Moving Images, Understanding Media

Chapter 8 The Production Process 309

with the painted area melding into the scene seen through the transparent

glass. By the 1930s, matte painting became an indispensable tool for some

productions, allowing fi lmmakers to create scenes that would be impossible

to build because of engineering or budget constraints. From Gone with the

Wind, Th e Wizard of Oz, Citizen Kane, and Black Narcissus to Th e Empire

Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, painters

trained in mastering illusionist eff ects have completed the work started by

production design teams.

Th e use of models has also been one of the visual design team’s most eff ective

tools, seen in an early method named aft er its inventor, cinematographer Eugen

Schüfft an. Th e Schüfft an process combines live action with miniature sets and

paintings that are photographed with the ingenious use of a silver mirror.

Scale models seen through the mirror could be combined with actors on a set

behind the transparent glass part of the mirror, or the opposite arrangement

in which the actors are seen in the mirror while the miniature or a painted

scene is behind the glass. Like other techniques of cinematic illusion, the

process required appropriate lighting and attention to scale and movement.

Th e application of the Schüfft an process and other scale model techniques

including stop-motion animation have been eff ective tools of storytelling

from movies such as Metropolis, Th e 39 Steps, and King Kong to the fi lms of

Ray Harryhausen and Th e Lord of the Rings: Th e Return of the King.

Compositing

Th e techniques that involve the combination of parts of separate images to

produce a single image can be understood under the term of compositing.

Many techniques continue to develop the eff ectiveness and artistry of optical

Figure 8-27 The future as

seen from 1927 in Metropolis,

directed by Fritz Lang, which

features a dazzling array of

visual effects, including both

stop-motion miniatures and

the Schüfftan process which

combines models and moving

people. (Courtesy UFA/

Photofest)

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