Moving Images, Understanding Media

308 Moving Images: Making Movies, Understanding Media

Aft er the production designer synthesizes the various design elements

of the fi lm in sketches, paintings, computer schematics, and research notes

that have been discussed with the director and cinematographer, they will be

passed to the art directors, who work to have them translated into draft ing

schematics and itemized reports. Art directors oversee the implementation and

budgeting of these plans with the set designer and construction manager. Set

constructors, decorators, and dressers are the primary personnel responsible

for taking the plans created by production designers, art directors, and set

designers and turning them into viable settings. Sets are constructed for fi lms

so that they allow for maximum ease of shooting through the use of wild

walls, open ceilings for lighting rigs, and smooth fl oors.

Illusions of Space and Movement

Some aspects of the creation of these worlds can also involve the fabrication

of complete illusion, whether through the use of mattes, models, trick

photography, CGI, and other visual manipulations of perspective and layering.

Th e collaboration involved in creating the convincing and expressive illusions

of the world on the screen can be quite extensive, and the methods used to

create them have a complex history. Early fi lmmakers discovered they could

enhance their capacity to tell stories by using inventive methods to trick the

eye. Th ey could mask part of the fi lm and run the same piece of fi lm back

through the camera, such as with a shot in Th e Great Train Robbery in which

the train is seen moving through the window of the station. Optical eff ects

could be produced by the camera crew, and other procedures were rapidly

developed to create a variety of eff ects during the post-production stages of

fi lm processing. Many of these printing techniques, such as fades, dissolves,

wipes, and composites now can be done digitally, and you may have performed

some of them using the tools on a computer editing program.

Th e intersection of camera perspective and visual design has prompted

ingenious solutions from generations of fi lmmakers. Two of the earliest

concepts that still see applications today—and whose lessons have been

applied to the digital world—are in the use of matte painting and scale

models. From the fi rst decade of the twentieth century, artist Norman Dawn

began creating illusions by placing painted glass plates in front of the camera,

Figure 8-26 Futuristic

cityscape from Ridley Scott’s

Bladerunner. (Courtesy Th e

Blade Runner Partnership/

Photofest)

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