American Cinematographer - July 1990 - 60

1 COMPUTER

f

fects shots. The first begins as a
motion control move following

Quaid inside the train with inter¬
For the Film & Video
f

MACINTOSH
MacToolkit Film Budget MacToolkit Film Schedule
Collaborator CineWrite Director -

-

PostcardEdit Lister

-

-

Collaborator

-

DocuComp Computer Bidding (AICP)
FilmWorks Budget FilmWorks Schedule
Movie Master -

[ Script Supervis'r
i Script Master

j Animator

$695.00
$695.00
$399.00
$495.00
$695.00
$159.00
$650.00
$350.00
$2999.00
$549.00
$900.00

rect

rect

-

-

-

-

| Cutting Edge (AICE)
Shipping Edge -

*

$399.00
$159.00
$650.00
$599.00
$599.00
$399.00
$199.00
$299.00
$299.00
$695.00

1

$549.001

| When ordering by direct mail, please add $10.00 for shiping||§
| and handling. Calif, residents add 6.75% sales tax. Be sure to B
| send appropriate mailing information.

BIRNS & SAWYER, INC.
1026 H.

Highland Ave.

(213) 466-821 1

Hollywood, CA
FAX:

90038

(213) 466-7049

feeling of speed and the cor¬
depth/' Brevig recalls. "We

wanted to create the

pvl

IBM

f

miniature

scenery racing by outside the
window.
"The interesting prob¬
lem of this shot was to build the
miniature so that it had the cor¬

^A

DocuComp Computer Bidding (AICP) The Production Manager Tape Vault

active lighting from the

Industry

sense

of the

foreground landscape going by
very quickly while the huge
mountain in the distance barely
moves

at all. To do that with a

single miniature would've re¬
quired an enormous, building
sized set, so we shot this by
gradually changing the scales of
the miniature. To generate the
proper sense of speed and depth,
this shot actually had four differ¬
ent layers, and they're all moving
at different rates. For example,
the huge mountain in the far dis¬
fact much closer to
than it appears to be - -it
shot in the same plane as the

tance is in
camera
was

foreground rocks right next to
camera.

"Essentially, we did a
kind of reverse forced perspec¬
tive - instead of starting big and

Lose excess

getting small, we started small
and got bigger, and moved the
models further away to create the
sense of speed and to keep the

baggage in

sizes correct. We also motion

^Seattle

controlled the foreground rocks,
so the camera's not only moving,
the rocks are also moving to in¬
crease the
apparent speed. Simi¬

larly, the posts and railway mark¬
ers
just outside the train's win¬
dows have to appear to move
faster than anything else, but it

would've been impractical to put
them close enough to actually let
the camera create the movement,

equipment, from Arriflex to Zeiss. The best
service and support. And the best maintenance
between here and L.A.

Phone: 206 467-8666
58

the

with

train

Sch¬

mining city, which is an
entirely different scale model

canyon

than the train-into-the-tunnel
miniature. "A shot blending two
different scale models in a seam¬
less move has been done before
and you've seen people projected
into models before," Brevig

smiles, "but

tried to take this

we

to the extreme

by designing a
shot that appears to be one con¬
tinuous shot from start to finish.
Then, just when we thought we
could barely pull it off they said,
'Add a couple seconds on the
head of this shot!"'
Funke
had
already

planned the 60 foot camera move,
which involved two sets of sixty
foot motion control track - one
for the camera, one for the train
they could track together.
we said,
'Sixty feet is all
you get!', then Paul said we had
to find a way to hold on the train
at the beginning of the shot, look
so

"After

in the window and

see

Arnold,"

Funke remembers incredulously.
"So at the head of the shot, while
we're

holding on the window,
nothing is moving except the
poles in front of the camera and
a
projection of the rocks until the
camera starts to hover
away from
the train and then we're moving.
To create the illusion that Arnold

is

actually

Martian

on our

miniature

train, we used two of the

mini-projectors we built for Abyss
one
plays a clip of Arnold talk¬
ing to a miner in one window, the
other shows some people in the

-

next

car

standing and reading the

physically moved them so
they'd go by in a blur. They're on
a
tiny track in front of the camera,
parked a half inch out of frame,
and they're motion control pro¬
grammed to zip by and then stop
outside of camera range. The

paper. The reflection of the land¬
scape in the glass is a matted ele¬
ment, and the yellow posts that

whole post movement rig is

actually

so we

Since 1979, the Northwest s only full-service
camera rental house has supplied the best

side

warzenegger rear projected in¬
side. First, the camera pulls back
to reveal the train going inside a
tunnel. Next, it flies over the
tunnel and over a ridge to reveal
the first big view of the Martian

actu¬
ally moving with the camera rela¬
tive to the background."
The reverse angle begins
on a closeup of the window out¬

Fax: 206 467-9165

July 1990

go zipping
front of the

by

were actually in
After we lift

camera.

up over the tunnel, we're in a full
matted view of Mars. There's
a matte

over one

set and

other. The

new

smaller scale

while the

split

as we go

come

set is in

-

into the
a

much

1/126 scale

previous set

was

-

1/12
American Cinematographer - July 1990

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - July 1990
