More Matte Than That

For Lo! We Are Back On "Forbidden Planet" Again

If you don't approve or like, then THE EXIT DOOR IS THAT WAY!

     I would like to re-use the last, absolutely on-point picture that I posted last night, because it proves an interesting point.  Art!

     As I explained yesteryon, the black-and-white image shows what the filmed insert contained, and the colour one shows how much of the shot is actually a matte painting.  Note that the third staircase is really a painting, and in all the live action shots of people going up and down staircases, you never see more than two at a time; the conceit is that the third 'leg' is hidden from view when it doesn't physically exist.  Thus saving money.  Art!

     This wonderfully evocative shot, shown when Morbius makes his speech to Commander Adams about how, eighteen years ago, 'I dug their graves with my own hands', is only seen for a few seconds and isn't repeated.  Again, cheaper to paint on glass than have a whole crew build a huge miniature set (I know, I know, an oxymoron) that's only in use for a single scene.  One guesses that the larger cross is Morbius's wife's grave.  Art!

     A travelling matte shot; there are two separate scenes being filmed here, one with Anne Francis, whom you will notice never actually touches the tiger, and another entirely separate one with the tiger all on it's ownsome.  It wouldn't do for your Hollywood starlet to become a Hollywood cutlet.  I shall leave you to try and spot the seam where both are merged*.  Art!

     This scene was also stolen - er, shall we say 'homaged' perhaps - in "The Time Tunnel" a good ten years later.  The filmed portion is the walkway here, and those little black dots are Morbius, Adams and Ostrow.  With the outstanding and enigmatic background here, you really get a sense of overwhelming scale.  Art!

     Possibly the most famous matte shot from the whole film, with Morbius, Adams and Ostrow walking through the innards of the Krell machine.  To have constructed a set for this would have bankrupted the studio, quite besides taking forever to build.  What you see is mostly matte, with our three human protagonists being filmed in a relatively small insert.  Art!

     That picture in upper starboard shows how little of the scene is live action.  I found these pictures on a blog I'd not come across before, the link below

http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/

     Which goes into matte work in the cinema with a lot more detail than does Your Humble Scribe.  Conrad not sure if it's still being updated or not.  Worth a check out, and I shall be back there later.  I just checked and yes, it's still a going concern.  I shall drop Pete a line later tonight.  Not sure what the time difference is with New Zealand.

     And with that we are done with "Forbidden Planet", or done until I can think up another excuse to promote it again**.

     Motley!  Don your hazmat suit, since the Sanjak Of Novi Pazar are pleading for help with their Vomit Volcano and we owe them a favour.  I'll co-ordinate from The Mansion and you get in the helicopter.

Conrad - One Of The Angry Old Men

There's a lot of us about.  Whilst others may rant and tant about the ballfoot game, corrupt politicians, pistachio import quotas or when pubs will re-open, Your Humble Scribe has other fish to fry.  CODEWORD SOLUTIONS!

     Really, there is no excuse.  Art!

     Here you go.  Note the absence of any words in Serbo-Croat, any obscure scientific expressions dealing with Magnetic Resonance Imaging, and absolutely nothing to do with the Latin taxonomy of sub-Saharan succulents.  However.  We must now travel the mean streets of codeword solutions, so you'd better neck some sanity-meds before we proceed.

"ERGO": Obviously Latin, which you may be familiar with from that phrase "Cogito ergo sum", which means "The clockwork power ratio".  Or not, I wasn't paying attention, because Latin.  Hang on, my Collins Concise says that it means "Therefore".  Well well.  Art!

Erg.  Travelling dunes.  So you could say that the Erg go.

"HAWSE": No!  Not South Canadian dialect for a 'house'.  Nor a horse.  No, this one will impress you.  It means that area of the bows of a ship where the hawseholes are STOP SNIGGERING AT THE BACK THERE! because anything hawse is to do with bows and arrows anchors.  Art!

A hawsehole.  NO SNIGGERING!

"OYER": This one - THIS ONE - brought me perilously close to a myocardial infarction.  It is part of the phrase "Oyer and terminer", referring to a branch of the judiciary in This Sceptred Isle, which dealt with cases at 'assizes', which were abolished fifty years ago when county courts came in.  WHAT ARE WE EXPERTS IN OBSOLETE LEGAL HISTORY NOW?!

Seemed appropriate somehow

Good Show Sir

I know what you're thinking - no, no, I returned the Prototype Telepathy Helmet to DARPA months ago - and no, this is not Your Humble Scribe holding forth in his typical RAF-inspired banter from the Second Unpleasantness.  No, it is in fact a website, one that Conrad encountered when attempting to track down artwork by Bob Fowke.  They claim to only feature bad sci-fi cover artwork, and one example caught my citric eye.  Art!

     Your Humble Scribe is curious here.  "Nokar The Librarian" is not exactly a name redolent with deeds of derring-go, wielding a sword and shield whilst facing down the bad guys.  And - "Seven-Fingered Fat Girl"?  Her parents were sadists!  Does she only have seven fingers in total? Or seven on both hands? Or seven on only one hand?  How many toes does she have?

Okay, okay, I'm being much too literal.  Thanks for your cautioning look.

Finally -

We only need a short post to hit the Compositional Ton, so I'm not going to do an item on either the Special Escort Group nor Roel castigating the technical staff on "Game Of Thrones", though rest assured both will arrive in the fulness of time.  No, I think we can end here with a brief observation that the helicopter Ingenuity has made it's third aerial trip on Mars, whizzing about up and down Jezero Crater.  Art!

Ingenuity dead centre

    There's going to be more footage later in the month, because all available bandwidth at present is occupied by technical engineering data, which NASA desires with all the intensity of a vampire after virgin's blood.  

     The big result, above all else, is that HELICOPTERS ARE VIABLE ON MARS.  Nobody knew before this week if this was going to be a thing or not, given the technical challenges involved in a rotary-wing vehicle on a planet with lesser gravity and also lesser atmosphere than Earth.  Now we know.

     The next models that get sent out will, of course - obviously! - have to carry air-to-surface missiles.

Because these.

*  Code for "I'm not sure myself"

**  Be warned.  It will happen.