Steppin' Out

It was 75 years ago that MGM signed the incredible Judy Garland to its roster of stars. As she steps out with her fellow MGM stars (Clark Gable, Shirley Temple and Mickey Rooney) I too am stepping out for the weekend as we celebrate our oldest daughter's graduation from high school, stepping out into a new direction or, at least, a new school. Let both the pomp and circumstance begin.

The Land Before CGISan Francisco

One of the best parts of blogging is starting new features that are invariably forgotten, scuffed up, stepped on and finally, mercifully, left for dead. "I'm starting a new feature..." is bloggerspeak for "I'm bored and have an idea that I will stick with for one or two posts, maybe three, and then move on. Hope you're not expecting too much!" I've done it and most other film bloggers have done it too. Whether or not they want to own up to the whole sordid affair is their business. But here's the thing:

I'm starting a new feature!

And like a gambler convinced he's finally figured out a way to beat the system I am here to assure you it will not be forgotten. Why? Because in my feverish obsession with editing together images and effects and music I have already created enough clips for this feature to last well into 2011. I purposely held off starting it until I was absolutely positive I had enough clips to carry me through the lean years, as it were. And what is this new feature (hold for maximum reader letdown)? A celebration of miniature and effects work from before 1993, the year Jurassic Park all but effectively killed the miniature business in Hollywood. There are still great examples of miniature work done post 1993, like Independence Day, but not many. My feature will focus on the craftsmanship behind the work that went into creating these little worlds on the silver screen.

One very important point: The quality of the film is of no concern as evidenced by my mention of Independence Day. My concern is to celebrate great hands-on effects work from a bygone era, even if it is the only thing worth seeing in the whole movie. Also, if making fun of how "fake" miniatures and models look is your bag these posts will hold little appeal for you. I'm not here to poke fun at the amazing work done by craftspeople and artisans that the average person couldn't duplicate with a million dollars and all the time in the world if their life depended on it. I'm here to celebrate it. Each clip will start with the title and director but will end with the names of all involved in the production of the effects sequence, often uncredited on the movie itself but recognized today thanks to the complete credit listings for most movies found on IMDB. On the flip side I am also not here to deride CGI which I recognize is enormously important in the effects world today and has changed the industry immeasurably. It's just that celebrating the lost art of miniature and model work is the primary concern.

We start with San Francisco, a 1936 W.S. Van Dyke production with Clark Gable, Jeanette MacDonald and Spencer Tracy. Its story of romance and business rivalry is well told but ends on a much too sentimental note to really embrace all that came before. Nonetheless, it is worth a viewing and the effects sequences for the earthquake are terrific.

Two of the most difficult things to deal with in miniature work are fire and water. Getting them "to scale" is impossible. A drop of water instantly betrays the size of the model ship it graces just as the size of a flame gives away the game for a model building. In San Francisco, effects photographer Loyal Griggs got around the problem as best he could by optically printing flames from a larger fire behind the models and making the models themselves as big as they could but still manipulative as miniatures.

Another problem faced with miniatures is the speed at which debris falls. On a larger scale it appears to fall more slowly and so high-speed cameras are employed to shoot the footage at many more frames per second than is custom so that it will play back at a slower but graceful speed. This sometimes but not always works. Note the dynamiting of the Victorian house in the clip. It is shown twice being dynamited. The first time looks like a model, the second time it appears much more natural. Why? The fault lies not with the high-speed photography but with the fact that the house was designed as a breakaway house rather than letting the explosives blow it apart. Thus, after the first explosion, we see whole sections of the house suddenly make clean breaks from the rest of the house betraying its model status. But the second explosion deals only with debris and as we see it fly into the air and slowly cascade down it has the look of the real thing.

Unfortunately, even on IMDB, the model makers are not listed, only members of the special effects crew. I hope that means the model makers as well because I would hate to not credit them for their extraordinary work. Also, as with any special effects sequence, sound is very important but the only credit is for the famed Douglas Shearer, head of the sound department. While he was certainly involved in many films of the era it was also common practice to simply put the head of the department on the credits (like Cedric Gibbons or Edith Head) giving short shrift to the many technicians working beneath them that often did most of the heavy lifting. I'd like to list the technicians who did such great Foley work on these scenes but sadly their names are lost to the ages.

Finally, let's remember that all the special effects members listed did some amazing full-scale work as well as seen when the street splits in two or the opera house starts breaking apart with hundreds of people inside. Enjoy.

History and the Movies III: The San Francisco Earthquake

Tomorrow is April 18th, the day 103 years ago that San Francisco was rocked with a 7.8 magnitude* earthquake and subsequently burned to the ground. Initial figures of deaths in the hundreds were doctored and the real death toll, which was in the thousands, was hidden from the public because the city government was afraid people might be apprehensive to move back in and businesses might be scared away. It took two to three years for the city to clean-up and start rebuilding the downtown area and a few more for it's economy to get back on track. The earthquake is still one of the strongest to ever hit the continental United States, though the strongest is still the almost unbelievable in size 9.2 earthquake of March 28, 1964 in Anchorage, Alaska. Thirty years after the fact, the movies got involved.

San Francisco was released in 1936 and starred Clark Gable, Jeanette McDonald and Spencer Tracy. The story of gambling hall owners, singers and priests called... Tim, really didn't matter much. The main thing was to show the earthquake and that's what ended up raking in the dough for all concerned. And Hollywood took notice. Using disaster as a backdrop for soap opera (touched on recently here in a post on the Titanic) quickly caught on and within a year John Ford had directed and released The Hurricane with its spectacular ending using extraordinary miniatures and even more extraordinary wind and water machines that must have made Thomas Mitchell and Dorothy Lamour wish they were in a real hurricane. From that movie to the seventies disaster flicks such as Earthquake and The Towering Inferno to the nineties offerings of Twister and Deep Impact to the 2000's The Day After Tomorrow the sub-genre is alive and well.

It does so well because audiences love seeing destruction and the wrath of nature from a safe distance. It's too terrifying and heartbreaking in real life but fictionalized up on the screen it can be awesome to behold. I grew up in Charleston, SC which suffered a massive intraplate earthquake in 1886. It was felt as far as Chicago, IL, Cuba and Bermuda. Charleston has only had that one big one but it has small earthquakes almost daily and every few weeks they're big enough to feel. Growing up there I got used to occasionally hearing all of nature go silent for a few seconds and then feeling the tremor as the doors rattled and the dishes shook. I also saw my fair share of hurricanes and tropical storms. I was already living in DC when Hurricane Hugo slammed into Charleston in 1989, just days before another huge earthquake rocked San Francisco, but going home to see my parents afterward it was amazing to me that anything had survived, so devastated did the whole area look. Like I said, close-up it's not much fun, but seen in a movie it can exhilarating, even cathartic.

The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was also one of the first big natural disasters well documented photographically, with both still and motion picture photography. Thirty years before the fiction movie was released, newsreel footage was abundent and can be seen below in the first clip. The second clip is from the climax of the 1936 movie, showing the first part of the earthquake unfold. On April 18th, 1906 San Francisco was destroyed by an earthquake. In 1936 Hollywood exploited that event and discovered gold still lay in the hills of San Francisco after all. Over a hundred years later we still don't know enough about earthquakes to predict when they will occur but predicting big-budget onscreen destruction is as easy as checking the calendar. Every summer the aftershocks of that Gable-McDonald romance are still felt, and will be until the world ends in 2012.

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*current estimate.

Further Links:
The Virtual San Francisco Museum
Wikipedia entry on 1906 earthquake
Eyewitness to History
USGS Page on 1906 Earthquake

Dance, Lady, Dance!

Although it had quite an impressive cast (Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Franchot Tone, May Robson, Sterling Holloway, Nelson Eddy, Robert Benchley and, yes, the Three Stooges) Dancing Lady (1933) is mainly remembered as the film debut of one Fred Astaire, playing himself, a dancer on Broadway, doing a single number with Joan. Less than one month later, he would have a significant supporting role in Flying Down to Rio where he would team for the first time with Ginger Rogers.

Another first of the film is the first Adolph Hitler joke/reference in a studio film. In one sequence, Larry Fine of the Three Stooges puts together a jigsaw puzzle only to realize upon its completion that it is a portrait of Hitler at which point he gives the camera a pronounced double take. The section was edited out for later release but then put back in. I've never seen the sequence myself and a brief check on Turner Classic Movies shows it is not currently scheduled but it is available on DVD. Unfortunately the DVD info does not say whether the sequence is there. No matter, it's a movie from the early thirties. I'll buy it anyway.

Gone of the Dead

"No, I don't think I will eat your brain, although you need your brain eaten, badly. That's what's wrong with you. You should have your brain eaten and often, and by someone who knows how."