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Back to the Future trilogy
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Mon May 29, 2017 2:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

scotpens wrote:
It probably could have been done with multiple camera passes and a roto-matte, but it would have been expensive and time-consuming.

True. Very true.

I think our "takeaway" from all this might be that we admire Robert Zemeckis for doing such a great job with the special effects methods he had at this disposal in 1989, and he produced a movie we can still enjoy in 2017, despite the fact that modern film-making methods can easily do things that were very difficult back then. Very Happy

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Maurice
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PostPosted: Mon May 29, 2017 3:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

scotpens wrote:
Bud Brewster wrote:
Gord Green wrote:
I think they just inter-cut the "up shots" of the actors upper bodies with the wire shots.

That was my thinking too, especially in view of the fact that I don't think the technology for "removing the wheels" existed in 1989.

It probably could have been done with multiple camera passes and a roto-matte, but it would have been expensive and time-consuming.

Basically nearly impossible at the time the film was done. You'd need a clean plate of the street to fill in any handmade mattes to get rid of the wheels and stuff, which would be basically impossible to get in that time, since contemporary motion control cameras were not really used for live action photography, and certainly basically impossible for those tracking shots down the street. And even if they could, trying to matte that mess without visible lines or color shifts would have been next to impossible.

If you see the actors and boards and the street all at once, they're on rigs and it's all in camera.

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Skullislander
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PostPosted: Tue May 30, 2017 12:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think it could have been done relatively well [the hoverboard 'off the ground' effects] with front projection, this worked pretty well for the flying shots in the Chris Reeve-era Superman movies.

Front projection gives a much brighter background image as well as a wide field of vision compared to rear-projection, and in the third FUTURE movie where bluescreen-greenscreen has been used for the shots where Doc is gliding on a hoverboard carrying Mary Steenburgen, parallel to a locomotive, the results are OK but a bit obvious-looking.

Thanks for all your input in this aspect, guys: very interesting discussion.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Tue May 30, 2017 9:09 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Skullislander wrote:
Front projection gives a much brighter background image as well as a wide field of vision compared to rear-projection, and in the third FUTURE movie where bluescreen-greenscreen has been used for the shots where Doc is gliding on a hoverboard carrying Mary Steenburgen, parallel to a locomotive, the results are OK but a bit obvious-looking.

I agree that the scene of Doc and Clara peeling off from the train was a less impressive FX than most of the ones in the Back to the Future trilogy.
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Skullislander
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PostPosted: Tue May 30, 2017 10:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

That final shot with the gliding train zooming straight towards the viewer was a beauty, though, Bud!
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Krel
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PostPosted: Tue May 30, 2017 1:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

When I watched that train wreck of a "Time Machine" remake, during the fight on the time machine, the only thing I could think of was Doc Brown comment about his time train. Marty! It's steam powered!

David.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Tue May 30, 2017 1:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Well, you know what they say — different strokes for different folks.

I love the 2002 The Time Machine, even though it took me a second viewing to understand the brilliance of the concept which states, in effect, "You can not use a time machine to prevent an event which was the direct cause of the time machine's invention in the first place."

I'm not criticizing folks who didn't care for it. To each his own. Very Happy

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Last edited by Bud Brewster on Sun Mar 04, 2018 11:03 am; edited 1 time in total
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Skullislander
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PostPosted: Tue May 30, 2017 3:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hiya folks, it has been pointed out that motion control was not availible for live-action shooting in time to work its' wonders for 'removing the wheels' in the hoverboard shots for FUTURE 2 released in 1989.

However!!

I have recalled at least ONE instance of where motion control technology was used commercially in 1988:

This was the Jeremy Irons film DEAD RINGERS in which he played identical twins: 'they' are seen together in the same moving shot using the same tracking used — identically — twice, then spliced together seamlessly, presumably using analog methods.

However, I will concede that perhaps the moving camera in this instance was mounted on a track [like for the Star Wars model spaceship motion control shots] which would have been much harder — if not impossible — to pull off for the hoverboard shots in FUTURE 2.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 29, 2018 11:13 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

I posted a fan-made trailer for The Last Starfighter (1984) on the thread for that movie, and the trailer had this amusing message at the beginning.






I wondered just how true the claim at the bottom was, so I made a list of 1980s science fiction films that I thought were good, just to see if that decade really did produce a significant number of “the best” sci-fi movies.

This movie is on the list I made. I know what I like about the film, but I’d like to hear the pros and cons from the rest of you folks.

So, what do you think, guys? Cool

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Krel
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 04, 2018 8:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I recently was reminded of my favorite scene, which I still think is genius. Marty is talking to his future Dad, all the while twisting at the bottle cap on his Pepsi. His future Dad grabs the bottle and uses a mounted bottle opener, then hands it back to Marty's confusion.

At the time twist-off bottle caps that looked like regular were less than ten years old. But Marty was young enough to not remember when you had to use a bottle opener. But because the bottle caps didn't look any different, he wouldn't notice the difference in the 50s, or to use a bottle opener because he had no experience with them. A genius fish-out-of-water scene.

In 1978, I was working for Barker's Department Store, and one of my duties was stocking the soft drink machines in the break room. The machines dispensed glass bottles, which were still the norm for drink machines. Nice, until the machine breaks a bottle, and you spend 60 to 90 minutes cleaning the glass and drink out of the machine. One day I noticed something different about the bottle caps, they had a line of instructions on how to twist the cap off.

Later in the day, I'm taking my break in the break room with my coworkers, we're all talking. I take my Coke and twist off the top...And EVERYONE stops talking. I look around, confused and someone points at the bottle and asks, how did you do that!? I show them the cap, saying that it's a twist-off. We all laugh, but for a few seconds, I had everyone amazed. Laughing

David.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 2:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Krel, you gave a new definition to "a surprise twist"! Cool

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Bogmeister
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PostPosted: Wed May 08, 2019 1:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

____________
_____________

_______________ Back to the Future 3 - Trailer


__________


At the end of Part II, Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) was in his DeLorean, floating above Marty (Michael J.Fox), when the auto time machine was struck by lightning, zapping it out of existence — out of 1955, that is.

It turns out, Doc & the DeLorean were zapped back to 1885. So, how is Marty going to follow him there? In the DeLorean, of course (think about it long enuff, you'll figure it out). The doc has set himself up as a blacksmith and did not expect Marty to follow him there, but Marty noticed a gravestone which revealed that Doc was gonna get shot in the back over 80 bucks by the local Mad Dog Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson, hamming it up as a filthy bank robber & depraved killer).



Marty and Doc encounter and must surmount familiar problems: there's no more fuel in the DeLorean so the only possible way to get the car to 88 mph in this era is to push it with a train.

But, there is one unfamiliar wrinkle in time — Doc falls in love with the newly-arrived schoolteacher (Mary Steenburgen) and the feeling is mutual. Can Doc leave her? Should he take her with him?

In the end, he decides to tell her the truth . . . and she naturally becomes highly skeptical (Steenburgen must have felt some deja vu in light of her role a decade earlier in Time After Time). In addition, Marty — dubbing himself Clint Eastwood — is scheduled to be in a gunfight with Tannen in a couple of days.



All this is no doubt entertaining but, by this point, a decided staleness had settled on the trilogy. The repetitive motifs, such as Marty waking up as Lea Thompson hovers over him, by this point had reached the realm of been-there-done-that.

In addition, Fox and Thompson playing Marty's great, great grandparents is a stretch even for such a film series — Thompson as Marty's great, great grandmother makes no sense (Thompson as Marty's mom married into the family — she was not a McFly).

But, other characters are also played by actors who are playing 19th-century incarnations of their 1955 & 1985 characters, so the trilogy really just devolved into an absurd counterpart of the original, much more elegant 1985 film. Marty's use of the Eastwood name seemed out of whack, as well, though the script managed a clever joke copying A Fistful of Dollars to thwart Tannen.



Back to the Trivia:
Doc Brown of this film and this old west time frame appeared much later in cameo and as an unofficial follow-up/joke in Seth McFarlane's A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014), which could be looked on as an unofficial sequel moment of Doc Brown's later adventures in time travel.


BoG's Score: 7 out of 10


BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus


Last edited by Bogmeister on Sun May 19, 2019 11:50 am; edited 1 time in total
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Wed May 08, 2019 1:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

This is another example of how Andrew Bogdan was a bit less enthusiastic than I am about movies that lean towards the lighthearted side. Conversely, movies that are a trifle grim for my taste, are just his cup 'a tea. Very Happy

Allen is a good example. Big favorite of Andrew's, but not so much for me.

When you read Andrew's review above you'll notice that his comments fall into two categories: accurate descriptions of the plot, and critical remarks about the flaws he perceived in the film.

Ah well, each to his own, eh? Cool

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Krel
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PostPosted: Wed May 08, 2019 4:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

To me a problem with the third film is that they made up an anger issue problem for Marty. There was no hint of such a problem in the first two films.

When I was watching the "Time Machine" remake, when they showed that the time machine was steam powered. The only thing I could think of, was what Doc Brown said when he showed Marty his time train: Marty! It's steam powered!

David.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Thu May 09, 2019 9:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Krel wrote:
To me a problem with the third film is that they made up an anger issue problem for Marty. There was no hint of such a problem in the first two films.

I'm not clear on what Marty's anger issue was. But after you tell me I'll probably slap my forehead and say, "Oh, THAT!" Shocked

Hey, was the time machine in the 2002 remake really steam powered? What did you notice about it which indicated that it was? I've always thought it had some awesome power source that enabled it to distort the space time continuum while creating that force field around it.

And ummm . . . where's the water tank?
Very Happy


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