American Cinematographer - February 2008 - (Page 62) Forward Thinker Right: After presenting the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects to the team behind Star Wars, actress Joan Fontaine poses with (from left) future ASC member John Dykstra, John Stears, Grant McCune, Edlund and Robert Blalack. Below: Presenter Dan Aykroyd (left) enjoys the spotlight with the Oscarwinning visual-effects artists behind Raiders of the Lost Ark: (from left) Edlund, Kit West, Bruce Nicholson and Joe Johnston. put the pan-and-tilt of the lens on its nodal point. The small camera on the VistaCruiser could get very close to a model, which made it ideal for shooting in the bowels of the Death Star.” After winning a fourth Oscar for his work on Jedi, Edlund decided to strike out on his own and launched Boss Film. “By the end of Raiders, the gestalt at ILM had changed considerably, so I thought I’d roll my dice back in L.A.,” he says. Edlund took over and rebuilt the visual-effects facility that Doug Trumbull had put together in Marina del Rey for Blade Runner (AC July ’82), and made deals to do Ghostbusters and 2010. “I pulled together an incredibly talented group of people, and we all created Boss Film overnight,” he says. Ghostbusters (AC June ’84) and 2010 (AC April ’85) put the company on the map by garnering dual Oscar nominations for Edlund and his colleagues. Ghostbusters proved effects could be funny, whereas 2010 captured the coldness and beauty of outer space. Edlund notes that Star Wars used fill light in outer space to wash out any blue spill on the models, a technique that worked in a space fantasy but wouldn’t suit the realism of 2010. “By 1983, people had already seen real space footage, so we couldn’t get away with any artificial fill light; we shot everything using a singlesource key light because there was nothing to justify any fill in the shadows. [Director] Peter Hyams supported a compositional approach that took full advantage of the anamorphic frame, and I think 2010 is one of the most beautiful sci-fi movies ever made.” Boss Film next tackled two projects that were polar opposites: Masters of the Universe (1987) and Ghost (AC Dec. ’90). After Masters was cut, it was decided that the ending needed an intense swordfight between heroic He-Man and the evil Skeletor. But there was no money to rebuild the Castle Grayskull set, which had already been struck. Edlund’s solution: Skeletor and HeMan are transported to an alternate universe made of mist and colored light. “The effect of the brilliant, post-animated flares given off as their swords clashed was far more effective against the black background than it would have been on a mid-toned set,” he notes. (The sequence was filmed on Boss Film’s stage). The emotional climax of Ghost, wherein Demi Moore’s spectral husband (Patrick Swayze) becomes visible and kisses her farewell before ascending to heaven, was not finalized until a preview screening loomed on the horizon. “First off, the studio had no idea Ghost would become such a hit, and second, they didn’t have much time,” recalls Edlund. “All they had for an ending was Swayze walking up a Mylar bridge towards a bluescreen, and there were even grips standing in the shot!” He pitched doing the sequence on the Harry (Quantel’s digital-video compositor) in NTSC standard-def video, and his colleagues shook their heads. “But we’d created a successful, artifact-free filmout process before there was any other good filmout process,” notes Edlund. “We steadygated the VistaVision footage of 62 February 2008
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.