American Cinematographer - August 1987 - 66

Tuck's pod falls
through fat cells.

Photos

by Kerry Nordquist and Roberto McGrath

Special Effects for I finerspace
by Ron Magid
With Dennis Muren heading the
unusual Innerspace project at San
Rafael's resident effects braintrust,
Industrial Light And Magic, he de¬
cided to take a very different tack:
to match his effects techniques to
the freewheeling, improvisational

approach of the film's director, Joe
Dante. Muren has long felt that
too many films have been locked
into post-Star Wars techniques
when there were many older, but
equally effective methods to create
convincing illusions. Of these,
Muren chose live

forced-perspec¬

tive photography and real-time
miniature effects done in-camera

64

American

Cinematographer

allow himself and his crew to
emulate Dante's spontaneous filmto

making style. The results are spec¬
tacular and wholly unique visual
effects.
It

was

Muren, for

exam¬

ple, who advocated the use of a
forced-perspective car set for a se¬
quence in which normal sized he¬
roes, played by Marty Short and
Meg Ryan, are riding in the nor¬
mal sized front seat of the car,
while the supposedly half scale
miniaturized villains, played by
Kevin

McCarthy and Fiona Lewis,

confined to the car's double¬
scale back seat. "We were looking

are

August 1987

at

perhaps

as many as a

dozen ef¬

fects shots in that sequence which
we ended up
doing live," Muren

"Mike Finnell and Joe
thought of using bluescreen, but I
says.

didn't think it was appropriate.
"I've always been a fan of
forced perspective. I produced

Equinox and various other com¬
mercials over the years, and I've
always admired Disney's Darby
O'Gill And The Little People for
featuring the best work ever done
with this technique. I felt that here
we had a perfect
opportunity to
use forced perspective, to build a
double sized back

seat

and

com-



American Cinematographer - August 1987

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