Author Topic: Judgement of Movie Effects artists on Apollo  (Read 21189 times)

Offline nomuse

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Re: Judgement of Movie Effects artists on Apollo
« Reply #15 on: January 31, 2013, 02:00:53 AM »
One of the bits in Destination Moon that I like--and I'm not being snarky--is the embedded educational Woody Woodpecker short.

That part is wonderful.

Every now and then I run into an HB who thinks rockets won't work in space, and I tell him he should listen to Woody.

Offline Noldi400

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Re: Judgement of Movie Effects artists on Apollo
« Reply #16 on: January 31, 2013, 04:18:45 AM »
Actually, they worked very hard to make it authentic, given the information they had at that time and the state of the film making art. RAH, who did the screenplay and served as technical adviser, wrote a piece called Making Destination Moon which tells about their struggles.

Reportedly, producer George Pal had his hands full keeping the money people off their backs. Fearing the plot was too dull, at one point TPTB wanted a trio of girl singers a la the Andrews Sisters included in the crew... ::)
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Offline Nowhere Man

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Re: Judgement of Movie Effects artists on Apollo
« Reply #17 on: January 31, 2013, 07:09:35 PM »
Oddly enough, the woodpecker section is the part of DM that I like the least.

Fred
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Offline gillianren

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Re: Judgement of Movie Effects artists on Apollo
« Reply #18 on: February 01, 2013, 01:11:51 AM »
I've never liked that bird.
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Offline nomuse

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Re: Judgement of Movie Effects artists on Apollo
« Reply #19 on: February 01, 2013, 01:49:03 PM »
The related problem with the visual effects industry v. Apollo is that ground-breaking films leave a history.  Over and over, if you listen to interviews or follow the mags, you get stuff like, "The original plan was a lot less footage of the bugs; they would mostly be realized with full-scale puppets, a la Alien.  But then Tippet brought in a Go Motion rig he'd been developing on his last project...."

If there had been a team of people developing new methods to fake Apollo footage, you'd see the footprint of new techniques filtering out into the rest of the industry over the next few years.  This would be even harder to bottle up -- the only way I can think of is having everyone involved sign a sort of long-term "non-compete," aka "I will walk away from the industry and not make another film in any capacity for the next twenty years."

Like THAT'S gonna fly.