American Cinematographer - March 1993 - 78

a

natural realistic progression with¬

out the

stroboscopic look associ¬
ated with stop-motion animation of
the

past.

The next shots animated
of the skeletons pulling
their dead buddies out of the grave
as Ash
creeps by. One of them
saunters forward with a jaunty air,

were scenes

a shovel over his
shoulder like a carbine rifle

swinging

bony
as

he

joins his mates. The graveyard was
softly lit with a large silk above the

stage. Here Bruce
Campbell would be added via front
projection, his action precisely cho¬
reographed to match the move¬

the

ments of the skeleton onscreen.

camera.

Tiny mirrors were posi¬
tioned on the set in the relative po¬
sitions where these objects should
exist in frame, so that the actual flag
and fire could be realized in full
scale some distance behind the
camera. The set was draped in
black, and only the flag and fire
filmed at 36

were

clamped over a large 10K
light and manually operated for
lightning effects, while the high¬
speed Paramount VistaVision cam¬
era overcranked 5248 film at speeds
of 96 and 120 frames per second.
Obviously, holding depth of field

long for

were

with

a

50mm Nikkor lens at

an

f-

stop of 4 was only one of the diffi¬
culties during this scene. Timings
were also critical, since the air jets,

lightning, flying debris and dust
were all controlled manually with¬
out motion control, a strategy dic¬
tated by the high speed rate of the
camera.

While this

being pho¬
tographed, Kleinow prepared the
was

first of the castle battle sequences,
in which the humans engage in

swordplay with the skeleton le¬
gions. One of the skeletons vaults
the wall, loses its sword and its
head (in a veiled tribute to Jason),
and then frenziedly beats Ash with
its amputated arm. To accomplish
the effect, the plate of the back¬
over

ground castle and skeleton had to
photographed in miniature. Be¬
fore any time-consuming anima¬
tion could take place the flickering

be

torches

on

the castle walls and the

waving flag high atop the tower
had to be composited in high
speed. The castle miniature was
only about 6 feet high, with the fur¬
thest tower nearly 15 feet from the
lens. To make the flag flap in proper

American

Cinematographer

Introvision

enough flames, the effect had to be
photographed in real time at more
than twice the distance away from

of quarter and
half CT Blues over the lights to
simulate moonlight. For the scene
where Ash reads the incantation
from the Book of the Dead, the min¬
iature tombstones were rigged with
air hoses and filled with Fuller's
Earth so they would shoot out of
the ground like missiles. Shutters
set and a number

76

scale and the fire flicker with small

perf Technirama
machines

were

fps using the 8camera. Wind

added offscreen to

provide

a waving and flickering
effect. The film was then exposed so
that the latent flag/fire images
could be superimposed over black
areas in the miniature castle set. The
entire shot lasted 30 seconds, quite
over

any animation scene. But
three times this length was

exposed in the camera as a precau¬
tion in case false starts with the ani¬
mation necessitated

starting over
from the beginning. A cap was
placed over the camera lens, and

Certain

scenes

of Ash

swordfighting with skeletons were
accomplished using traditional
miniature process shot techniques.
First, Bruce Campbell was filmed in
on the full-size live-ac¬
tion set fighting nothing. Around
him small pyro spark elements ex¬

VistaVision

ploded to simulate the effect of cold
steel blades clashing together.
Then, the miniature skeleton

was

added frame-by-frame in front of
the VistaVision background projec¬
tion of Ash. Scenes where their
swords collided, producing a bar¬

rage of sparks,

involved adding an
lighting flash on the
puppet. Shots of the four skeletons
storming the castle with a log bat¬
tering-ram
employed
the

interactive

Introvision dual-screen method of
front projection. For large-scale ap¬

plications,

had to be locked down for steadi¬

a supplementary lens
reduces the secondary image on the
smaller reflex screen. For minia¬
tures this proved unnecessary since
the two small Scotchlite screens
could be placed at equal distances
from the configuration. Comple¬

that the two "double-ex¬

mentary mattes were drawn on

posed" images would not seem to
shift against one another on the
composited plate. The Technirama
G-6 camera body, its intermittent
movement equipped with .1866
short pitch Bell & Howell registra¬

glass in front of each screen, exactly
masking the makeshift bridge so

the film was rewound back at a safe
slow rate to frame zero on the
counter. Then the castle was lit ac¬

cordingly. Naturally, everything
ness so

tion,

was

chained to the animation

table.
The animation then pro¬
ceeded as usual. Motion-controlled
cuckaloris wheels were positioned
in front of small interactive lights
covered with diffusion and half
CTO gels to simulate flicker on the
brick walls. The first 30 seconds of
the scene involved Ash in the fore¬

ground fighting a live full-size skel¬
eton. As a

result, 720 frames of static

the skeletons would appear to
clamber over the moat and strike

the castle wall.
This scene involved many
intricate problems - not the least
of which was aligning the mattes

during bright explosion frames-
making it probably the second
most difficult shot in the animation

portion of the film. The mattes were
painted on glass by Matsune
Suzuki and James Mayeda using
the brightest frame as a guideline,
since this was where the matte lines
would be most noticeable. The log
was motion-controlled and
pro¬

castle

grammed to accelerate from half an

sec/frame) before the animated

inch to 1 x/\ inches of movement per
frame. The skeletons were attached

footage had to be shot first
(which took a long 48 minutes at 4

skeleton reared its ugly head above
the castle wall. Upon completion,
the

plate's negative

was

safely

stored until needed on the full-scale

March 1993

to

the

log, imparting realistic

mo¬

tion blur to their movements. Tiny
obstacles were placed in the path of

the wooden wheels to

give a sense
American Cinematographer - March 1993

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