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Sunday, November 27, 2005
Covington: Special effects
By Gary Covington
looking in
YESTERDAY evening I looked on as Jerusalem fell to Saladin and his hordes in 1187. The week before I'd watched as Rome's legions slaughtered German barbarians circa AD 71 and next week I rather fancy rubbernecking as Howard Hughes coaxes his giant Spruce Goose aeroplane into the air.
Wonderful isn't it? Time travel courtesy of the movies and special effects.
I've long been thinking of writing a piece on special effects ever since I'd noticed (probably ten years too late) that movie visual trickery was taking over from the actors, a notion sparked by an American buddy-buddy cops 'n' robbers movie. You know the sort of thing--a couple of detectives, the best of pals, clean up town with a lot of shouting, maximum gunplay and minimal plot.
There was the obligatory car chase; an overlong smash-em-up car chase which our heroes--still shouting--navigated with ease, not caring a hoot about the assorted wreckage heading for their windshield. Countless autos--whole or parts thereof--trucks, buses, a tanker or two and even a cabin cruiser mounted on a trailer went crashing past. However had they filmed it?
I'm not at my best late in the evening--it took a while for the peso to drop, for the proverbial light bulb to come on over my head. Most of that junk flying past wasn't real. It was special effects.
They've been around as long as the movies themselves but the baton of creating effects has passed from the model maker and pyrotechnics guy to the computer programmer whose wizardry--and wizardry it is--can conjure up any effect you could wish for. Actors need only play their scenes in front of a blue screen--the room, the set, the background action and even the outdoor locations are created on a computer screen and superimposed later.
An example of this technique is on the video rental store shelves right now, a film called Captain America and the World of the Future. It's a comic book movie where the real world is set aside for a moment and the viewer asked to believe in the impossible.
The time is the 1940s in a past world of the future (if you see what I mean). A mad scientist is getting set to take over the world, his strong right arm squadrons of gigantic flying machines which lay waste everything in their path. The call is put out to Captain America, the only guy who can save humanity and he does--driving a WW II Mustang fighter aeroplane (limited edition--this one "flies" underwater too), felling villains with a crisp uppercut to the jaw and ultimately destroying the madman's lair in the nick of time.
Nonsense of course, hugely enjoyable nonsense, and apart from a handful of flesh and blood actors the entire film--Captain America's private aerodrome with its massive hangers, aerial dogfights, a Himalayan Shangri-la and 1940s New York--is computer generated.
I loved it but was there maybe a surfeit of special effects? Chase scenes or action sequences, fast and furious, instead of promoting excitement leave the viewer stunned as the mind attempts to process the information and sort out what is going on and to whom.
Special effects overkill? Too much of a good thing? It's movie progress and I for one am glad of it. Without such technical wizardry I couldn't have witnessed the siege of Jerusalem last week. And nor would I be sitting here wondering how the Spruce Goose will do.
For Bisaya stories from Davao. Click here. (November 27, 2005 issue)
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