Plastic Reality

Special Effects, Technology, and the Emergence of 1970s Blockbuster Aesthetics

Julie A. Turnock

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN:
  9780231535274
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

Julie A. Turnock tracks the use and evolution of special effects in 1970s filmmaking, a development as revolutionary to film as the form's transition to sound in the 1920s. Beginning with the classical studio era's early approaches to special effects, she follows the industry's slow build toward the significant advances of the late 1960s and early 1970s, which set the stage for the groundbreaking achievements of 1977.

Turnock analyzes the far-reaching impact of the convincing, absorbing, and seemingly unlimited fantasy environments of that year's iconic films, dedicating a major section of her book to the unparalleled innovations of Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. She then traces these films' technological, cultural, and aesthetic influence into the 1980s in the deployment of optical special effects as well as the "not-too-realistic" and hyper-realistic techniques of traditional stop motion and Showscan. She concludes with a critique of special effects practices in the 2000s and their implications for the future of filmmaking and the production and experience of other visual media.

Effects so special, you’ll miss ’em.

—MOTTO IN THE SERVICE BROCHURE FOR LINWOOD DUNN’S FILM EFFECTS HOLLYWOOD (C. 1965)¹

You have to be able to breathe the air on the […] planet—to be able to smell it. That everything be credible and totally fantastic at the same time.

—GEORGE LUCAS (1977)²

Optical Animation

Special Effects Compositing Up to 1977

These opening quotes by Linwood Dunn, a master of studio-era special effects, and George Lucas, arguably the architect of 1970s special effects, can serve as mottos for two different historical approaches to special effects. In the studio era, especially by the 1960s, the (somewhat disingenuous) cliché of effects work had been that the best results were those that the audience would never notice. Broadly speaking, special effects from the 1930s to the 1960s had mostly been concerned with supporting the more naturalistic “classical” style. The studio’s aesthetic ideal was unobtrusiveness: all elements appeared in proper perspective in the frame and blended seamlessly with the live-action cinematography and mise-en-scène.³ Perhaps most importantly, they were achieved as simply, economically, and efficiently as possible. In naturalistic films such as Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), and A Place in the Sun (1951) (all of which featured extensive composite work), studio-era special effects ideally valued a brand of photorealism that hewed closely to live-action photographic conventions, prioritized the aesthetic of the principal photography (the portion of filming that included the main actors performing the plot), and subordinated special effects to the background. Of course, it is worth stating that these were ideals, and were not always achieved. The dates of the quotes also testify to how quickly the role of special effects changed between the mid-1960s and 1977. By the 1970s, the industry recognized the prevalence of a more visible and spectacular form of special effects. Indeed, the most apparent difference between 1970s special effects and the preceding studio era is that they became so conspicuous.

The acceleration of special effects production in the 1970s may seem at odds with prevailing filmmaking styles in an era usually touted more for gritty naturalism. In interviews, the variously termed “New Hollywood” or “American auteur” directors of the 1960s and early 1970s often expressed dissatisfaction with the artificial, set-bound look of large studio sound stages and frequently repeated the desire to strip away perceived Hollywood artifice.⁴ The “stripped-down” 1970s filmmaking aesthetic favors such techniques as lens flares, available light, handheld cameras, long takes, and rack focus; and “anti-glamour” actors (such as Bruce Dern, Warren Oates, Shelley Duvall). Easy Rider (1969), Cockfighter (1974), and Nashville (1975) typify these tendencies. For this reason, directors of this era constantly derided the studio’s rear-projection composite backgrounds, preferring the “authenticity” of shooting on location.⁵

These emblematic 1970s stylistic characteristics seem to exclude late 1970s fantasy extravaganzas like Star Wars and Close Encounters.⁶ Histories of 1970s filmmaking tend to divide the decade into two periods—the earlier, naturalistic “New Wave” period giving way to the later, spectacular “blockbuster” era.⁷ However, statements made by filmmakers like Lucas, Coppola, and Spielberg suggest they did not believe that they were contradicting or overturning their peers’ predilection for gritty photographic realism. Rather, they saw a turn toward intensified, visible special effects as enabling an alternative style of realism: a 1970s’ inflected photorealism that allowed filmmakers to build fantastic environments that would be, in Lucas’s words, “credible and totally fantastic at the same time.”⁸ Live-action filmmaking in the 1970s ushered in a new style and approach to realism, making previous forms associated with the studios seem outdated. Indeed, rather than turning their backs on the early 1970s naturalistic aesthetic, filmmakers used the same aesthetic that informs the style of photorealistic special effects practiced by “fantastic” filmmakers like Lucas and Spielberg. Effects teams on Star Wars and others reproduced such 1970s cinematographic marks as lens flares, handheld cameras, and rack focus in the special effects footage explicitly so as not to disappear into the background but rather to serve the same purpose as in live-action cinematography—that is, to call attention to the act of filming. Ironically, stripping away studio-based rear projection allowed for the return to another, arguably more invasive form of special effects artifice: so-called “optical effects.” As opposed to the on-set rear-projection composite method completed during principal photography (see Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief [1955] or Marnie [1964] for particularly obvious examples), optical effects were completed after principal photography in postproduction, usually using optical printing techniques. Filmmakers of the 1970s cherry-picked techniques from traditional optical special effects, animation, and experimental film in order to realize their ideal of a photorealistic, multilayered cinematic environment, most influentially in the flamboyantly fantastic world of Star Wars.

Indeed, the handmade integrity associated with experimental and traditional animation proved to be the key to realizing and unifying these varied 1970s aesthetics.⁹ In order to gain control over the frame, special effects artists, at the behest of ambitious directors, combined the technology and aesthetic of animation and experimental film with traditional optical techniques, resulting in what I am calling optical animation. By separating the photographic components from their original context, the practice of optical animation allowed filmmakers to treat live action as a designable animation element, and to recompose and recombine them in postproduction optical printing.

The technological prominence of special effects in the 1970s eventually transformed nearly all areas of cinematic production. It is important to place this change within a historical outline and to introduce special effects terminology that will be fleshed out in later chapters, in order to understand more precisely what changed in 1970s special effects. With this in mind, we must constantly consider the shifting historical frameworks for photorealism within the context of the cinema. We must reject the notion that past special effects are by definition “dated,” and that effects are always improving toward a perfected aesthetic. Instead, realism in general and photorealism in particular are the constantly renegotiated areas of concern for special effects aesthetics. It should also be evident that photoreal does not mean the same thing in The Lost World (1925), or Vertigo (1958), or Star Wars (1977). As photographic technologies change, and different sets of choices become more or less valid, what accounts for the forms, goals, or values that make up an aesthetic of photorealism at a given time?

For filmmakers of the 1970s, the advantage of revisiting and repurposing techniques of an earlier generation meant a new way to obtain greater control of the composition of the frame, and therefore the illusion of an encompassing cinematic environment. By and large, they were not satisfied with the particular aesthetic associated with studio-era photorealism, mostly because it could not provide the materials to build the multi-planar, highly detailed impossible worlds or situations they imagined. In fact (well before the digital era), optical effects methods meant a move toward realizing the goal of the total control of all elements of the frame. Since at least the 1940s, total control of the frame had traditionally been associated with perfectionist auteurs (like Bazin’s description of Orson Welles’s and William Wyler’s deep-focus staging of the mise-en-scène).¹⁰ Traditional mise-en-scène arranges the various actors, props, scenery, and so on in front of the camera, shoots them, and edits them together. Filmmakers of the 1970s such as Kubrick, Lucas, and Spielberg in films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind certainly had these classical-era precedents in mind. However, this kind of control adds a level of hands-on manipulation to the celluloid frame. Here, total control of the frame employs frame-by-frame control on the negative, as in animation. In other words, filmmakers of the 1970s worked toward a layered, composite mise-en-scène—or the composition of the celluloid frame (and, consequently, the world), assembled in postproduction, then projected on the screen. The composite mise-en-scène typically transforms each component (actor, prop, scenery) into separately filmed elements to be arranged and composed within the frame, frame by frame, in order to appear as if filmed together in live-action motion photography.

Most importantly, special effects photorealism in the 1970s concerns the manipulation of the filmmaking process to make objects or environments look real or credible in the movies, not “in real life.” In other words, a composite mise-en-scène usually requires that its separately generated elements fit together in a traditional, three-dimensional cinematic picture plane, as if filmed by one camera in a single shot, and not necessarily how the naked eye would witness it. On a practical level, in order to construct a photoreal composite mise-en-scène from scratch, the special effects elements must be filmed to be consistent with the aesthetic of the live-action elements (actors, constructed sets, etc.), and vice versa. Special effects photorealism thus relies on a visual consistency across production levels to build up a composite mise-en-scène.

In the 1970s, as filmmakers sought a visual vocabulary for special effects–intensive filmmaking, notions of photorealism were far from stable. The professional rhetoric illustrates how practitioners were trying to characterize what they were doing as different from previous traditions. Practitioner rhetoric is therefore valuable in understanding aesthetic shifts within the industry. Matte painter Harrison Ellenshaw (Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back [1980]) sums up well the technician’s rhetoric on the justifications for photorealism:

All that matters is if the audience will believe it on the screen. The fact is that people who know nothing about how these things are done can still tell us whether the effect is good or bad. You don’t have to know what a 10k is to know whether you like or dislike a movie, and that’s something we tend to forget. We say, “What do they know?” But they know. They’ve used their eyes all their lives and they know when something doesn’t look exactly right. There isn’t a little sign that pops up in front of their faces and says, “matte line” or “jiggle” or “dupe.” It just says, “Oops!” It distracts them. It takes their minds off the story. … [And] that’s where your mind should be. Anything technical that jars you a little bit is going to distract you. So your effects have to flow and fit in neatly.¹¹

It is exactly the commonsense appeal to “trust your eyes” that makes the claims so easy to accept. However, Ellenshaw’s words, though sincere, should be treated with caution. Ellenshaw and many others from the era appear to use words consistent with traditional forms of “perceptual realistic” special effects (especially, “eyes … know when something doesn’t look exactly right”). In fact, his statement can better be understood as promoting the newer photoreal aesthetic under development, as well as defining negatively the industry’s dissatisfaction with previous styles of photorealism. The new style will eliminate the noticeable matte lines of old, stabilize the composited image so it does not wobble, and improve image quality over duplication stages—precisely the aesthetic priorities of the Star Wars crew. Moreover, Ellenshaw also acknowledges how, at this point, special effects artists have to juggle an unprecedented number of elements to create a sense of photorealism.

What were the problems and limitations associated with studio-era special effects? Most importantly, for the preceding generation of special effects artists, the photographic elements of filmmaking (that is, the elements generated photochemically rather than via animation techniques, especially the principal photography) had been understood as more or less fixed and minimally flexible. Previously, although different studios had different priorities, effects departments usually emphasized physical effects and downplayed optical compositing. When using “opticals” (as they were called), the number of elements to be composited was typically kept to a minimum.¹² In fact, after 1940, time-consuming postproduction composites were increasingly avoided in favor of on-set composite methods, such as rear projection. In the 1970s, however, the return to postproduction optical printing methods altered the status of photographed elements and how they were arranged within the film frame by approaching each component as a separate element of composition. Ideally, the film frame could be infinitely mutable and designable, while maintaining the look of live-action photography.

Although there have been special effects of various kinds and complexities throughout cinema’s history, changes were afoot in the 1970s that transformed the role of special effects in film production more broadly overall. More strikingly, the willingness to spend additional time and money in postproduction and to stake the film on the success of the special effects is evidence of their increased importance. Through this shift in emphasis to postproduction, special effects became central to the much-remarked changes in cinema’s economics, aesthetics, and exhibition in the 1970s. As a consequence, 1970s Hollywood cinema converted more intensively and obviously to an industry based around the spectacle of big-budget special effects. Further, as evidence from fan publications suggests, a core faction of the audi...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents 
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: Before 1977
• Part II: Circa 1977: Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind
• Part III: The 1980s and Beyond
• Conclusion: World-Building and the Legacy of 1970s Special Effects in Contemporary Cinema
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Series List