
The special effects for the computer display in “Escape From New York” - thibautg
https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1066284025600339968
======
hazeii
The effect was actually done using retroreflective tape; the building were
indeed a physical model, with the edges covered in 3M Scotchlite tape. From
first-hand experience (on other movies) the camera is placed behind a half-
silvered mirror placed with a 45 degree tilt, with a projector underneath (in
this case shining green light). The net result is the camera and projector are
on the same optical axis, so no shadows are visible and because the tape
(retro)reflects so strongly that's the only thing that shows up.

We used exactly the same technique on 'Superman', but projecting footage in
sync with the camera and the most massive screen of Scotchlite behind the
actors (it's must've been something like 200 feet wide and 50 high, so big we
had to dig a curved trench several feet deep in the floor of Pinewood's A
stage to fit it all in (my boss at the time won an Oscar for the flying FX).

~~~
triggercut
Superman was the last movie my grandfather worked on before he retired. He was
with British Lion so probably at Shepperton Studios/Sound City unit, not
Pinewood. If you do read this, please send me an email, would be great to see
if you ever crossed paths.

~~~
gus_massa
Note: The "email" field in your profile is private (for password reset and
similar stuff). If you want to make it public you must copy it to the "about"
field.

~~~
hazeii
Thanks for thw tip!

------
alan_wade
On the other hand, I've just watched a behind the scenes video [1] about
Mission Impossible: Fallout, and was absolutely shocked by how much of it was
shot in real life.

Basically, most of it. When I saw the movie, I would've bet my left kidney
that 90% of the effects were green screen, I definitely would never have
guessed that the skydivig scene, helicopter chase, and the canyon fight are
for real. I could barely believe such canyon existed! Absolutely stunning.

[1]
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=lCv59-y123g&t=0s](https://youtube.com/watch?v=lCv59-y123g&t=0s)

~~~
dpcan
Makes you wonder why they took the risks at all when special effects are so
good that nobody needs to do such things anymore. Maybe they actually made a
mistake by getting the scenes so perfect.

~~~
dylan604
>...so good that nobody needs to do such things anymore.

There is a lot of CGI that just looks fake. I would even say most, at least to
me. I go back to Star Wars (ep 4). The physical models still look good. The
original Blade Runner still looks good. I've also noticed that CGI movies look
okay in the theater, but once they hit the high compression formats like Blu-
ray or streaming, the CGI really becomes noticeable. The practical stuff still
looks good in these formats. Go back and watch Hunt For Red October, and know
that during the submarine underwater scenes are just physical models in rooms
of smoke to simulate underwater. I really notice when they do 100% CGI
characters like Spiderman and Hulk.

~~~
vlunkr
I have two maybe contradictory things to say about this. On the one hand,
thinking all cgi looks fake is confirmation bias. There is so much cgi you
don’t notice (cars for example, look incredibly real). But when you do, it’s
because it’s bad.

On the other hand, I agree that 100% cgi characters look bad. I recently
watched the latest Avengers and was amazed that with all the budget and years
of experience they have, the Hulk looks terrible.

It’s a useful tool, but when it becomes the only tool it gets old. There’s a
lot of charm to practical effects. Yeah I can tell that Yoda is just a puppet,
but it works.

~~~
neotek
>On the one hand, thinking all cgi looks fake is confirmation bias. There is
so much cgi you don’t notice (cars for example, look incredibly real). But
when you do, it’s because it’s bad.

Also known as the Toupée fallacy:

[https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Toupee_fallacy](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Toupee_fallacy)

------
jungler
Discussions of older effects work always make note of the high manual labor
effort. But increasingly I'm not convinced that we really have things that
much different in the CGI era. Certain things can be done in a commodity
fashion(e.g. instancing thousands of AIs to make an army) but a good visual
effect is designed and crafted, not manufactured. You don't get great
animation just by scaling up the processing power.

So you still end up with labor effort, but proportionately more goes to the
intellectual parts of modelling it on the computer, instead of hiring a crew
to sweat over an array of painted glass, miniatures, and puppets. When CGI
visuals got really popular for the first time in the 90's and 00's, they often
suffered from the belief that the computer would make post-production so fast
that the up-front design could be avoided in favor of a brute force "just redo
it in post until it looks good" approach. And this is an appealing pitch on
the surface, since it means more aspects of the work can stay undecided until
the very end. Indecision is one of the things that drives a lot of software
complexity.

But that kind of futurism isn't touted nearly as much as it used to be. It
adds unnecessary risk for expensive mistakes, underwhelming visuals and
awkward editing. Post work is still a huge part of doing blockbuster cinema,
but it's been supplemented with extensive testing and a resurgent trend of in-
camera effects. Meanwhile, the studios that provide CGI services are treated
as commodity labor, just like yesteryear's model painters.

~~~
bsder
I'd say that a whole generation of effects people took the Star Wars prequels
to heart as to how too much CGI sucks.

~~~
gmueckl
It was not too much CG, but rather the wrong approach to it. If you stick an
actor into a green screen you need to do your damnest as a director to make
clear to them what the invisible part of the setting is. As far as I know
Lucas failed to handle that correctly.

Newer productions with actually capable directors got this right. There was a
reason why Lord of the Rings employed previs animations before filming to
figure out what the sequence will be. Weta Dgitial gave James Cameron a
tracked virtual camera inside the motion capture rig with a real time preview
of the Navi so that he could direct the camera while his actors where playing
out the movie in a nonexistent jungle in a really drab gray studio with no
props. There are tons of examples how the industry has learned to take CG as a
tool and tame its abstract nature to make it useable.

------
PhasmaFelis
The discussion of the title effect for The Thing (painted glass, burning
garbage bag, fishtank full of smoke) reminded me that the well-known Windows
10 default wallpaper[1] is, surprisingly, a practical effect. It's a pane of
glass etched with the Windows logo suspended in front of a black background,
with a bright light shining in from the side and a fog machine going.

[1] [https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-
content/uploads/2015/08/windo...](https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-
content/uploads/2015/08/windows-10-wallpaper-lights-640x347.png)

------
TipVFL
The model shots as CGI reminds me of RoboCop's "thermal vision". Renting an
actual heat sensing camera was too expensive, so they just filmed people in
black spandex covered in fluorescent paints under a black light.

It's clever, but I don't think it really holds up:
[https://youtu.be/Md14H_qD8iQ](https://youtu.be/Md14H_qD8iQ)

I always thought that shot looked weird, but I never questioned the wireframes
in Escape From New York.

~~~
Doxin
It's _so close_ to holding up though. If they had blurred it a smidge so you
don't see the folds in the spandex it'd be perfectly fine. Thermal cameras
aren't known for their high resolution anyway.

------
corysama
In the movie _2001_ , the computers feature flat screen displays because they
were actually displaying rear projection film. This accidentally gave it a
more futuristic look than later sci-fi’s such as Alien and Blade Runner which
featured bulbous CRT computer screens.

Also, like in OP’s tweets, there were no actual computers involved in the
production of _2001_. All of the displayed 3D wireframe models were films of
physical wireframe models.

~~~
gmueckl
The effects in 2001 are breathtaking. Have you ever watched all the windows in
the spaceships and stations? They aren't just white matte fakeouts, but actual
filmsets with extras moving around overlaid with the model work. Building
these sets, filming the inserts from the right angles and compositing that
onto the final film in a purely optical process took an enormous amount of
labor. I wonder why noone ever talks about that.

~~~
corysama
There’s a scene in a cockpit that was filmed with rear-projected computer
screens and black windshields. That film was stored and later re-exposed
filming a miniature moon landscape filmed through the windshield of a
miniature black cockpit viewing a miniature moon base with black windows. That
film was stored again then re-exposed to film people walking around through
the windows of a full-sized black moon base.

~~~
gmueckl
The worst part of it: this is chemical film. Copying degrades image quality.
So you want to do every step on a the same strip of film. But make one single
mistake and you'll have to redo everything from scratch. Digital compositing
is a godsend compared to that process.

------
AndrewStephens
My favorite story of practical effects on a John Carpenter film is about the
portal at the end of Prince of Darkness, where a character reaches through a
mirror to hell. The effect was achieved using a large pool of mercury, which
the crew had "liberated" from the hydraulic system of a rented piece of heavy
machinery. They filmed for one night, got the shots they needed then replaced
the mercury before anyone noticed.

This was a terrible idea for many, many reasons. But they got the film made.

~~~
fein
I have no idea where you would get mercury from a hydraulic system on
anything. This story kind of sounds like urban legend, or the crew had no idea
what they were taking apart.

~~~
hazeii
Having worked in SFX, I guess it was probably from a Chapman (a sort of crane
balanced seesaw big enough to hang cameramen and cameras from) - at one time
(presumably no longer) I believe they used a big reservoir of mercury to
achieve fine balance, to the extent you could move swing them around manually.

Amusing side note: They had a locking lever when obviously had to be engaged
when the cameraman wasn't on the end. If someone freed the lever with the
crane out of balance, the results could be quite catastrophic (source: I
could've been killed on one occasion).

Aha, and here's an article about them:-

[http://hollywoodjuicer.blogspot.com/2008/12/adventures-in-
gr...](http://hollywoodjuicer.blogspot.com/2008/12/adventures-in-grip-land-
cranes.html)

~~~
AndrewStephens
I heard the story second-hand on a podcast and obviously confused some of the
details, but I think you are right about the piece of equipment they had
access to.

------
powerlanguage
If you find this kind of stuff interesting you may like this blog series on
creative development for Moon (2009): [http://www.gavinrothery.com/they-never-
went-to-the-moon](http://www.gavinrothery.com/they-never-went-to-the-moon)

Lots of interesting insight into production tricks used for a modern low-
budget sci-fi film. Including graphic/motion design, sets and visual effects.

------
CharlesW
Nice! This takes me back to my days as a kid when I would pour over issues of
_Cinefex_ , which I'm very happy to see is still around.

If you enjoyed this, you'll probably also get a kick out of how they made the
legendary HBO intro from 1983: [https://youtu.be/wqzihgR_-
SI](https://youtu.be/wqzihgR_-SI)

~~~
hazeii
Yes, I just looked it up too because I used to read it when I worked in the
SFX business. Pretty sure there's an issue that covers Escape from New York,
but couldn't find it in a quick search.

[http://www.cinefex.com/](http://www.cinefex.com/)

------
roywiggins
I'm a big fan of slit-scan:

[https://vimeo.com/71702374](https://vimeo.com/71702374)

As used in Doctor Who:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fnzcAFy8d8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fnzcAFy8d8)

~~~
TipVFL
I love slit-scan effects, it's such a simple but powerful concept.

They're actually really easy to do now in post, After Effects has an effect
called time displacement that allows you to displace time on a per pixel
level. So to recreate a standard slit scan you'd just supply it with a
gradient from black to white, but you can also create even more bizarre
effects by mapping the pixels differently.

A few months ago I did all the effects for some music videos, and I created
multiple effects based on slit-screen. Things like, having the video smoothly
break apart into slices where the time moves at different speeds and then
smoothly splice itself back together.

Another cool effect I figured out: using a blurred copy of the video as the
time displacement mapping. This makes everything that's colored similarly move
together in time, but out of sync with everything else.

I did that effect for a video that was just one long shot, and then I
rotoscoped out the performers so they move in regular time and match the
music: [https://youtu.be/-0zO7Fnqnvs](https://youtu.be/-0zO7Fnqnvs)

I really love old school effects work, they're a constant source of
inspiration.

~~~
roywiggins
Very cool!

I did have a go at copying the Doctor Who tunnel effect:

[http://roy.red/slitscan-.html](http://roy.red/slitscan-.html)

~~~
TipVFL
Nice, your version of the time tunnel looks awesome!

------
homarp
his patreon: [https://www.patreon.com/foone](https://www.patreon.com/foone)

and why it's nto a blog post:
[https://mobile.twitter.com/Foone/status/1066547670477488128](https://mobile.twitter.com/Foone/status/1066547670477488128)

------
purple_ducks
Both the title and the story of the title of "The Thing" are absolutely
brilliant

~~~
rainbowzootsuit
I'm getting excited for my annual holiday viewing of "THE THING."

If you have an opportunity to see the special edition or some other copy with
the documentary "Terror Takes Shape" about the background of the movie and
special effects it is absolutely worth the hour.

Also if you are available June 25, 2022, there is a fan meetup at the location
of the filming in Stewart, British Columbia.

[https://www.outpost31.com/2022](https://www.outpost31.com/2022)

------
classichasclass
It's the sheer ingenuity of effects like this that impress me to this day. You
couldn't just come up with a concept and poot it out in CGI from the bureau
render farm. It took a real understanding of the medium and the camera, and
when manual animation was needed, a lot of blood and sweat.

------
berberous
This guy @foone that did this tweet storm generally has an excellent Twitter
account that everyone reading HN would love. He buys lots of old weird
hardware and has interesting threads on them. He’s well worth a follow.

------
abootstrapper
Imagine how much easier this great content would be to read as a blog post.

~~~
foone
Feel free to write it as one!

But personally I can only do it this way, as I've got rather bad ADHD. So when
I'm writing, it's a choice between "a rambly twitter thread" or "an unfinished
never-posted blog post".

~~~
roghummal
Are you converting "an unfinished never-posted blog post" into "a rambly
twitter thread"?

------
guelo
I often find Twitter to be an awful platform for viewing images and video
because they make it so hard to zoom in or to save it.

------
FearNotDaniel
In a similar vein: all the graphics from the BBC TV version of Hitch Hiker's
Guide to the Galaxy.

------
lostgame
How did this change into some awful Twitter thing?

I swear it was a solid blog post the first time I clicked on it - totally
readable, unlike this...

~~~
pronoiac
I first saw this story as
[https://threader.app/thread/1066284025600339968](https://threader.app/thread/1066284025600339968)
, which didn't work for some here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18524844](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18524844)

------
njharman
Twitter is a completely shit medium for in depth article like this.

~~~
neotek
Personally I much prefer Twitter threads like this to big, long, overly
descriptive blog posts. The improvisational nature of the writing, plus the
interleaved commentary from other interesting people, make it much more
conversational and easy to digest.

------
agumonkey
The windows 10 background was also CGI free.

------
glhaynes
A lot of people seem to love these twitter thread unroller sites, but it's not
clear to me what problem they solve (on modern Twitter) and I almost always
find the original Twitter thread to be more readable/flexible. For example, in
this one, I found it a bit confusing whether a particular paragraph went with
the clip above or below it. Anyway, to each their own! Original thread here…
@Foone is _the best_ :
[https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1066284025600339968](https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1066284025600339968)

~~~
tofof
On my machine, the linked 'threader' has every video as a busted icon, which
defeats the entire topic. Twitter handles them correctly. Thank you.

One thing I found interesting that the author didn't seem to notice is that
the text of the Star Wars opening crawl in the behind-the-scenes photo[1] is
radically different from the version that saw release.

The crawl that we've all seen is only 4 sentences long: two in the first
paragraph, then two 'paragraphs' of one multi-clause sentence each.

The crawl pictured in the tweet[1] is a much wordier mess, and may well be the
original crawl Lucas showed to friends and executives before Brian de Palma
edited the text down for him. It also features something similar to Dan
Perri's semi-rejected logotype at the top (cut off unless you click in or view
the image directly), the _angled_ 'Star Wars' block logo most prominently seen
on the original posters[2] for the film.

[1]:
[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dsw_RjNUcAAgCgE.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dsw_RjNUcAAgCgE.jpg)

[2]:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=star+wars+77+poster&tbm=isch](https://www.google.com/search?q=star+wars+77+poster&tbm=isch)

~~~
tunap
I shudder to think how bad ANH would have been if Lucas had his way. We had a
1st taste in ROTJ and full-Lucas vision in the prequels.

