CAMELOT Theatrical Special Effects

Hollywood production budgets make me want to yack. No, I'm not jealous; I simply don't believe that Steven Spielberg needed 128 million to make War of the Worlds screenworthy... and here's David Latt with a measly million dollars to prove it. His version of WOTW was actually enjoyable, well-acted and had pretty nifty CG effects too. But what was most amazing was that he did it all for a tiny percentage of what Tom Cruise alone took home for the Spielberg blockbuster.

Does anyone need that much money to make a decent movie? No way, unless they're extremely sloppy, have overpaid actors, no imagination and way-too-complicated CG development equipment and staff. But we're talking Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Paramount Pictures here! They're no dummies at this art, right? Let's take a look.

1. Sets. David Latt did a wonderful job of scouting locations. For example: if you need a ruined building that looks like some Martian war-machines just blew it to shiznit, you can build one for lots of money, do a CG green-screen-scene or do like Latt did: go find a demolition site and get permission to film. It looks great and authentic as hell because that's exactly what it would look like!

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow had no sets at all! The entire thing was green-screened. Total cost? 70 million. Mere peanuts... hahaha!

2. Matte Shots. When one does need a set that doesn't exist, one uses a matte shot in which an imaginary artwork background is blended with a real foreground which contains the actors. It isn't rocket science and it doesn't require a lot of expensive equipment. From what I saw in the background of Latt's studio, it looked like they had a couple of laptops. I wouldn't doubt it.

3. CG Graphics. Keep them to the minimum necessary to maintain suspense but when they do appear, let the audience get a good look at them in action. The Asylum version doesn't try to fight the "tripods can't walk" problem: the Martian machines are given six legs. Problem solved. Do they look like giant bugs? Yes, but scary 60-foot-tall bugs with heat rays. They show up just enough to keep everyone screaming and in one scene, very unexpectedly. It worked for me.

The heat ray victims die the best deaths of any of the four versions extant including Spielberg's who simply vaporized them (but not their clothes... huh?) In Latt's version, the victims are burned to skeletons which crash to the ground as they are running. Hines used skeletons too but his skeletons flopped around writhing on the ground. Skeletons don't flop and writhe so the Pendragon version just looked silly.

The acting was great. The story rewrite was well-done (except that there is no explanation of why the creatures all died; you're expected to know the story.) Finally, this DVD actually had outtakes and deleted scenes! That means that Latt did some editing. There's a trick that Timothy Hines should have learned.

posted by C. J. # 11:20 AM