One of the greatest pleasures of being part of the VFX industry is getting the opportunity to hear the crew from some of your favorite (or not so favorite) films wax poetic about how it was done before all these new fangled computer thingies. Here’s a comment from Sam Longoria left on my previous post When Not To Use VFX – Step Away From Greenscreen Unitard that falls into the catagory of golden nuggets of wisdom from a bygone age.
On “Ghostbusters,” I remember a meeting, between the camera / machinist group, (We were building 65mm cameras, printers, animation stands, roto rigs from scratch) and the Artist / Animator group. (They were drawing animation that would – hopefully – be shot on equipment that didn’t exist yet). In hindsight, there nowhere near enough time and money to pull it all off. Any sensible persons would have had doubts, but…vfx people…you know. An earnest Animator (I think it was Terry Windell) said, to the camera designers, “We need an electronic device that will close the camera shutter, block all the light, and prevent the film from being exposed, while the computer backwinds the film.” It was quiet in the room a good while. The device they were describing would probably take a week to build and implement, and we had very little time. I was young then, and didn’t want to say anything, certainly not anything that would tick off my colleagues, or hurt the Animators’ feelings. We all looked back and forth at each other. Smiles began to waver. Then Jerry Jeffress, one of the truly brilliant human beings I’ve ever met, broke the silence. “What you are describing, is a lens cap.”
Got your own war story to tell? Leave a comment! Oh, and it doesn’t have to be old to be good.
LINK to Sam Longoria’s filmmaking blog
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