Bad back projection

[cinemagoer]

Hi all,
How many of have been enjoying a film but have almost laughed out loud at bad back projection?

Which films really show it up?

Ian

[Steve Crook]

Hi all,
How many of have been enjoying a film but have almost laughed out loud at bad back projection?

Which films really show it up?

Ian

Most of them
Especially any where there are two people talking in a car as they drive along the road. The angles are wrong as they turn corners because the projection was filmed on the back of a flat-bed lorry where the camera is further from the centre of the turning circle than the rear window of a car. The two actors also usually look at each other as they talk a lot more than is safe for driving

Steve

[Moor Larkin]

CGI seems awful on TV. When Avatar was on the other week, I didn't watch it but as I flicked channels I saw a few images and it was appalling - like cut-outs on a background. Very weird. I didn't linger. I wonder if TV does this to back projection too and makes it more apparently false than it actually appeared on the big-screen. I cannot imagine Avatar having been such a hit otherwise. I've noticed the edging effects on a number of other CGI epics and generally find them unbearable to watch on TV to be honest, if the effects are prolonged.

There's a few sequences I noticed on an episode of Danger Man, which seemed quite sophisticated as it gave a rear view from the back window of the car, and simultaneusly there appeared to be a coherent version of the same scenery from a side window, blurring sideways as you would expect. It wasn't just filmed, the car was obviously studio-bound, but the overall effect was impressive. I have a feeling the section is on youtube someplace.

Of course it may just be that the beauty was in the eye of this beholder...

[Gerald Lovell]

Alfred Hitchcock was apparently too impatient to care much about back projection in car scenes . . . and it shows.

[cinemagoer]

So true about Hitch...My girlfriend laugh at some of those "Hitch-cock-ups"!

Ian

[cinemagoer]

"Moor" but you can never compare watching any film on T V to the wonder of the cinema.

Ian

[Moor Larkin]

"Moor" but you can never compare watching any film on T V to the wonder of the cinema.

Ian

Quite so, but the world being what it is, I would guess everyone will be talking with reference to their TV screen. One thing that does strike me is that these backgrounds are fully within the field of the eye on a TV screen, and so are noticeable; whereas in the cinema they were so large, the brain never really took in the background in this way. In this sense, why would Hitchcock (for instance) have wasted time over it? It's a similar, if inverse argument to that about very old TV programmes having sets that look a bit ropey on the big Plasma, similarly: that viewer is not allowing for the fact that in 425-lines and murky monochrome, nobody would have even been able to see that there was a background half the time.

You presumably are speaking of silver screen observation?

[Steve Crook]

CGI seems awful on TV. When Avatar was on the other week, I didn't watch it but as I flicked channels I saw a few images and it was appalling - like cut-outs on a background.

That wasn't just because of the CGI. The story was appalling as well

Steve

[cinemagoer]

But I enjoyed it at the cinema.

Ian

[Dean Williams]

I think Quosimodo does a good job at projecting a bad back...

[Stephen Pickard]

Due to lack of sufficient light on the rear background plate image, the rear projection method rarely ever was convincing. This was further hampered by the fact that the actor playing the driver rarely turned the wheel when a turn was visible on the background plate. Directors, like Hitchcock, always preferred to use process projection because you could always guarantee a clean dialog recording, which meant the performances would not be compromised by looping which would have been likely if they had attempted to shoot it on location. I have witnessed several rear projection set-ups when I was working at Pinewood. When there is not much dialogue being spoken, the director would make an effort to direct the actors, often through a voice amplification device, from behind the camera. He would also give directions to the actor sitting behind the wheel when to turn and in which direction as the actor cannot see the projected plate which is behind him/her.
In the sixties a 'front-projection' still plate rig was developed by MGM and Stanley Kubrick for "2001" utilizing a special 'scotch-lite' material which amplified the light source hitting it, one of the weaknesses of rear projection. The rig was used later on "Where Eagles Dare", of which I was involved, and went into detail in an article I wrote elsewhere on this site.
Moor Larkin mentions a reflected image in a side car window as well as the rear in an episode of 'Danger Man'. This was most likely achieved by using a special device known as a 'triple-head rear projection rig' which MGM used for the coach sequences in "Where Eagles Dare" which I also explained in the article.
In one of Hitchcock's films, I can't remember which, he put the rear projection technology to daring use. A translucent rear projection screen was stretched flat over a tank of water. A mock-up of a plane was hung downwards over it. A plate was somehow photographed of a POV shot heading straight toward water. When the camera and plate started rolling and the image of the surface of the water was close enough, a cue was given to drop the plane mock-up which tore through the screen and consequently the water burst through directly at the camera. The only think I can't figure out is where the projector was placed to provide the projected plate.

[Gerald Lovell]

In one of Hitchcock's films, I can't remember which, he put the rear projection technology to daring use. A translucent rear projection screen was stretched flat over a tank of water. A mock-up of a plane was hung downwards over it. A plate was somehow photographed of a POV shot heading straight toward water. When the camera and plate started rolling and the image of the surface of the water was close enough, a cue was given to drop the plane mock-up which tore through the screen and consequently the water burst through directly at the camera. The only think I can't figure out is where the projector was placed to provide the projected plate.

I think that must have been Foreign Correspondent (1940).

[Stephen Pickard]

Thanks Gerald, I'll have to dig out the laserdisc and study it again.