Building the World of Tomorrow
How far back can we trace current trends in Hollywood? Digital filmmaking in the late 1990s? Talkies in 1927? Celluloid, Georges Méliès and the Lumiere brothers in the 19th century?
How about an inexpensive action adventure yarn from 2004 that did okay with critics and so-so at the box office? Read on and learn how the way movies use VFX was cemented – possibly generated – with Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow.
These days only a tiny portion of a real set is built in any self-respecting blockbuster (a single room, a rocky outcrop, a city street), with almost everything else in the frame to be animated later in the render farms the world over. In fact, it’s now gone beyond actors emoting to stage hands holding tennis balls. Disney’s remake of The Lion King harks back to the 1994 original in that it’s completely animated – not a single real landscape, sky or animal was photographed.
Once upon a time filmmakers used what are called travelling mattes, where black draping would allow for double exposing a print during processing, letting the director expose a background and foreground together on new celluloid.
Blue screens were first used in the 1930s for wipes and transitions between scenes, with the first true on-screen blue screen effect appearing in 1940’s . As for why green screens were finally
