchromatic film,
Speaker 1: and my brain I started bleeding out in my ear.
Speaker 1: I cannot tell you how many times I read descriptions
Speaker 1: about this and I can't quite get it. So suffice
Speaker 1: to say that that was one technique for green screen.
Speaker 1: What really kind of changed the industry is when they
Speaker 1: figured out that again if you if you if you
Speaker 1: film in black them, the film is not going to
Speaker 1: be exposed. So anything you go and re expose it
Speaker 1: to it will cover over that stuff so like it's transparent.
Speaker 1: So for example, in The Invisible Man from I think
Speaker 1: Claude Rains wore a black body suit and the background
Speaker 1: was black. It was a black screen, like a black
Speaker 1: green screen. But he wore clothes and everything, and bandages
Speaker 1: and sunglasses, and I think he smoked a cigarette or whatever.
Speaker 1: But when he took the bandages off and we took
Speaker 1: his sunglasses and clothes off, there was nothing there. It
Speaker 1: was a black bodysuit and a black background. So when
Speaker 1: they filmed the background later on, all you could see
Speaker 1: was the background in the clothes and the bandages. It
Speaker 1: looked like there was nothing there because as far as
Speaker 1: the film was concerned, when they were filming it, there
Speaker 1: wasn't anything there. So the film wasn't exposed in those
Speaker 1: sections on each frame. That's right, And that's called the
Speaker 1: Williams process. And a key part of the Williams process
Speaker 1: is the optical printer, and that is a projector that
Speaker 1: actually prints an image directly onto the film that runs
Speaker 1: through the camera while that printer and camera are SYNCD up. Yes,
Speaker 1: so this is to me, the optical printers the second
Speaker 1: most widespread and useful special effect technique in the history
Speaker 1: of film. You just waved her hand. Suddenly they had
Speaker 1: an ascot in a beret on. Uh yeah, hard to
Speaker 1: argue that too. But all this stuff was just precursor
Speaker 1: to what was blue screen early on Chroma Key blue
Speaker 1: and then later became Chroma Key green. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: why they made the switch actually, other than maybe the
Speaker 1: green less private in or less use. I think so
Speaker 1: probably maybe the blue was um because you know what,
Speaker 1: you don't want anything close to that color will disappear
Speaker 1: against the green screen. Anyone who's ever done the weather
Speaker 1: on the newscast that, yeah, there have been. There are
Speaker 1: blooper reels of weather people disappearing when they wear like
Speaker 1: a green jacket or something. Right, it looks like the
Speaker 1: weather is going on through their body. Same thing. So,
Speaker 1: so I want to say one more thing about optical printers,
Speaker 1: or another little bit about So what you have is
Speaker 1: a projector projecting a film on to a screen, and
Speaker 1: you have a camera recording what's being projected. Right, That's right,
Speaker 1: that's the optical printer. And you could do all sorts
Speaker 1: of stuff with that. So let's say you have a
Speaker 1: shot where you have one Matt in the foreground and
Speaker 1: live actor and then another Matt in the background that
Speaker 1: has a bunch of different people in it or something
Speaker 1: like that. Three. Okay, so you've got three different elements
Speaker 1: to that shot. What you would do is using the
Speaker 1: same film film each thing. So you go film that,
Speaker 1: like the the actor, the live action actor, You've got
Speaker 1: that on the film and you project that, and you
Speaker 1: take film where you're filming the mat and you project
Speaker 1: that and film that. I just totally have screwed this up.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, this is just like, um no, it's
Speaker 1: worse than that. Was it? Um false false positives. Do
Speaker 1: you remember that time where I was like I took
Speaker 1: a pretty simple thing and just completely walk the dog
Speaker 1: with it. Okay, well I just do that again. Everyone.
Speaker 1: I want you to go look up obstacle printers, read
Speaker 1: a little bit about them, and then you'll say, oh,
Speaker 1: Josh is right. Yeah this stuff stuff. It is essentially
Speaker 1: you're filming a projection and you can do that multiple
Speaker 1: times with the same film, and it adds up to
Speaker 1: where you have the shot you wanted, where it makes
Speaker 1: it look like all these things that you filmed three
Speaker 1: separate times are all happening together in one space. Yes,
Speaker 1: you're mary being separate images together onto a single piece
Speaker 1: of film. Right. You couldn't do that with before optical printers,
Speaker 1: which is a projector and a camera working together. That's right, Okay,
Speaker 1: I think I needed that we should mention briefly motion
Speaker 1: controlled cameras. This is a system that allows it's basically
Speaker 1: taking the person out of the equation. There is not
Speaker 1: a person pushing a dolly. There's not a person moving
Speaker 1: the camera. It is a machine that is programmed to
Speaker 1: move a camera through space very very precisely and exactly
Speaker 1: the same every single time. Yeah, so you can do
Speaker 1: the exact same motion over and over again, over and over,
Speaker 1: and a lot of times you'll if you're on a
Speaker 1: TV commercial, as boring as that is, you will see
Speaker 1: stuff like this for like a food shoot, because food
Speaker 1: shoots are notoriously tricky because everything is super close up
Speaker 1: and has to be perfect, and you can't be off
Speaker 1: a little bit with a camera because a lot of
Speaker 1: times you'll sub in stuff later and post. And that's
Speaker 1: the whole reason for a mo and control is to
Speaker 1: replicate moves with exact precision. So, um, I was reading
Speaker 1: about industrial light and magic using this to really great
Speaker 1: effect with the first Star Wars, which is episode four right,
Speaker 1: the New Hope. That's the first one right right. I'm
Speaker 1: not confirming or denying anything. I'm just gonna let that stand.
Speaker 1: Episode four is the first Star Wars movie that ever
Speaker 1: came out. Correct, The Star Wars and New Hope is
Speaker 1: the first episode that I ever saw in a movie theater,
Speaker 1: because that's the first one that ever came out. Anyway,
Speaker 1: when they were making this, you know, is it a
Speaker 1: Star Destroyer? The big the big daddy ships. Okay, oh man,
Speaker 1: we're gonna get murdered. Um. Everything. All of the ships
Speaker 1: and Star Wars were models, fairly small models. Actually they
Speaker 1: were okay, I think it was episode four. I'm almost positible. So, um,
Speaker 1: those models were not moving in these shots and these
Speaker 1: enormous like huge panoramic shots where like there's um taie
Speaker 1: fighters flying around shooting everything and um X wing fighters
Speaker 1: shooting the tie fighters. None of those models were moving.
Speaker 1: What happened was they figured out how to use motion
Speaker 1: controlled cameras so that the camera would go through the
Speaker 1: shot and around the model and make it look like
Speaker 1: the model was moving, and plus it was moving the
Speaker 1: shot through space. Right. The thing is is, let's say
Speaker 1: you have five different ships. You film those five ships separately,
Speaker 1: but those five ships are all going to be in
Speaker 1: the same shot, so you have to film that same
Speaker 1: shot the exact same way five different times and then
Speaker 1: running through an optical printer so that you can get
Speaker 1: all of them, all five shots onto the same strip
Speaker 1: of film. But that's one of the one of the
Speaker 1: ways that motion um motion controlled cameras were really put
Speaker 1: to good use, and it was extremely groundbreaking because not
Speaker 1: one of those ships were moving in reality when they
Speaker 1: were filming Start Wars. Can you name five Star warships
Speaker 1: tie Fighter X wing Fighter. You already said one tie
Speaker 1: fighter too. Huh. The deuce is what the people in
Speaker 1: the no call it. Um the Uh you already said
Speaker 1: star destroyer should so star destroyer was right. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a star Destroyer. Okay, you made a face like I
Speaker 1: was just totally off. Um. You could make the case
Speaker 1: that end Or was a ship even though it was
Speaker 1: a planet. Uh. There was the forest Speeder, the the
Speaker 1: pod Raiser, yeah, and um drs as that's right, and
Speaker 1: he's the final ship. Uh. You know many people by
Speaker 1: their calf muscles just popped right out of the back
Speaker 1: to their legs. Hollie Fry is like hyperventilating somewhere in
Speaker 1: the office and she doesn't know why. So, as I
Speaker 1: said earlier, it's it's usually a combination of these different
Speaker 1: techniques to create one overall special effect using these different crafts.
Speaker 1: And a great example is Jurassic Park in the um
Speaker 1: in the scene with the velociraptors in the kitchen, that great,
Speaker 1: great sequence when it was playing cat and mouse with
Speaker 1: those children. There were puppets, there were actors and costumes,
Speaker 1: there were animatronic raptor heads, and there were full c
Speaker 1: g I raptors and you throw this all in a hat,
Speaker 1: mix it all up, and it comes out to be
Speaker 1: like a really believable looking scene. It comes out as
Speaker 1: an oscar. Yeah, I'm sure they want oscars, right, but
Speaker 1: they had to have I don't know, but there's just
Speaker 1: no way. It was groundbreaking. I remember being just gob
Speaker 1: smacked in the movie theater when I first saw those
Speaker 1: dinosaurs walking across the screen. And that was I believe
Speaker 1: for the first Jurassic Park, right, Jurassic Park A New Hope,
Speaker 1: the first one that came out so um, but that
Speaker 1: was five years after the first oscar had been awarded
Speaker 1: for special effects. As far as I know, I believe
Speaker 1: that the Abyss was the first one to win an
Speaker 1: OSCAR for special effects maybe or there No, No, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm way off, way off. Um. The Abyss was the
Speaker 1: first movie to win a special effect for a c
Speaker 1: G I effect. Remember the water? Um still looks pretty good.
Speaker 1: It looks amazing. And this is seven we're talking about. Wow?
Speaker 1: Is that when that came out? Yeah? I was surprised
Speaker 1: to see that too, because I thought it was Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a good movie. I really like that movie. How
Speaker 1: do you not like Ed Harris? You don't like get Here?
Speaker 1: What did you not like get Here? No? I like
Speaker 1: I like him as an actor. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people might have problems with Ed Harris as a person.
Speaker 1: He's notoriously cantankerous. I've never heard that. I believe it. Sure,
Speaker 1: he looks like he could yell somebody down, doesn't he?
Speaker 1: But he also keeps a cool head when he's an actor.
Speaker 1: Is a seventies or sixties NASA guy. Hey, I love it, Harris.
Speaker 1: All right, let's take another break and we're gonna come
Speaker 1: back and talk a little bit about Star Wars episode
Speaker 1: whatever right after this. Okay, we're back, and we should talk.
Speaker 1: We should mention the garbage, Matt real quick, because that
Speaker 1: is uh, that is a big deal. A lot of
Speaker 1: times you have wire work or you have um, you
Speaker 1: have things hanging from wires. It doesn't have to be
Speaker 1: a person. It can be like a model plane or
Speaker 1: a tie fighter or whatever. You gotta get rid of
Speaker 1: those wires. Unless you're ed Wood, you can't have fishing line. No,
Speaker 1: you're supposed to not, but yes. Or if you're Charlie
Speaker 1: Throne in mad Max Fury Road, you gotta get it
Speaker 1: rid of that arm. Or if you're in Forrest Gump,
Speaker 1: you gotta get rid of Lieutenant Dan's legs. Man. That
Speaker 1: was amazing. That was the first time anybody's ever done
Speaker 1: really something like that throughout. Yeah. I had my problems
Speaker 1: with that movie, for sure, And one of them is
Speaker 1: I think he way Over. He was like a kid
Speaker 1: in a candy store and way Over did the like
Speaker 1: and now Forest is in the White House and using
Speaker 1: archival footage and sticking Forest in it. Yeah, that whole
Speaker 1: like half hour dialogue he has with Peter Cushing's ghost,
Speaker 1: it was uncanny. Uh, But I get it. I get
Speaker 1: why these filmmakers get excited these really technical wizards. Well
Speaker 1: you get a new technique and they just hammer it.
Speaker 1: The guy from Industrial Lite and Magic when they made
Speaker 1: the first Star Wars call it what you will um.
Speaker 1: His name was like John Deekstra, and this motion controlled
Speaker 1: camera assembly that they created was called distro Flex Super groundbreaking,
Speaker 1: and they really did amazing stuff with it. Well, he's
Speaker 1: like a legend in this industry now, and I saw
Speaker 1: an interview with him recently and he was like, I'm
Speaker 1: so tired of seeing just whole cities leveled and like
Speaker 1: just the most amazing stuff you can possibly think of
Speaker 1: being done just because we can do it. He put
Speaker 1: it really, really well. I think it's an embarrassment of riches,
Speaker 1: you know, like it can be done, so it's being done,
Speaker 1: everybody's doing it. It's just you know, like and it
Speaker 1: makes it less amazing, not necessarily because it looks bad.
Speaker 1: It just keeps looking better and better every time. Like
Speaker 1: if you if you look at Charlie's theren's um prosthetic
Speaker 1: arm or missing arm compared with Lieutenant Dan's missing legs,
Speaker 1: it does so it's getting better. There's just too much
Speaker 1: of it, I think is the point to be you know,
Speaker 1: just to be all ed heresy on this. No. I
Speaker 1: have long predicted a return to practical effects, and it's
Speaker 1: starting to happen a little bit more and more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I could see starting with indie filmmakers. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: Which is funny because finally computer generated effects have trickled
Speaker 1: down enough, like you or I could just walk out
Speaker 1: of the studio and probably get on any one of
Speaker 1: those backs out there and use stuff that ten fifteen
Speaker 1: years ago, when we cost five hundred thousand dollars to
Speaker 1: set up a rig like that. Yeah. And that's how
Speaker 1: some young filmmakers have gotten noticed is by making these
Speaker 1: um short films with like zero money on their computer
Speaker 1: that get a lot of action on YouTube because it
Speaker 1: looks so amazing. In the studio will be like sign
Speaker 1: that person up. I can't remember the guy's name, but
Speaker 1: that's happened a couple of times in recent years. Ed Harris, Uh,
Speaker 1: we should talk about a few of the groundbreaking people
Speaker 1: over the years. Um, we'll go through these a little
Speaker 1: quicker than what we have in front of us, I think,
Speaker 1: but we should mention Lon Cheney, one of the original
Speaker 1: um superstars of film and the Silent era, the Man
Speaker 1: of a Thousand Faces. He was, uh, he was very
Speaker 1: talented doing his own makeup and changing his face. Um.
Speaker 1: That's why it's called the Man of a thousand Faces, Right,
Speaker 1: He's like, here's nine. What about Willis O'Brien. He was
Speaker 1: one of the pioneers of stop motion photography. Again, if
Speaker 1: you're a California Racings fan, you have a lot to
Speaker 1: thank Willis O'Brien for. He also this dude, the stuff
Speaker 1: he did. I mean, if you look back, he did
Speaker 1: King Kong, the nineteen thirty three King Kong. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: if you look back at this, you're like, this is
Speaker 1: this is cool. But if you research what was done
Speaker 1: to create this, you're just blown away by it. Yeah. Again,
Speaker 1: many processes coming together, um to create that nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: three version of King Kong. And that fight looks good still,
Speaker 1: I mean it doesn't look realistic consider the year. It
Speaker 1: looks awesome. It does, and it's about three three and
Speaker 1: a half minutes long, King Kong fighting the tarannosaurs rex um.
Speaker 1: But it took seven weeks to film because there's twenty
Speaker 1: four frames shot per second in a film, and for
Speaker 1: every frame, they moved the models a little bit here
Speaker 1: or there. So that's why it took seven weeks just
Speaker 1: for that fight scene. I think it was fifty five
Speaker 1: weeks for all of the stop motion photography that was
Speaker 1: done in that movie. Yeah, that's impressive. It really is impressive,
Speaker 1: especially when you realize the trouble they went to when
Speaker 1: you go back and watch it, like this is pretty nuts. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Ray Harry Housing continued the work of Willis O'Brien and
Speaker 1: very famously in like the fifties and sixties with movies
Speaker 1: like Jason and the Argonauts, Clash of the Titans, remember
Speaker 1: Medusa Scary Lady. Yeah, that had to be towards the
Speaker 1: end of his career, I guess because that was in
Speaker 1: the eighties. Yeah, I think like eighty one maybe remember
Speaker 1: the minuteur Too Man? That was cool movie. That was
Speaker 1: a big movie for me as a kid. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I was like when l A Law came along, I
Speaker 1: was like, I know that guy's right, there's the Titans guy.
Speaker 1: Uh we we should shout out militant Patrick. This is
Speaker 1: a very interesting story. She was one of the only,
Speaker 1: well first and only women working in special effects back
Speaker 1: in the day, and she created the very famous mask
Speaker 1: of the gil Man from Creature from the Black Lagoon.
Speaker 1: In the mid nineteen fifties and was unceremoniously fired, not
Speaker 1: just fired, stricken from the credits. Yeah, this guy named
Speaker 1: Bud Westmore. He assisted her and then basically had her
Speaker 1: fired rather than give her the credit for the mask,
Speaker 1: which he would take credit for because I think he
Speaker 1: was the supervisor in charge of effects or costume or something.
Speaker 1: Oh I thought. I guess he assisted her, but he
Speaker 1: was her boss. Yeah, okay, but like she very clearly
Speaker 1: on her own, came up with the gil Man for yeah,
Speaker 1: the creature, and this has only come out in the
Speaker 1: last like few years. They've kind of dug up the
Speaker 1: original stuff and uh yeah, sexism just basically pushed her
Speaker 1: out of the industry altogether. Very sad. She's starting to
Speaker 1: get her do now though, which is good. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: is very good. Um, there's Dick Smith was amazing. He
Speaker 1: created the Squib. Yeah, he's a he's a very famous
Speaker 1: makeup artist. He's really good at making people look aged. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He made forty seven year old Marlon Brando look much
Speaker 1: than the Godfather. Oh yeah, yeah, he was only he
Speaker 1: was a year younger than me. Brando. I never thought
Speaker 1: about that. Nut. Wow, he really is good. He also
Speaker 1: did Death Becomes Her, which is one of the all
Speaker 1: time great movies, Yeah for sure, and The Exorcist and
Speaker 1: Scanners and if you were seeing Ghost Story from Yeah,
Speaker 1: very scary movie. The old Dudes he did he did that?
Speaker 1: What else? Very famously aged Dustin Hoffman a little big
Speaker 1: man by many, many years. And then in the last
Speaker 1: like twenty five thirty years, Rick Baker and stan Winston,
Speaker 1: stan Winston's He's mcc got my vote. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: these two guys were both just creative leaders in the
Speaker 1: industry and um trailblazers in the industry, and as Ed
Speaker 1: says in here, like mentored a generation of special effects employees, employees, creators, artists.
Speaker 1: All three of those were Lord gig workers. Rick Baker
Speaker 1: American Werewolf in London in one which still holds up,
Speaker 1: the thriller video in nineteen eighty three Star Wars, Moss
Speaker 1: Eisley Cantina, he made all those Yeah did you know
Speaker 1: that about the mos Eisley Cantina. I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: He was almost single handedly response. And then Stan Winston,
Speaker 1: you got to talk about movies like The Thing and
Speaker 1: Predator and Terminator and they both have set up, you know,
Speaker 1: foundations and schools and things like that. Stan Winston also
Speaker 1: did the makeup for what I think is maybe the
Speaker 1: best slash film of all time, Friday the Thirteenth Part two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: two is when Jason comes along, right, Yes, it's Jason
Speaker 1: before he got his mask. He gets his mask in three.
Speaker 1: I think the Thirteenth franchises as good as it gets
Speaker 1: for horror movies. I dropped off at a certain point.
Speaker 1: Did you see all those No? No, I still haven't
Speaker 1: seen all of them, but even just putting like the
Speaker 1: first five or six up, um, I think it's like
Speaker 1: watching him again as an adult. I'm like, these are
Speaker 1: really good scarcer films, like even better than I remember
Speaker 1: for Me and a Kid. Um. And the reason stan
Speaker 1: Winston filled in for Friday Thirteenth Part two is because
Speaker 1: the guy who did ft the first one, Tom Savini,
Speaker 1: was unavailable. He was off doing creep Show. I believe
Speaker 1: that Tom Savini is another legend. I think they're redoing
Speaker 1: creep Show? Are they? Okay? I'd watched that different stories?
Speaker 1: Oh even better if I'm not mistaken. But yeah, Savini
Speaker 1: is well known for being sort of the godfather of Gore.
Speaker 1: He did Maniac. Do you see that Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: off the Rocker movie. And then these days there are
Speaker 1: companies UM I l M and Wetta I LM, Industrial
Speaker 1: Light and Magic is Lucas company and they're cool because
Speaker 1: they invented this stuff because Lucas needed stuff to be
Speaker 1: done that couldn't be done, and he was like, go
Speaker 1: figure out how to do it, and they did, they
Speaker 1: really did. And then WET as Peter Jackson's company, and
Speaker 1: he's the one that has really pioneered the mo cap
Speaker 1: the motion capture techniques where a person is wearing like
Speaker 1: a suit and the suit has a bunch of different
Speaker 1: kind of like almost ping pong balls all over it
Speaker 1: at like joints and crucial places where the body moves
Speaker 1: and the actor, stunt person or dancer whoever wearing the
Speaker 1: suit goes through the motions and then uh, they're just
Speaker 1: going through the motions and that that those motions that
Speaker 1: what's captured is fed into a computer in the computer
Speaker 1: generates a care a doing all those same motions, creating
Speaker 1: the performance, but it's a computer generated character. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: don't think he was the first, but the Golem character
Speaker 1: and those Lord of the Rings movies, UM was really
Speaker 1: one of the first really terrific looking fully c G
Speaker 1: I character. Yeah, I found, from what I could tell,
Speaker 1: the first full c g I character ever in a movie.
Speaker 1: You want to guess, You'll never guess. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: it's touted as Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. Wrong, really,
Speaker 1: what is it going to be? It's another Spielberg movie. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's young Sherlock Holmes. Do you remember the Stained Glass
Speaker 1: Night that comes to life and tries to slash one
Speaker 1: of them with his sword? First full c g I
Speaker 1: character in a movie, Well, why, I don't know, But
Speaker 1: that's what I could find in that. One's from well
Speaker 1: it says maybe there's it's in the nitpicky language because
Speaker 1: in the Last Crusade when walt Or Donovan's face melts
Speaker 1: and turns to dust when he drinks from the chalice,
Speaker 1: that's in that's in writers of Lost Ark, isn't it.
Speaker 1: Oh no, you're right, you're right. It says here it
Speaker 1: was the first ever digital composite of a full screen
Speaker 1: live action image. There's something in a language there, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it was a full screen or something. This was
Speaker 1: the this was the first c G I, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't the first c G I image. This is the
Speaker 1: first moving c g I image. The first c g
Speaker 1: I'M image was in Looker. Remember that movie. I totally
Speaker 1: saw a Looker. That was a big HBO movie for
Speaker 1: me for sure. Same here it was Looker, Runaway, Runaways,
Speaker 1: Tom Selleck yeah, and Gene Simmons. Yeah, that's right, that's
Speaker 1: all crawl a lot too, look Ahead, Albert Finney, right,
Speaker 1: if I remember correctly, Albert Finney and Susan Day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Susan Day right, written by Michael Crichton. I think that
Speaker 1: was the first full body three D human, but it
Speaker 1: did not move. It was static and the very first
Speaker 1: computer generated effects period. Funny enough, we're used to replicate
Speaker 1: computer screen. So whenever you would see a computer screen
Speaker 1: and like Westworld or Aliens or Star Wars, and they
Speaker 1: were like, what is the computer gonna look like? You know?
Speaker 1: Not now that that was the first time they used
Speaker 1: computer generated imaging was to make a fake computer screen.
Speaker 1: And the first full c g I scene ever done
Speaker 1: was in The Wrath of Khan, which I believe came
Speaker 1: out in But there's a genesis like Earth being you know,
Speaker 1: like cooling and turning into the Earth, and there's this
Speaker 1: amazing shots around it. That's all c G I and
Speaker 1: that was the first one and Tron. I thought for
Speaker 1: sure Tron would have been among the first. Apparently most
Speaker 1: of that was animated by humans, not computers them, like
Speaker 1: all the glowing lines, all that stuff animated, which makes
Speaker 1: it nuts that they were able to create that. Uh.
Speaker 1: Now the big thing is is d aging technique, that
Speaker 1: they're getting better and better they are. Yeah, so the
Speaker 1: new um Scorsese picked the Irishman I think d ages
Speaker 1: and and has taken a long time to get out
Speaker 1: because the d aging didn't look good enough for Scorsese,
Speaker 1: so they have d aged to narrow. And then I
Speaker 1: saw this new angle movie Jim and I Man, where
Speaker 1: Will Smith of Now he plays an assassin and he
Speaker 1: has to go kill his younger self. Uh yeah, sort
Speaker 1: of like Looper, I guess. But this Jim and I
Speaker 1: Man script has been in development for like twenty five
Speaker 1: years with various people attached, but they could never do
Speaker 1: it because the technology was Yeah, it's finally here. But
Speaker 1: here's the thing I didn't know. Like, I've seen this
Speaker 1: trailer and I'm like, man, that d aging looks great.
Speaker 1: They didn't d age him. It is a fully c
Speaker 1: g I. Will Smith the younger version is yeah, because
Speaker 1: I was like, man, they're getting so good at the
Speaker 1: d aging. So he mo capped his whole performance motion
Speaker 1: captured and they just used fresh Prince photos and they
Speaker 1: just basically deep faked them. Sort of have you seen
Speaker 1: the Bill Hayter deep fake that's going around now. It's
Speaker 1: pretty cool, Yeah, because he goes from Hayter to Tom
Speaker 1: Cruise to seth Rogan back to Tom Cruise. It's like
Speaker 1: kind of all over the place. It's really uh. And
Speaker 1: then you know, like we said, they use c g
Speaker 1: I for so many movies, little mistakes that can be corrected,
Speaker 1: little things that it's just much cheaper to add digitally
Speaker 1: later on. It could be a movie that, like I said,
Speaker 1: looks like it has no c g I whatsoever. And
Speaker 1: it's cheaper to put a play the food in the
Speaker 1: background digitally than cook the food and put it on set,
Speaker 1: which is that's a bad example. Or you can color
Speaker 1: graad a movie you completely change like the movie Oh Brother,
Speaker 1: where Art Thou has that yellow hue for everything. All
Speaker 1: that stuff is green. You know, they're in the Deep
Speaker 1: South in the summertime, and they used to have to
Speaker 1: like film it at some weird exposure and then projected
Speaker 1: at another exposure with some filter, and then record the
Speaker 1: whole thing on an optical negative. Yeah. Now they can
Speaker 1: just do it all with a computer, easy peasy. It's great.
Speaker 1: Anything else, I'm kind of looking around, but this is
Speaker 1: like one eight of this topic. Hopefully it made you
Speaker 1: appreciate movies more. Yeah, you specifically me, I know you
Speaker 1: love the movies. Uh. If you want to know more
Speaker 1: about movies, go list into Chuck's podcast Movie Crush. You'll
Speaker 1: love it. Uh. And since I said movie Crush, it's
Speaker 1: time for listener mail. Uh. And actually, since you said
Speaker 1: movie Crush, we're about to release an episode on The Matrix.
Speaker 1: Hadn't seen that movie. It's been twenty years since it
Speaker 1: came out. You've never seen The Matrix. No, I hadn't
Speaker 1: seen it in a long time, but I didn't realize
Speaker 1: this is the twenty year anniversary. Watch it last night.
Speaker 1: Still totally holds up, really looks great. Fun. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: acted by most of the cast members who didn't act well. Oh,
Speaker 1: you know Kanu while he's gets picked on. I love
Speaker 1: that guy, I know, kung Fu He's perfect in that role. Though, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's great. I can't imagine anybody else and it would
Speaker 1: be too just too serious. I think, like imagine Tom
Speaker 1: Cruise in that in the major. Yeah, you're right, he
Speaker 1: hads a little like something light, doesn't he. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: makes it a little more every man, almost a little
Speaker 1: more believable in a weird wa have you seen those
Speaker 1: John Wick movies. I've seen some of it. It's just
Speaker 1: like a little too video gaming for me. But I
Speaker 1: mean it's fine. I respect that people like it. Sure,
Speaker 1: here we go. Okay, it's about three D three D.
Speaker 1: It's about solar panels. I got movies on you got
Speaker 1: the well they are in three D. I guess I
Speaker 1: got movies on the brain. Hey, guys. Being a roof
Speaker 1: of my entire life and never thought i'd have much
Speaker 1: input until now it's my time to shine. One thing
Speaker 1: that wasn't mentioned in the solar panel episode is that
Speaker 1: people really need to consider the age of their existing
Speaker 1: roof before installing solar panels. A new residential single roof
Speaker 1: should last about thirty years, but if the roof isn't
Speaker 1: nearly new, I would not suggest installing solar panels, and
Speaker 1: definitely don't install it if the roof the roof. The
Speaker 1: roof is on fire. Once the panels are installed. Roof
Speaker 1: repairs or replacement is very difficult and much more expensive
Speaker 1: that the life of the roof ends. Before the solar
Speaker 1: panels die, you can easily add fifty or more to
Speaker 1: the cost of the reroofing due to the added labor
Speaker 1: costs to remove and reinstall the panels. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: think about that, so you should align it ideally with
Speaker 1: your new roof. I do mostly commercial roofing. Can't tell
Speaker 1: you the number of customers so I talked to had
Speaker 1: solar panels on an old roof and are now paying
Speaker 1: through the nose for repairs or replacement. Reputable solar panels
Speaker 1: specialists should have this roof conversation with a potential customer
Speaker 1: before installing the panels. I'm afraid it doesn't always happen,
Speaker 1: or customers underestimate the added reroofing costs once they're installed. Man,
Speaker 1: this is a great p s A. It is thanks
Speaker 1: again for what you guys do. I'm in my truck
Speaker 1: a lot driving to different job sites and it's always
Speaker 1: easier on Tuesday through Thursday when I have a new stuff.
Speaker 1: You should know and that is from Owen, uh Cincinnick.
Speaker 1: Great name, first day and last I love the name
Speaker 1: on way Stephen King's kids name. Yeah, Owen King, thanks
Speaker 1: a lot, Ohen. We appreciate that big time. That was
Speaker 1: a great email. I would have never thought about that,
Speaker 1: and he didn't even send his business and to be plugged.
Speaker 1: So just google his name and roofing and if he
Speaker 1: happens to live near you, use him. That's how dedicated
Speaker 1: this guy. He sounds honest. Well, if you want to
Speaker 1: be a cool person like Owen, you can get in
Speaker 1: touch with us. You can go onto stuff you Should
Speaker 1: Know dot com and check out our social links. You
Speaker 1: can also send us an email to stuff podcast at
Speaker 1: iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
Speaker 1: production of i Heeart Radios. Stuff Works. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: for my heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: M M