American Cinematographer - March 1995 - 14

the positioning and movement of the
head itself would be determined and pro¬

grammed with motion control, VanVIiet

limits of both time and money by having
the best people driving the right equip¬
ment. The overlapping skills of the crew

felt that actual animation and perfor¬
mance of the face would still be up to the
five puppeteers. "Van and his team de¬

paid off - a small team was able to
adapt to whatever problems arose."

veloped the Crypt Keeper character over
five years," says Snowden. "I wasn't
about to tamper with a working formula."
As first-unit director of photog¬
raphy, Rick Bota used a steady-tested
Panavision production camera for all
plate photography. Additional takes
were shot to provide a clean element
without the Crypt Keeper for the inevi¬
table paint-back that is required when
doing replacement shots. To further sell
the illusion, the clean backgrounds also
included matching rack focus as the
Crypt Keeper approached camera. In or¬
der to guarantee a perfect match in
angles and lights, all aspects of cinema¬
tography were thoroughly documented

Light, 3110 W. Burbank Blvd., Burbank,

and rushed to the blue-screen unit, which

programming and lighting simulta¬
neously across town.
While the first background
plate was being tracked by the bluescreen unit, the last plate was being shot
across town. "If anything had been over¬

was

For information: Available

CA 91505, (818)842-2109.
Nashville

Equipment Facility
Production Services-Atlanta

(PS-A) has opened a 16,000-square-foot
production equipment rental and sales
facility in Nashville. The facility is
equipped to supply a wide range of spe¬
cialized equipment such as Chapman
stage cranes, camera dollies, Lenny
arms, Fisher camera dollies, Jimmy
Fisher jib arms and rotating jib arms,
Steadicam, film-video sync system, Seitz
wireless servos, periscopes, Tyler cam¬
era systems, cam-remote, Power Pod,
Mitchell Bazookas, Teleprompters, lowangle prisms, Cartoni heads, and Arri 16
and 35 cameras, including the Arri 16SR3 with time code equipment. The facility
can also supply full lighting and grip
packages to Nashville and Tennesseebased and visiting producers of television

looked, it would be too late to correct,"

commercials, series and movies, music

Arance. As the deadline drew
closer, it was apparent that the camera
tracking system wouldn't be able to

videos and features.
For information: Production

says

move

in real time. The actor's

ments were too

move¬

quick for the motion-con¬

Services-Atlanta, 2000 Lakewood Way,
Bldg. 4, Atlanta, GA 30315, (404) 6221311.

trol motors animating the puppet head,
so Bernstien compensated by shooting at

Staten Island

half

speed. This in turn made the puppe¬
teers scale down their performance to
match the 12fps speed. Even so, only 80
percent of the motion control could be
tracked in the short time allotted and it
would be left to Klick to complete the

positioning in post

on the Macintosh.
challenge that Klick
recognized early on was anatomical dif¬
ferences. As she points out, "The Crypt
Keeper is a chicken-necked dead guy.
Any actor you find is going to have con¬
siderably more meat on him." To solve
the problem, Klick and Alan Wolfson
Another

Production Facility
Nationwide Digital has a new,

fully loaded film/video/audio production
facility on Staten Island. The Film &
Video Department has 5400 square feet
of raw space, a fully equipped sound
stage, full working kitchen set, auto¬
mated lighting grid, four-camera system
and video control room, and multi-format
on- and offline editing.

The 3-D Animation

meticulously hand-painted and rebuilt

Depart¬
design,
computer rendering, rotoscoping,
morphing, warping, animatics, stop mo¬
tion, digital compositing and special ef¬

the

fects.

missing shirt collar

area

for 385

frames of animation.

The result is

a

convincing 16

seconds of film in which the

Crypt Keeper

puppet struts toward camera while talk¬
ing and animating like a live-action char¬
acter. "We were able to overcome the

March 1995

ment offers 3-D and 2-D model

The facility's audio services for
film and video feature a staff of engi¬

producers and musicians, 96 input
mixing console, 32-track DA88 & Adat recorders, 24-track Otari 2"
neers,

automated

analog recorder, and Pro-Tools recording
American Cinematographer - March 1995

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - March 1995
