When trying to learn more about the careers and backgrounds of technical folk associated with the Golden Era of the film industry the job can be fraught with difficulties and blank spots. The ‘superstars’ of special visual effects – Ray Harryhausen, Peter Ellenshaw, John Fulton, Norman Dawn, Willis O’Brien and Albert Whitlock and so forth are often well documented and complete biographical surveys are usually fairly easily obtained. Filling the blank spots for the many film technicians whose names may not be as familiar yet who have also contributed significantly to the magic of the movies is often a wish unfulfilled.
I can but salivate in researcher frustration at the presumably hundreds of family albums and dusty old boxes of correspondence and photographs that families and descendants of so many movie magicians must have stored in lofts, garages, and worse still, in land fills chewed at by mice and irreparably damaged by flash floods and the like. I applaud loudly with both hands historians such as Craig Barron, the late George Turner and Professor Raymond Fielding who took it upon themselves to interview, document and eventually publish such wonderful accounts of visual wizardry straight from the mouths of the technicians who performed these tricks, and what’s more always with a human and very endearing manner. Kudos, gentlemen, it is all so much appreciated…
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A Tribute to Golden Era Special FX
Please Note: Now that I am all caught up with Matte & Effects Films Celebrated, I am going further back into the archives of Matte Shot – A Tribute to Golden Era Special FX to feature even more great articles from this great site.
This blog is intended primarily as a tribute to the inventiveness and ingenuity of the craft of the matte painter during Hollywoods’ Golden Era. Some of the shots will amaze in their grandeur and epic quality while others will surprise in their ‘invisibility’ to even the sophisticated viewer. I hope this collection will serve as an appreciation of the artform and both casual visitors and those with a specialist interest may benefit, enjoy and be amazed at skills largely unknown today.