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The Airplane! scene where Captain Kramer is driving to the airport! .
-of course it starts seriously enough: a road with a gentle curve and a line down the middle, and then a car stopped on the opposite shoulder.... .
-but true to the spirit of the Movie, Captain Kramer runs down a bicyclist and soon they are being overtaken by riders on horseback!
You can't make this stuff up!
(Well, actually you can...and they did!)
The car is a 1966 Mustang convertible: a classic even back when Airplane! was made. OK, so who got their cool car put in the movie?! According to the Internet, it belonged to Robert Hays: that's Ted Stryker to you and me! .
For me the demonstration shots of it in Stan & Ollie, that is when it is film of "Way out West" being made. It looks like a scene from the film but they pull back to show what is really being done.
Other favourites are really front axial projection such as the early flying shots in Supergirl.
There was once another rear screen projection. In cinemas. In Taunton, Somerset. an old friend once was a projectionist in the County Cinema. Due to lack of space projection was from the stage onto the back of the screen.
Apparently, due to the thickness of the screen the projectionist saw a slightly out of focus picture, this was to ensure that the seen picture on the audience side was clearly in focus.
I was told that the two projectors lens holders had several marks. The picture was focused by the projectionist as he saw it, and then the lens was rotated to one of the appropriate marks. This ensured that the audience now saw a clearly focussed picture.
I have never had that good of luck with my rear screen projection, as the picture is rather small, as me wifeys hiney is fairly demure. It's kind of a one way projection, in that wifey can't see unless I have a mirror handy. hard to focus with all of those curves. (This topic was just BEGGING for a response like this ... Hah!).
Lets not forget the classic taxi cab ride in On The Waterfront. Oops!, someone forgot. His name was Sam Spiegel.
Sam Spiegel forgot to pay for rear-projection equipment, hence the reason why the cab where Marlon Brando and Rod Steiger play out the film's most famous scene has blinds.
IMHO, not using rear projection improved the scene. It feels more claustrophobic, and certainly more focused without rear projection.
As part of his contract, Marlon Brando only worked until 4:00 every day and then would leave to go see his analyst. Brando's mother had recently died and the conflicted young actor was in therapy to resolve his issues with his parents. Interestingly, for the film's classic scene between Rod Steiger and Brando in the back of the cab, all of Steiger's close-ups were filmed after Brando had left for the day, so Brando's lines were read by one of the crew members. For many years Steiger, who had actually stayed during Brando's close-ups to help him put in a better performance, remained very bitter that Brando didn't return the favor, and often mentioned it in interviews.
More years ago than I care to remember I was asked to run a matinee at the Palladium Cinema in Kendal. It was rear projection and I had never run it before. All seemed straight forward, got the film on screen, went into the auditorium to check the picture and sound etc. Oh shit the tabs were still closed, quick exit back to the box to open the tabs. Being the wrong side of the screen never thought about the tabs, as far as I was concerned the picture was on the screen just the audience couldn’t see it. Needless to say, they didn’t ask me again.
I would imagine that in order to film with a rear projection background, some kind of sync. would need to be worked out between the projector and the camera, otherwise there would be flicker.
-this must have been very interesting back in the early years. Modern electronics often makes things like this a lot easier to do.
To ask a serious question, did they tend to use 35mm for the rear screen? To me, it would make sense to use 70mm for rear screen, if you are shooting 35mm up front. Nothing gives away rear screen more easily than that grainey slightly out of focus look to it.
I think that bad blue screen involving multi generation background plates (or even worse, foreground action) can be much worst than back projection for grain and contrast.
Hi Maurice, The focus was fine, not any different from focusing on the front of the screen. If my memory serves me right, there was something different with the projector because the image had to be reversed , but I can’t remember how this was achieved.
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