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Rear projection (background projection, process photography, etc.) is one of many in-camera effects cinematic techniques in film production for combining foreground performances with pre-filmed backgrounds. It was widely used for many years in driving scenes, or to show other forms of "distant" background motion.
Actors stand in front of a screen while a projector positioned behind the screen casts a reversed image of the background. This requires a large space, as the projector needs to be placed some distance from the back of the screen. Frequently the background image may initially appear faint and washed out compared to the foreground. The image that is projected can be still or moving, but is always called the plate. One might hear the command "Roll plate" to instruct stage crew to begin projecting.
These so-called process shots were widely used to film actors as if they were inside a moving vehicle, who in reality are in a vehicle mock-up on a sound stage. In these cases the motion of the backdrop film and foreground actors and props were often different due to the lack of camera stabilizing in the filming from the moving vehicles used to produce the plate. This was most noticeable as bumps and jarring motions of the background image that would not be duplicated by the actors.
A major problem with rear projection use was that the image projected on the screen was always slightly less crisp than the action in front of it, an effect which was especially noticeable in sequences where footage with rear projection alternates with non-projection shots.
A major advance over rear projection is front projection, which uses a special screen material to allow the plate to be projected from the front of the screen. This results in a much sharper and more saturated image. Although the technique had been used experimentally for some time, it was during the filming of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) that the modern version was fully developed. In this case it was used to avoid costly on-location shots in Africa during the opening scenes of the movie, but the effect was also used throughout the film for a variety of shots into the windows of spacecraft. 2001 also used rear projection to produce computer screen effects.
As front projection and bluescreen effects became more widespread and less costly, rear projection has been rendered largely obsolete. Quentin Tarantino used the process for the taxi ride sequence in Pulp Fiction (1994). James Cameron also used rear projection for several special effects shots in Aliens (1986), including the crash of the dropship, as well as for several sequences in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) such as the car escape from the mental hospital and the T-1000 hijacking the police helicopter; Cameron has been described as one of the few people in Hollywood still able to understand and use process photography as an effective technique. [1] The Austin Powers film series (1997–2002) frequently used rear projection to help recreate the feel of old spy movies, while Natural Born Killers (1994) used the technique extensively throughout to emphasize characters' subconscious motivations.
Rear projection was conceived long before its actual usage; however, it was only made possible in the 1930s due to three necessary technical developments. The most important was the development of camera and projector motors that could be linked up for synchronization of their shutters, which were developed out of the unrelated needs of "talking" movies whose timing had to be carefully controlled. Secondly, Eastman Kodak's introduction of panchromatic film stock in 1928 allowed for the camera to expose the projected background more than orthochromatic stocks, making it look less faint than it did before. Finally, the larger film gauges beginning to emerge in the late 1920s demanded more powerful projection lamps, which were subsequently available for making the rear projection screen brighter and thus more properly exposed.
In 1930, Fox Film Corporation was the first to use the rear projection technique, with their films Liliom and then Just Imagine, and were subsequently awarded a technical Oscar for their work the next year. Shortly after this debut, Farciot Edouart ASC, at Paramount Pictures, refined the technique, starting in 1933, and developed several new methods such as syncing three projectors with the same background plate for more even and bright exposure. Linwood Dunn ASC, at RKO Radio Pictures, expanded on this with the use of traveling matte with films like Flying Down to Rio (1933).[ citation needed ] The first ever full-scale rear projection was created by famed special effects director Eiji Tsuburaya for Arnold Fanck's German–Japanese film The Daughter of the Samurai . [2]
In the late 1940s, David Rawnsley introduced the technique in four minor British films, when it was heavily criticized.
Alfred Hitchcock was a master at using process screenshots, mixing them with location shots so that the slight artificiality of the process screen shots does not distract from the action. He used the process to show Cary Grant's character being attacked by a crop duster plane in North by Northwest and throughout the film, but it was criticized when he used it extensively in Marnie .
Fantasy filmmaker Ray Harryhausen pioneered a variation of rear projection in the 1950s and 1960s with Dynamation, whereby the rear screen was placed on a miniature set along with stop-motion creatures. Harryhausen figured out a way to synchronize the movement of the miniature figures with the background projection as a way to insert live-action humans in the same scene as the creatures.
King Kong is a 1933 American pre-Code adventure horror monster film directed and produced by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, with special effects by Willis H. O'Brien. Produced and distributed by RKO Radio Pictures, it is the first film in the King Kong franchise. The film stars Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong and Bruce Cabot. In the film, a giant ape dubbed Kong captured from Skull Island attempts to possess a beautiful young woman.
Widescreen images are displayed within a set of aspect ratios used in film, television and computer screens. In film, a widescreen film is any film image with a width-to-height aspect ratio greater than 4:3 (12:9).
35 mm film is a film gauge used in filmmaking, and the film standard. In motion pictures that record on film, 35 mm is the most commonly used gauge. The name of the gauge is not a direct measurement, and refers to the nominal width of the 35 mm format photographic film, which consists of strips 1.377 ± 0.001 inches (34.976 ± 0.025 mm) wide. The standard image exposure length on 35 mm for movies is four perforations per frame along both edges, which results in 16 frames per foot of film.
Chroma key compositing, or chroma keying, is a visual-effects and post-production technique for compositing (layering) two or more images or video streams together based on colour hues. The technique has been used in many fields to remove a background from the subject of a photo or video – particularly the newscasting, motion picture, and video game industries. A colour range in the foreground footage is made transparent, allowing separately filmed background footage or a static image to be inserted into the scene. The chroma keying technique is commonly used in video production and post-production. This technique is also referred to as colour keying, colour-separation overlay, or by various terms for specific colour-related variants such as green screen or blue screen; chroma keying can be done with backgrounds of any colour that are uniform and distinct, but green and blue backgrounds are more commonly used because they differ most distinctly in hue from any human skin colour. No part of the subject being filmed or photographed may duplicate the colour used as the backing, or the part may be erroneously identified as part of the backing.
Special effects are illusions or visual tricks used in the theatre, film, television, video game, amusement park and simulator industries to simulate the imagined events in a story or virtual world.
Cinematography is the art of motion picture photography.
Visual effects is the process by which imagery is created or manipulated outside the context of a live-action shot in filmmaking and video production. The integration of live-action footage and other live-action footage or CGI elements to create realistic imagery is called VFX.
Traditional animation is an animation technique in which each frame is drawn by hand. The technique was the dominant form of animation in cinema until the end of the 20th century, when there was a shift to computer animation in the industry, specifically 3D computer animation.
Compositing is the process or technique of combining visual elements from separate sources into single images, often to create the illusion that all those elements are parts of the same scene. Live-action shooting for compositing is variously called "chroma key", "blue screen", "green screen" and other names. Today, most, though not all, compositing is achieved through digital image manipulation. Pre-digital compositing techniques, however, go back as far as the trick films of Georges Méliès in the late 19th century, and some are still in use.
In visual effects, match moving is a technique that allows the insertion of 2D elements, other live action elements or CG computer graphics into live-action footage with correct position, scale, orientation, and motion relative to the photographed objects in the shot. It also allows for the removal of live action elements from the live action shot. The term is used loosely to describe several different methods of extracting camera motion information from a motion picture. Sometimes referred to as motion tracking or camera solving, match moving is related to rotoscoping and photogrammetry. Match moving is sometimes confused with motion capture, which records the motion of objects, often human actors, rather than the camera. Typically, motion capture requires special cameras and sensors and a controlled environment. Match moving is also distinct from motion control photography, which uses mechanical hardware to execute multiple identical camera moves. Match moving, by contrast, is typically a software-based technology, applied after the fact to normal footage recorded in uncontrolled environments with an ordinary camera.
Open matte is a filming technique that involves matting out the top and bottom of the film frame in the movie projector for the widescreen theatrical release and then scanning the film without a matte for a full screen home video release.
Mattes are used in photography and special effects filmmaking to combine two or more image elements into a single, final image. Usually, mattes are used to combine a foreground image with a background image. In this case, the matte is the background painting. In film and stage, mattes can be physically huge sections of painted canvas, portraying large scenic expanses of landscapes.
A front projection effect is an in-camera visual effects process in film production for combining foreground performance with pre-filmed background footage. In contrast to rear projection, which projects footage onto a screen from behind the performers, front projection projects the pre-filmed material over the performers and onto a highly reflective background surface.
The sodium vapor process is a photochemical film technique for combining actors and background footage. It originated in the British film industry in the late 1950s and was used extensively by Walt Disney Productions in the 1960s and 1970s as an alternative to the more common bluescreen process. Wadsworth E. Pohl is credited with the invention or development of both of these processes, and received an Academy Award in 1965 for the sodium vapor process used in the film Mary Poppins.
Ultra Panavision 70 and MGM Camera 65 were, from 1957 to 1966, the marketing brands that identified motion pictures photographed with Panavision's anamorphic movie camera lenses on 65 mm film. Ultra Panavision 70 and MGM Camera 65 were shot at 24 frames per second (fps) using anamorphic camera lenses. Ultra Panavision 70 and MGM Camera 65's anamorphic lenses compressed the image 1.25 times, yielding an extremely wide aspect ratio of 2.76:1.
In cinematography, bipacking, or a bipack, is the process of loading two reels of film into a camera, so that they both pass through the camera gate together. It was used both for in-camera effects and as an early subtractive colour process.
Introvision was a variation on a front-projection process that allowed film makers to view a finished composite of live action and plate photography through the camera's viewfinder on set and in real time. During its heyday, starting with the feature film, Outland in 1981, Introvision enjoyed the novelty of visual effect compositing in-camera, thus eliminating the need to wait for photo-chemical compositing to determine if the effect shot was successful.
Multi-image is the now largely obsolete practice and business of using 35mm slides (diapositives) projected by single or multiple slide projectors onto one or more screens in synchronization with an audio voice-over or music track. Multi-image productions are also known as multi-image slide presentations, slide shows and diaporamas and are a specific form of multimedia or audio-visual production.
Foreground and background or background and foreground may refer to:
The Williams process or Williams doublematting process is a matte creation technique patented by the American cinematographer Frank D. Williams in 1918. Unlike prior matte techniques, it allowed for the integration of the actors' movements with previously shot backgrounds.