American Cinematographer - March 1993 - 82

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preventing the fork's shadow from
falling between the projector lens
and the screen. The wires holding
the fork disappeared by slightly
swinging the utensil, pendulum¬
like, during the two-second expo¬
sure, thereby giving the prop a nice
soft blur.
Scenes of the Siamesetwinned Spider-Ash scrambling

through the forest were created by
mounting the puppet on a mo-co
dolly track and programming it
with random

jerking movements
through a miniature forest set. The
rod holding the puppet protruded
through a slit in the ground which
had to be covered by Kleinow after
every frame of movement. The
camera boomed
through the trees,
following the puppet's action with
sinusoidal pan and tilt movements.
This random motion

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arri

grip
below
COSt!

was

pre-pro¬

grammed for frequency and inten¬
sity utilizing Lynx's "Wheels" func¬
tion to resemble

a

human operator

running a pan and tilt head - not
a
precise duplication of the model's
motion-controlled travel. Realistic
motion blur was likewise achieved.
Kleinow animated one of the "spi¬
ders" slapping the head of the other
in a comical send-up of Raimi's
beloved Three Stooges.
The final animation scene
filmed revolved around a feisty fly¬

ing Book of the Dead that attacks
Ash. Right before he says the magic
words - "Klaatu, Barada, Nikto"
the Book opens its mouth,

-

crunching his fingers. He hurls it
away, but the Book magically flaps
its bindings like a butterfly, diving
upside-down to fly back at our
hero.
was

achieved

using two smaller, identical, quar¬
ter- scale Books of the Dead
jok¬
ingly referred to as The Paperback
-

Editions. One had a ball-and-socket
on the inside and the other
contained one on the spine. Each
book was rigged in a similar fash¬
ion to the Winged Deadite, with
six-channels of movement: camera-

projector pan and tilt to simulate a

CE* STAND

side-to-side, up-down flying mo¬
tion; rod forward and backward
roll to make it fly toward

and away
from camera; and a separate zoom

March 1993

giving the effect of a slight boom up
as the Book flew to the
top of the
frame. The books

were

inter¬

changed as necessary whenever
they needed to fly in a complete
360-degree loop. The pages were
animated to flip page-by-page
when the Book flew

near camera.

The pages were colorXeroxed from the original book and

printed to the correct scale. They
were also stuck
together with sticky
wax and
paper tape in order to ani¬
mate on cue. The covers were glued
to hinged metal sheets which
flapped like bat wings in threeframe intervals. The projector had
to be manually advanced frame-byframe, however, as all six channels
the driver box

were
already oc¬
cupied. The frantic movements ne¬
on

cessitated that each take be shot at
an

f/16 with two seconds of expo¬

for maximum depth of field.
As the rod holding the book moved
toward camera, a guide wire was
added to prevent it from sagging.
Careful flagging of lights hid the
sure

wire by making it go

to a thin black
silhouette in front of the high-gain
Scotchlite screen.
The windmill exteriors
were all shot in miniature; the ro¬

tating blades, tree and camera
were
programmed via
the computer. For a shot where Ash

movements

turns around and

sees himself in
the doorway, a small transparency
of Campbell was positioned in the
mill's door with a light behind it.

Later, Campbell was filmed before
front projection screen in the
usual fashion. Shots where
a

Campbell confronts his evil self
The effect

joint

1*800

and nodal-point camera tilt control

filmed in the same way.
These new and exciting
variations on traditional animation
were

techniques mark the next steps on
road
paved by Ray
Harryhausen. With this extensive
application of go-animation com¬
bined with large-scale front projec¬
the

tion, the stop-motion animated
look of the past

has been given an
important update.
▲
American Cinematographer - March 1993

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