Author

Edward Landler

Edward Landler is a filmmaker, media educator and film historian. He made I Build the Tower, the definitive feature documentary on the Watts Towers, and is currently completing a cultural history of film. He can be reached at [email protected].

Features

Film School Confidential: Does It Really Matter?

by Edward Landler September 1, 2010

written by Edward Landler 13 minutes read

by Edward Landler

In the age of YouTube, making movies no longer seems complicated. With an expanding range of visual media and easy access to affordable camcorders and editing software, many can shoot and arrange scenes without a big crew.

Nancy Richardson, left, photo by Gregory Schwartz, and Alan Heim, photo by Gregory Schwartz.

“The only way to learn to manipulate images is by actually doing it,” says Oscar- winning editor and Editors Guild Vice President Alan Heim, A.C.E. Nancy Richardson, A.C.E., Guild Board member and editor of Twilight, agrees, saying “Film school or not, the bottom line is you learn by editing.”

But some aspects of working in a high-pressure, heavily financed, collaborative industry cannot be learned by working on one’s own. Editors Guild Magazine talked to a cross-section of Guild members about their backgrounds and preparation for working in Hollywood. Reflecting a broad range of learning experiences, they shared their thoughts about gaining an education in their field.

The process of learning editing has never been static. Former Guild President Donn Cambern, A.C.E., editor of Easy Rider and Romancing the Stone, started working when an apprentice system still existed in the studios. He moved up from apprentice to assistant music editor and within six months to music editor. He became a picture editor 12 years later.

Chic Ciccolini, MPSE, sound editor on many of Ron Howard’s films, had a part- time job in production while attending the School of Visual Arts in New York. Realizing he was learning more on the job, he left film school and made a two-year progression from messenger to shipping room to print checker to apprentice to assistant editor.

Now a picture editor, Joanne D’Antonio was an unpaid intern editing news film in New York when she looked into applying for film school at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication. The dean of the school told her, “You are where our students wish they were. You could keep learning on the job.” She took his advice and moved to Los Angeles. Within three years, she accumulated experience as assistant editor and sound editor and became a dialogue editor on Apocalypse Now.

Joanne D’Antonio, left, and Chic Ciccolini.

But the change in technology from film to digital editing practically short-circuited the apprentice system. Sound editor R. J. Kizer, ADR supervisor on Inception, says, “Schedules these days rarely allow for an editor to show assistants the how-and-why of decision-making.” Assistant editor and Guild Board member Sharon Smith Holley agrees. “In film, assistants would observe the cuts and changes and understand the reasons for them by taking notes for the editor, ” she says. “Now the assistant is in another room organizing the data and out- putting it.”

Experiencing this change while an assistant editor, Stephanie Hernstadt decided to go to the American Film Institute Conservatory. “The apprentice scenario has evaporated and assistant jobs are harder to find,” she says. “I went to film school to learn how to tell stories better.” Along with an MFA in editing, Hernstadt says the training qualified her for an “undocumented degree in post-production supervision” and has since worked as a post supervisor as well as an assistant in TV and movies.

“The film school has replaced the apprentice system,” says Cambern, who teaches at AFI. “If you can afford it, you are prepared to step into the real world with a strong sense of self, strong editing aesthetics, real skill sets and the ability to stand up to enormous pressure.”

With students constantly making films—short movies the first year and longer projects later—“the film schools are like little film studios,” adds Heim, who studied at City College of New York. “In film school, a student learns the whole process, so that in the real world you can understand how your job fits into the whole process,” explains Richardson, a graduate from and a professor at the UCLA School of Theatre, Film and Television.

Also at school, Hernstadt says, “You pay for the privilege to make mistakes and not get fired.” Similarly, Kizer says his years at NYU were a protective bubble that he could “use as a playground and try any- thing. That’s where I discovered I really liked editing.”

Brad Buecker, left, and Stephanie Hernstadt.

“You find your own voice in film school,” says Brad Buecker, supervising producer and editor for TV’s Glee and editor of the recently released Eat Pray Love. “You learn how to talk about story. Later that helps on the job. On Glee, the entire editorial team gets involved in the storytelling process. Everyone needs to be able to communicate.”

“The ability to articulate is part of what makes you a good editor,” says Richardson. “You have to learn how to articulate your views about story, performance and what the scene is about,” Cambern adds. “It’s learning the language.” Students viewing and discussing contemporary and classic films, and how film storytelling has evolved, is part of this learning as well. “If you don’t think you need to know film history, you need to go to film school,” says Buecker, who took a summer program at USC and a dramatic writing class at NYU before attending the AFI.

These discussions help students form long-lasting friendships as they discover they share tastes and outlooks. “School provides a network of friends; it creates a community,” says Richardson. “Later, when one person gets a feature, their friends work on it. That’s harder to come by without the film school background.”

“At USC, I hooked into a network of people I loved to work with and continue to work with,” adds Rocket Science editor Yana Gorskaya. “My first four major jobs were from referrals from faculty. But I know not everyone can say that. I’m fully aware of how lucky I am.” “Every dime I’ve made in this town came from my first year at AFI,” Buecker states. “The contacts made in the editing program got me work.”

Tom Fleischman, left, photo by Kfir Ziv, and Yana Gorskaya.

Re-recording mixer Tom Fleischman, MPSE, CAS––who often works with Martin Scorsese and Spike Lee––dropped out of NYU after three semesters. The son of Dede Allen, A.C.E., he grew up immersed in the atmosphere of story and editing. “In film school, I wasn’t learning anything I did- n’t know already,” he reveals. “Film school would be good for someone with no back- ground in the dramatic arts.” Fleischman grew up with the contacts, too, proving that some luck in finding connections may come from being in the major centers of film activity. Academic programs outside those centers could offer an education in the art and craft of filmmaking, but may not have a faculty that can provide significant contacts.

Despite that, assistant editor Holley interned on Robert Altman’s Health on loca- tion in Florida while she was in high school. After graduating from the University of Florida, she found more location work on Hollywood movies which led to more work and to her move into post-production.

Without the benefit of a film school, Holley says that other venues can help a would-be editor piece together an educa- tion and find both contacts and work. For example, a focused selection of seminars and programs offered by film organiza- tions, film festivals and university exten- sions can offer grounding for a determined individual. “The Academy recently offered a four-week educational series—open to the public—about editing called ‘Cut to the Chase,’” says Holley. “In one session, Richard Chew showed how the zoom lens changed editing. This is tremendously useful to both professionals and stu- dents.”

Hughes Winborne, left, photo by Gregory Schwartz, and Sharon Smith Holley, photo by Wm. Stetz.

Oscar-winning Crash editor Hughes Winborne’s film school experience was limited to an intensive NYU program where he made three 16mm films in six weeks. Drawn instinctively to editing— “nobody else wanted to stay late in a dark room”—Winborne became an assistant editor on a shoestring-budget movie. One day he was sent out for coffee and came back to find the editor gone. He took over the job. Honing his craft editing corporate films and TV documentaries led him to Slingblade and to work in Los Angeles. There he had the luck of finding a mentor in director Daniel Petrie, Sr. “He navigated me through the social and political realities of the business,” Winborne says.

Big Brother editor Rod Schultheiss majored in film theory at the University of Colorado, but took only one Super-8 film- making course––having no intention of going into production work. His real training as an editor came on the job. Originally a post-production coordinator, he learned different aesthetics working on sports promos, video graphics shorts, music videos, documentaries, game shows and then reality shows. Schultheiss learned story structure from putting together longer-format shows. “In reality shows, you are crafting story scripts as you edit,”he says. Holley echoes Schultheiss’ experience, observing, “Today, you can work up through the post-production house, and that might be working on trailers, training and industrial films, commercials and airline versions of movies.”

Rod Schulthesiss, left, and Erich Gann.

Supervising sound editor on TV’s Sons of Anarchy, Erich Gann is a good example of working one’s way up through a post-production house, starting at Smart Post Sound in 2006. Before coming to Los Angeles in 1999, he mixed albums for rock bands and got additional tech training in music post-production at Full Sail University in Orlando. The LA Film School had developed Full Sail as a technical training facility for film and video as well as music. While he was there, Gann started working on film and video projects.

Similarly, Luis Galdames, MPSE, sound effects editor on House M.D., came from a music background, where he learned ProTools. He trained five months at the LA Recording Workshop (now the LA Recording School, affiliated with LA Film School), learning post-production, scoring- to-picture and Foley editing. But it was the luck of having director Alexander Payne as a neighbor that brought him his first job as assistant sound editor to supervising sound editor Frank Gaeta, MPSE. “The school was the starting point. The hard-core train- ing is really on the job and who you know,” Galdames says.

The change from film to digital editing represents a change in learning and an obligation to keep up with constantly evolving software. “Today, the mastery of the computer is a given, no matter what the back- ground,” says Cambern. “You have to learn the new technical skill sets.” Short-term and long-term training services and facilities abound for both picture and sound editing software—Avid “boot camps,” LA Film School, Apple stores, UCLA Extension, to name a few. But learning the computer skills is essentially technical. It does not teach story, character and rhythm—things emphasized in film schools. And coming out of tech training leaves students less likely to have formed the personal relationships necessary for the industry.

Luis Galdames, left, and Donn Cambern.

Many editors and mixers say they learn the new versions of software on their own as they come along, building on what they already know of the older versions. “When you figure it out your own way, you may not know the best way, but you get the job done,” says sound editor Kizer. “Later, you revise your method as you work with people who show you.” As systems become more complex, though, it is harder to learn the technology on the job. “It’s like watch- ing someone play a computer game,” Holley says. The work schedule doesn’t allow time for training.

Dody Dorn, A.C.E., editor on Memento and Australia, is a prime example of what she calls “the University of On-the-Job Training.” Her father was a set builder and B-movie producer. She skipped college, going to work as a production assistant in her late teens. She was capable, so productions kept pushing her into more responsible positions in an industry where the vast majority of jobs are blue-collar, no matter how well paid. Starting as an assistant— working on film—Dorn learned quickly and moved to editor, then sound editor, supervising sound editor and eventually owner of her own company, Sonic Kitchen, before returning to picture editing. Just as quickly, she adapted to the computer and the digital medium. “I wish I had the leisure of college to explore film history creatively,” Dorn says.

R.J. Kizer, left, and Dody Dorn.

“But I wound up doing it anyway. I fell in love with the magic of film through editing.” Everyone interviewed agrees about one thing that is difficult to learn outside the workplace: politics. “There is a hierarchy and protocol in our business that could be explained more clearly in detail by the schools,” says sound editor Ciccolini. “Working in the real world, I had to learn the political dynamic between producer, director, studio and editor,” Kizer adds. “Failure on the job isn’t an option,” notes editor Buecker, adding, “You learn the time to speak and the time not to speak.”

“You’ll want to collaborate with the director and be nice to the producer,” explains Cambern. “If they argue, don’t get in between them.” He adds, “If you see a better way to cut a scene, take the risk and show it to the director. You won’t get laid off and the director will take the credit for how well it plays. The director will remember you and hire you for his next movie.” Richardson concurs: “In my experience, when you are focused on making a good movie, the politics can be overcome.”

The education never ends. “Every good project I’ve worked on has led to more good things, with more aesthetic sense, more technical sense and more jobs,” says Buecker.

Ultimately, all interviewed agree with Heim when he says, “It’s still storytelling.”

“Whether you go to film school or not,” says editor D’Antonio in summary, “you have to have the innate ability.”

September 1, 2010 0 comments

Features

Trail of the Arrow The Legend of Robin Hood on Film

by Edward Landler May 1, 2010

written by Edward Landler 13 minutes read

by Edward Landler

In 1225, Robert Hode fled the jurisdiction of the king’s court in Yorkshire and on public record was declared “outside the law.” Over the century before Hode appeared on public record and over the three centuries following, numerous stories developed by word of mouth in the shires of Nottingham and York. These tales recounted the exploits of the various outlaws sheltered in Sherwood Forest, which lay between the two shires.

As these local oral traditions came to be written down, the various outlaws became perceived as one band of outlaws led by Robin Hood. Since the 1500s, these stories spread throughout the world, eventually becoming familiar to audiences through the medium of cinema.

John Irvin’s Robin Hood (1991) television movie with Patrick Bergin. Courtesy of 20th Century Fox/Photofest. Copyright 20th Century Fox

The Little Johns, Will Scarletts and Friar Tucks of movies today would still be recognizable to the tales’ original audiences. In the earliest lore, they killed the king’s deer and robbed the wealthy and the corrupt clergy. A few sheriffs including the Sheriff of Nottingham pursued them, yet Robin and his band swore allegiance to the king. The king was never identified as Richard I until the late 1500s.

Around the same time, a popular May Day ritual combined two folk traditions by dramatizing a wedding of Robin Hood to the Queen of the May. Soon, stories emerged linking Robin with a May Queen who was now a noble, Maid Marian. Robin then became the Earl of Huntington, whose lands had been confiscated by the crown. In the original lore, Robin was a yeoman—a freeman but not a noble. Guy of Gisbourne, a bounty hunter after Robin’s head, and also a yeoman in the original stories, became a noble in 17th-century versions. Alan-a-Dale, the minstrel, was introduced to the legend around the same time.

On the set of Alan Dwan’s Robin Hood (1922) with director Dwan, left, and stars Enid Bennett and Douglas Fairbanks. Courtesy of United Artists/Photofest Copyright United Artists

Until the 1800s, the Robin Hood tales had not suggested any enmity between Normans and Saxons. Richard I, in whose reign Robin’s activities were now firmly set, lived over a hundred years after the Norman Conquest of Saxon England. By then, Norman-Saxon hostilities had been put aside. But Sir Walter Scott’s 1820 novel Ivanhoe established the perception that the Normans continued oppressing Saxons into Richard’s reign. By making Robin Hood a character in his novel, Scott embedded this in the legend, along with the true story of the ransom demanded to free Richard from captivity in Austria.

The 1800s also saw the growth of Robin’s role as a champion of social justice. While a few of the original tales depicted him helping peasants, they did not call for changes in the social order; they simply recognized the realities of wealth and power. As the divine right of kings waned and equal rights arose, the legend assimilated the call for social justice. The theme of stealing from the rich specifically to give to the poor became more prominent in the tales, and Robin Hood became a liberator of the oppressed.

By the time movies arrived, all the elements of the legend were in place—except for a cohesive plot line. Books about Robin Hood only tied the various tales and anecdotes together as a loose string of episodes, and the earliest short silent films simply presented tableaux of pageantry recreating separate adventures.

The major silent Robin Hood carried on the pageantry but far more spectacularly. Written by its star, Douglas Fairbanks, under the name of Elton Thomas, this 1922 film kept little of the oral tradition. Returning from the crusade, Fairbanks’ Earl of Huntington assumes the name Robin Hood to protect England from Prince John’s cruelties.

Mel Brooks’ Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993) with Amy Yasbeck, left, Brooks, Cary Elwes and Mark Blankfield. Photo by Peter Sorel. Courtesy of 20th Century Fox/Photofest. Copyright 20th Century Fox

Heightening the pageantry, director Allan Dwan draws from traditional May Day imagery in the tournament where Robin and Sir Guy vie for Maid Marian’s hand. Also evoking May Day, the outlaws ambush the Sheriff’s men in the forest, ending with a rhythmic montage of Will Scarlett twirling one soldier over his head and throwing him to Friar Tuck who then throws him to Little John who tosses him onto a tree limb.

Unlike Fairbanks, the writers of the 1938 sound The Adventures of Robin Hood—Seton I. Miller and Norman Reilly Raine—entwined the traditional tales with the 19th-century historic context. This movie, with Robin Hood in the person of Errol Flynn, defined the legend as the world knows it today and set the standard by which all later versions would be judged. It also won Ralph Dawson an Oscar for Best Editing.

In the original lore, the stories stand by themselves: Driving off the Sheriff’s men after killing the royal deer, Robin’s first meetings with Little John and Friar Tuck, his rescue from the gallows, the disguised King’s journey through Sherwood—these were all related as separate incidents. But in The Adventures, directors Michael Curtiz and William Keighley linked these episodes to tell the story of Sir Robin defending England against Norman injustices in the name of the rightful king.

Still affected by the Great Depression, audiences of 1938 could identify with Flynn’s Robin Hood. His righteous struggle bolstered the hopes for economic justice offered by democracies in contrast to the order imposed by Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. Technicolor and Ralph Dawson’s editing reinforced the impact of these themes.

Michael Curtiz and William Keighley’s The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) with Errol Flynn. Courtesy of Warner Bros./Photofest. Copyright Warner Bros

Dawson constructs action scenes with an economy and rhythm that keep viewers aware of the geography of the entire action. For example, the editing of the outlaws preparing the ambush on the royal caravan is echoed in the raid itself. The audience is always clear about where and when each action is taking place. The shifting spatial relationships between the major characters drive the logic of the editing but also allow for engaging vignettes––like the ground-level shot of a row of green-clad outlaws leaping over the camera cutting to a higher shot of the outlaws from the side as they jump onto the soldiers’ horses.

Even cartoon characters including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Popeye the Sailor have taken on the guise of Robin Hood. A 1973 Disney musical animated feature, Robin Hood, cast all the characters as animals—Robin and Marian foxes, King Richard and Prince John lions, Little John a bear. British actors voiced the “noble” characters while the commoners had voices of actors known for their roles in Westerns.

The first major British Robin Hood movie was produced by Walt Disney in 1952—The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men. Filmed in Sherwood Forest itself, the authentic castles are sized more appropriately to human dimensions than the grandiose sets of Hollywood. Clothes look worn and lived in and the villages are realistically rustic.

Director Ken Annakin depicts a more realistic social setting by incorporating traditional folk customs into the action. As punishment, the Sheriff’s men wrap a poacher in deer skin, tie antlers to his head, and beat him in the Nottingham village square. Villagers raise cries of protest against the Sheriff and join to help Robin rescue the poacher.

The Story of Robin Hood also introduces a more assertive Maid Marian, who disguises herself as a boy to join Robin’s band. Marian’s empowerment becomes more

Richard Lester’s Robin and Marian (1976) with Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn. Photo by Iain Coates. Courtesy of Columbia Pictures/Photofest. Copyright Columbia Pictures

pronounced in the long-running British TV series of the late 1950s entitled The Adventures of Robin Hood and starring Richard Greene. In this version, she often wears men’s clothing and matches arms and wits with both Robin and the Sheriff. This series also consistently focuses on themes of social justice, some of its scripts furnished by American writers blacklisted during the McCarthy Era.

Two later British TV series, Robin of Sherwood (in the 1980s) and Robin Hood (recently ending a four-year run) presented even stronger, more contemporary Marians and introduced Muslim characters into Robin’s band. Deviating from the realism of the original tales, Robin of Sherwood made sorcery central to its storyline while the 21st-century Robin Hood focused more on personal rivalries than on social justice.

Another British TV series, Maid Marian and Her Merry Men––a children’s comedy of the early 1990s––best reflects how contemporary social attitudes have influenced the legend. Here Kate Lonergan’s Marian revolts against the status quo while Robin is a tailor who joins the outlaws to design their outfits. Barrington, a dreadlocked black Rastafarian, introduces every show with a hip-hop song.

Mel Brooks transforms Barrington into a quartet of black rappers to introduce his Robin Hood: Men in Tights of 1993. But Brooks is more concerned with sending up pop culture icons than with social satire. The main target of mockery is the 1991 Kevin Costner movie Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, directed by Kevin Reynolds. Dave Chapelle’s Moor and Tracey Ullman’s witch are obvious take-offs on both Morgan Freeman’s character and the witch character from the Costner movie—both of whom had likely been adapted from the Robin of Sherwood TV series.

Ken Annakin’s The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (1952) with Richard Todd. Courtesy of Walt Disney Pictures/Photofest. Copyright Walt Disney Productions

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves was the last major production based on the legend until Ridley Scott’s upcoming release. It departs almost completely from the original tales and, after Robin’s escape from Jerusalem, removes the story from history entirely. Alan Rickman’s Sheriff of Nottingham—instead of Prince John—tries to usurp the throne here, by forcing his marriage to Maid Marian, who is of royal blood.
Of the movies and TV shows since the 1950s, two stand on their own as imaginatively well-grounded treatments of the legend. In fact, Robin and Marian, directed by Richard Lester in 1976, is substantially a logical sequel to the 1938 movie. Embracing the traditional tale of Robin’s death, writer James Goldman transforms it into the story of Robin’s return to Nottingham after 20 years of warring in France with King Richard.

A tale of aging and disillusionment, Sean Connery’s Robin returns home to discover the Sheriff still in power in Nottingham and Audrey Hepburn as Marian now the Abbess of Kirkslee Priory. When Robin leads the peasants once more against the Sheriff’s harsh rule, he finds a disparity between his ideals and his age.
John Victor Smith’s editing conveys these themes through sequences set in the outlaws’ old camp. After the first night reunited with his band in Sherwood, Robin and the others rise one by one in the chilly morning with aches and pains, as they adjust their well-worn clothes and wash in the stream.

The settings are authentic, as in the 1952 Story of Robin Hood, and keen attention is paid to daily living realities, frequently showing peasants working in fields and orchards along the roads between villages and castles. Particularly in contrast to the other movies, we see that wielding broadswords and scaling castle walls entail draining physical exertion.

The other imaginative post-’50s treatment is Robin Hood, starring Patrick Bergin, directed by John Irvin, written by Sam Resnick and John McGrath, and released in 1991 as a US TV movie in the shadow of the Costner version. Leading Robin Hood scholar J. C. Holt served as advisor and, although the writers made the hero the Saxon Earl of Huntington, they also gave him the pre-outlaw name of Robert Hode.

Uma Thurman’s Marian has the strongest character of all her counterparts. The story follows the growing maturity of this spoiled Norman noblewoman as she recognizes the injustices of the feudal system. Seeking understanding and attracted to Robin’s resolute daring, she disguises herself as a boy to join his band. Her skill at arms and her growing resolve help bring Norman and Saxon together in peace.

An Army of Archers

A Selected Hood-ology

The cinematography of the natural locales suggests a sense of the characters’ deep relationship to their environment. The opening sequence draws viewers directly into the life of Sherwood, interweaving close documentary shots of wild forest creatures—rabbit, fox, badger, deer—with details of servants’ preparations for the nobles’ hunt. This leads seamlessly into the story’s beginning, in which Robert Hode defends a hungry poacher against the Norman nobles.

This sequence displays the intricacy of Peter Tanner’s editing, which also observes the vital differences between rich and poor that the legend has come to embody. The longevity of the Robin Hood story and its lasting appeal has much to do with these ever-present realities of haves and have-nots and the innate human desire to be treated fairly.

May 1, 2010 0 comments

Features

It Came Right Out of the Movie Screen: A Look at 3-D Movies of the 50’s

by Edward Landler January 1, 2010

written by Edward Landler 12 minutes read

by Edward Landler

In the early 1950s, the film industry, hoping to lure audiences back into theatres from their new TV sets, created more movies in color and introduced widescreen formats that could not be reproduced on the small screen. Between 1952 and 1954, it even tried to recapture viewers with movies in 3-D, the process created to intensify the illusion of depth.

Box office for 3-D movies peaked and plummeted quickly as the novelty wore off. Since their heyday, stereoscopic movies have continued to pop up––literally––drawing viewers into cinemas to don the prerequisite red and blue polarized glasses. Having little else than novelty itself to attract an audience, these films have been largely ignored and quickly forgotten.

But, with James Cameron’s Avatar (see Page 22) bounding onto––and off of––screens in 3-D, following other impressive offerings in the last few years, it’s time to re-examine the early 3-D movies to see if some might really stand out, so to speak, from the others. Do any of these films successfully integrate the novelty of three dimensions into the dramatic flow of a compelling storyline?

The biggest 3-D hit of its time, which is also one of the new horror movies on Netflix, and the most often revived, is Andre de Toth’s House of Wax (1953). In that, the strongest stereoscopic attractions come from well-timed thrusts of threatening objects from background to foreground. The soon-to-be-mad wax sculptor’s studio is set ablaze by the sculptor’s partner and a fiery second-floor landing collapses forward onto the ground floor, almost into our laps. Later, as the police rush to save a young woman from being embalmed with boiling wax, medieval pikes poke through a bolted door and out of the screen. The movie ends with a joke on the forward-thrust effect: A police detective turns toward the foreground, his arm outstretched, waving the decapitated head of a wax statue at us.

House of Wax. Courtesy of Warner Bros./Photofest Warner Bros.

The themes in Crane Wilbur’s screen- play for House of Wax play on an aware- ness of the film’s use of 3-D. The story highlights the conflict of the artist who must compromise his art with sensationalism, titillation and gimmicks to attract business––not unlike what 3-D itself was doing. The mad sculptor wants to make great art, but his partner forces him to create tableaux of celebrated acts of violence. The opening of the new wax museum includes what would be a seemingly irrelevant bit of imagery, except that it directs our attention to the 3-D gimmick itself: A man in a tuxedo walking up and down the sidewalk entices passers-by into the wax museum by bouncing three balls on strings off of paddleboards and into our faces.

Another scene capitalizing on the effect of depth underscores the theme of what it takes to attract audiences. The shot cranes below an ornate crystal chandelier above the audience in a grand 1880s New York City music hall. The camera swoops forward to give us the illusion of the chandelier moving out above us. We drop down to view the Can-Can dancers on stage, watching their exhilarating movements, and then go into a close shot of a row of bare legs kicking out of the screen. After a dialogue between three main characters in the music hall, we cut back to finish the scene with a dancer kicking her leg out- ward, turning around and then bending down into a close shot of her derrière. The 3-D is expertly utilized but plays pointedly on the age-old theatrical come- on of using women’s bodies to attract attention.

All in all, Rudi Fehr’s editing arranges House of Wax into a series of tableaux simply to show off the individual 3-D effects of the action.

In contrast, two lower- budget science-fiction movies, produced by Universal-International and directed by Jack Arnold, integrate the illusion of depth more fully into the editing itself: It Came from Outer Space (1953) and Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954).

We see many individual stereoscopic effects of objects thrust out of the screen in It Came from Outer Space-Joshua Tree branches reaching out toward us, rocks tumbling down a hill- side-but the camera seems more attuned to successive layers of movement across all planes of distance. The cam- era moves across a desert crater through sheets of smoke and into a rocky tunnel in the side of the hill. It closes in on the hatch opening out from the geodesic dome-like spacecraft lodged deep in the hill’s interior. As an alien eye emerges through the smoke, we cut to its point of view. The 3-D effect heightens the perception of depth through a gelatinous foreground glittering with reflections, past rocks littering the alien’s path from foreground to mid-ground, and toward rocky ridges standing out against the sky in the background.

Editor Paul Weatherwax enhances the 3-D effect by cutting on the movements across visual planes, thus heightening the suspense of the story. Two telephone linemen drive through the desert in a pick- up truck. From the point of view of one of them, backlit telephone poles and wires move forward across the screen, the perception of depth emphasizing an ominous foreshortening effect. The editing establishes a visual rhythm cutting back and forth between the lineman’s point of view and a reverse angle of the truck’s interior. The pattern climaxes to reveal the alien’s eye appearing in the wind- shield and a shot of the second lineman from the alien’s gelatinous point of view.

It Came from Outer Space. Courtesy of Universal Pictures/Photofest Universal Pictures

This integration of stereoscopic cinematography and editing draws the viewer into the action. John is an astronomer who desires to communicate with the aliens. Two aliens have assumed the shapes of the telephone linemen and we follow John as he sees them enter an iron door in a brick wall, standing out visually in the 3-D perspective of depth. The scene cuts to inside the deep hall behind it, revealing two human shadows on the interior of the door. The door slowly swings out to reveal John standing in sunshine. Then, from behind John in the foreground and the brick wall mid- ground, we see the alien linemen silhouetted down the hall in the background.

As they step out into the bright sunlight, the 3-D effect achieves a chilling hint of otherworldliness. These emotionally charged 3-D images serve as visual metaphors of the theme of the Ray Bradbury story from which the movie was adapted: Achieving communication by understanding the perspective of those alien to us.

Although Creature from the Black Lagoon draws tit- ters when the creature’s arti- fice becomes obvious in bright daylight shots, William E. Snyder’s black-and-white 3-D photography and Ted J. Kent’s editing are far more sophisticated than that of most 3-D movies.

The film creates surreal parallels of action using the depth of the planes of distance. The first instance of the film’s extensive underwater photography is inside a huge aquarium filled with murky water and a myriad of fish at varying distances from the camera. The camera pans right to reveal Kay, the young female marine biologist, observing the fish from outside the glass. As she turns, we cut to a reverse angle long shot of Kay in front of the huge aquarium window with the immense fish behind her. She moves into the foreground, joining the group of scientists who stand at a large lab table. The lead scientist, Dr. Maya, places on the table the grotesque fossil he dug up in the jungle and we cut to a close shot-a huge, ferocious claw reaching out of the screen in 3-D.

This amphibian claw becomes a key image in the film. The scientists arrive at the camp deep in the Amazon rain forest where Maya had discovered the fossil and the scene dissolves to inside a tent where we see in close-up a claw-like human hand frozen in rigor mortis. Just before the scientists arrived, we saw the creature’s attack on two expedition workers. Now we see in the foreground the frozen claw-like hand of one of the mauled men and beyond, through the open flap of the tent, the scientists approaching from the river’s edge in the background. This kind of linking of specific 3-D imagery is also apparent in It Came from Outer Space.

As the action of the film moves under- water, the interplay of image, movement and the illusion of depth is so engrossing that the story’s basic silliness––a monstrous creature’s lust for a human female––no longer distracts from our fascination with the visuals. Kent’s strategy of cutting on movement, enhanced by 3- D imagery, sets a surreal tone in the aquarium scene and evokes taut excitement when the creature kills the workers, but its effect raises the underwater sequences to evocatively erotic and even poetic visual displays.

In the first extended underwater sequence of the film, we cut from an overhead shot above Kay swimming in the title lagoon to a view of her from underwater. Kay swims at the surface in the background. Underwater vegetarian waves out of the screen in the foreground as the creature enters the shot even closer in the foreground, looking back at Kay. The camera cuts to a shot of Kay from directly below, the sky bright white above her.

Dial M for Murder. Courtesy of Warner Bros./Photofest Warner Bros.

The editing of the sequence interweaves images of Kay from the creature’s point of view and images of the creature swimming along, watching and following her. All the objects moving in the various planes of distance from the camera lend a rhythm to the cutting- underwater vegetation and branches, fish, bubbles, debris and the contrasting shades of murky water below with the bright, white sheet of sky above. This sequence conjures up a profound sense of primal urges and fears-the urges of a being that hunts and the fears of a woman alone being watched. It clearly demonstrates the power of the stereoscopic process when used imaginatively.

Unfortunately, a film with one of the most effective demonstrations of 3-D was never officially released in that for- mat and very few have seen it projected stereoscopically. The 3-D fad was at the height of its brief box office glory in 1953 when Warner Bros. insisted that Alfred Hitchcock shoot Dial M for Murder in 3-D. Despite Hitchcock’s stated indifference to the format, a careful viewing of the film on a normal flat screen reveals that the director built both the visual and editing strategies around the arrangement of objects in planes of depth with meticulous care.

Shot like a chamber drama, the film continually directs attention to the relationship between foreground and back- ground from all angles of the main London flat setting. Characters move for- ward from backgrounds and into the close foreground to direct our attention to key details, and cuts are made on movements that direct our attention from one plane to another. Entire sequences are edited around a progression of images that brings us closer to the key characters, leading into a close straight-on shot of the character, revealing that individual’s state of mind.

For example, after the wife (Grace Kelly) kills the attacker hired by her husband to murder her, Hitchcock achieves a growing tension by inter-cutting the police inspector questioning her with a series of straight- on shots of the woman at var- ious distances. As she is questioned, the movement of characters in the background increases her isolation in the frame and evokes her emotional isolation as she realizes she will be tried for homicide. The trial itself is economically depicted in a simple series of three head-on close shots with shifting light values and colors that would be quite striking projected in 3-D and which underscore the wife’s sense of loss and despair.

Hitchcock uses the illusion-of-depth effect to draw viewers into the story and to help them identify more closely with the characters’ emotions. The emphasis on spatial and depth relation- ships in the photography and in its editing involves the audience more deeply in the action.

As a 3-D movie, Dial M for Murder would show a successful integration of 3- D into the dramatic and visual flow of the story. In contrast, when an effect is thrust forward toward the audience for shock value, as is so often done in House of Wax, the audience feels more removed from the action. Given the vast difference in editing between the two movies, it is surprising to note that Fehr edited both of them. Offering a balance of these approaches, Arnold demonstrates an intriguing but only sporadically successful integration of the 3-D effect into his two science-fiction movies.

January 1, 2010 0 comments

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