American Cinematographer - March 1993 - 75

on

the

exit

axis

the

projector's
pupil. The actor's body, in ef¬
same

fect, masks its

as

own

being visible

shadow from

the screen.
system introduces a
black painted matte between the
actor and the camera-projector con¬
figuration, while the exact negative
reverse of the matte is
employed
on

Introvision's

between the smaller

screen

and

supplementary lens on the other
side of the beam splitter. This en¬

used

primarily in all of the
principle photography for Army of
Darkness' night scenes and interior
shots. Practically all of the anima¬
tion shots (except for front screen
composites) were filmed with at
least two camera set-ups using 8perf and 4-perf 35mm cameras.
was

This enabled director Raimi to cut
to closer views without having to
resort to the expensive and time-

consuming procedure of re-doing

ables the actor
to appear to
walk behind ob¬

tography, with exposure adjusted
accordingly during the shots. Mod¬
els were always tested for motion
whenever motion-control

volved, and focus

in¬

often
pushed back toward the screen to
soften the

sharp-edged model,
thereby strengthening the blend
with the projected background im¬
age.
Peter Kleinow, whose

previous credits include
Robocop2, Terminator 1&2 and the
Pillsbury Doughboy, supervised
many

most of the Go-Animation effects.
The motion-control camera opera¬
tors included Nic Nicholson,
Michael Ball and myself. Lighting

jects in the pro¬
jected back¬
ground image.
In order to

was

create the Dead-

Ken

ite

was

was

skeleton

provided by Fred fohnson,
Thompson and Cosmo

Kleinow, and miniature set decora¬

army
which
rises from the
dead to battle

tors were Omei
Zuzana Swansea.

the live-action
castle dwellers,
Introvision

animation sequence

Eaglerider and

The first and most difficult

undertaken
intended) was a wideangle graveyard sequence, during
Opposite: A closewhich the cam(no pun

opted to eschew stop-motion tech¬
niques and perform the process in
reverse. Using the former method,
pioneered by effects wizard Ray
Harryhausen, the filmmakers
would have photographed the live

op look at the
miniature graveyard

with its

era

booms up

pqj to reveal the charac¬
ters Ash and
over a

busy

skeletons. This
page, above: The
author adjusts a

Sheila overlook¬

first, and then inserted the
ball-and-socket skeleton puppet in

bony extra. Left:

front of miniature rear projection
screens via complementary mattes
and by back-winding the film in the
camera. Introvision decided to
shoot the miniatures first and later

dead as they
make ready for
animator's gauge.
battle. As many
as 50
moving
skeletons are visible in the shot,
with 15 channels of movement pro¬

action

project the finished plate onto the
60-foot Scotchlite front-projection
screens. The actor was then placed
into the "miniature" set using
Introvision's unique, patented
dual-screen projection process.
All of the projected back¬
ground plates were shot on
Eastman 5248 color negative using
both Technirama 8-perf and high¬
speed VistaVision cameras to
achieve a high-quality VistaVision
image. This enabled a higher copy
ratio of nearly 2 to 1 when the im¬
age was rephotographed in 1.85
onto standard 4-perf 5296 Eastman
stock, resulting in a finer grain and
more
convincing composite. The
high- speed 5296 was chosen as the
composite negative since the stock

ing the vast

Peter Kleinow takes
the measure of a

armies of the

shield-bearing
skeleton with

an

grammed into the Lynx Robotics
Motion-Control Spectrum System
on an IBM 286
computer. Only six
of the skeletons were actually ani¬
mated by hand in the shot. The four
main 12-inch foreground

the animation.
Color exposure

half-stop increments,

wedges, in
were made

skeletons

consisted of ball-and-socket metal
armatures with parts culled from
human anatomy model kits. These

for each shot to determine correct

were

animated

lighting, projector color correction
and printing lights. For the previ¬
ously shot live action footage, direc¬
tor of photography Bill Pope rated
the film slightly under Eastman's
recommended exposure index to
obtain a denser negative in the 40s
range of printing lights. This was
duplicated for all miniature pho¬

Peter

Kleinow, while I animated

March 1993

frame-by-frame by
a

six-inch grave

digger, a sword
clopper and two sets of marching
skeletons in the background.
were

The rest of the skeletons
controlled by the computer

using wire cables connected to step¬
per motors. The camera boom and
tilt were each operated on two

American

Cinematographer

73
American Cinematographer - March 1993

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