Douglas Trumbull, VFX Whiz For 'Blade Runner', '2001' and Others, Dies At 79 (engadget.com) 17
Douglas Trumbull, the visual effects mastermind behind Blade Runner, Close Encounter of the Third Kind, 2001: A Space Odyssey and numerous others, died on Monday at age 79. His daughter Amy Trumbull announced the news on Facebook, writing that her father's death followed a "two-year battle" with cancer, a brain tumor and stroke. Engadget reports: Trumbull was born on April 8, 1942 in Los Angeles, the son of a mechanical engineer and artist. His father worked on the special effects for films including The Wizard of Oz and Star Wars: A New Hope. The younger Trumbull worked as an illustrator and airbrush artist in Hollywood for many years. His career really took off after he cold-called Stanley Kubrick, a conversation which led to a job working on 2001: A Space Odyssey.
One of his most significant contributions to 2001 was creating the film's Star Gate, a ground-breaking scene where astronaut Dave Bowman hurtles through an illuminated tunnel transcending space and time. In order to meet Kubrick's high aesthetic standards for the shot, Trumbull essentially designed a way to turn the film camera inside-out. Trumbull's ad hoc technique "was completely breaking the concept of what a camera is supposed to do," he said during a lecture at TIFF. Trumbull earned visual effects Oscar nominations for his work on Close Encounters, Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Blade Runner. He also received the President's Award from the American Society of Cinematographers in 1996.
Later in his career, Trumbull voiced distaste over the impact of computers on visual effects, decrying the cheapening and flattening impact of the new era of CGI. [...] He spent the last years of his life working on a new super-immersive film format he dubbed MAGI, which he believed would improve the experience of watching a film in theaters. But Trumbull struggled to draw the interest of today's film industry.
One of his most significant contributions to 2001 was creating the film's Star Gate, a ground-breaking scene where astronaut Dave Bowman hurtles through an illuminated tunnel transcending space and time. In order to meet Kubrick's high aesthetic standards for the shot, Trumbull essentially designed a way to turn the film camera inside-out. Trumbull's ad hoc technique "was completely breaking the concept of what a camera is supposed to do," he said during a lecture at TIFF. Trumbull earned visual effects Oscar nominations for his work on Close Encounters, Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Blade Runner. He also received the President's Award from the American Society of Cinematographers in 1996.
Later in his career, Trumbull voiced distaste over the impact of computers on visual effects, decrying the cheapening and flattening impact of the new era of CGI. [...] He spent the last years of his life working on a new super-immersive film format he dubbed MAGI, which he believed would improve the experience of watching a film in theaters. But Trumbull struggled to draw the interest of today's film industry.
Truly a Legend (Score:5, Interesting)
You almost can't overstate Douglas Trumbull's influence on modern cinematography.
The linked video explains how he got to the MAGI system. I hope we get to see that some day. I just might go back to a theater to see it in action.
Trumbull directed Silent Running (Score:2)
Silent Running was a formative movie for me which I saw on TV around age 10. It helped inspire interests (and some career moves) in better understanding nature/biology/health, technology (especially robotics, AI, space, and biospheres), and society/politics/psychology. Thanks for directing it and bringing together so many idea into a fascinating cinematic whole, Doug!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Book on Silent Running with Trumbull interview (Score:2)
For any other SR fans: "Silent Running (BFI Film Classics)" by Mark Kermode
https://www.amazon.com/Silent-... [amazon.com]
"A visually stunning and heartfelt riposte to the emotional sterility of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, Douglas Trumbull's eco-themed Silent Running (1972) became one of the defining science-fiction films of the seventies. Bruce Dern excels as lonely hero Freeman Lowell, cast adrift in deep space with three robotic 'Drones' who become his 'amazing companions' on a journey 'beyond imagination'. Mark
2001: A Space Odyssey (Score:4)
I know a lot of people who feel 2001: A Space Odyssey is just boring and drags but I'm not one of those people and it's without a doubt a visual masterpiece
Re:2001: A Space Odyssey (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Sadly it's a sign of the times, cerebral doesn't go over well these days but I love it for it's beauty and realism. my parent took me to see it in the theater in 1968 when I was 7 and it was just wondrous, I have it in 4K so I can watch it whenever I want.
Re:2001: A Space Odyssey (Score:4, Interesting)
I had the good fortune to be living in Hawaii when 2001 premiered. Honolulu was one of the cities in the USA where it played during its Cinerama "roadshow" rollout, before going into general release.
Like all of the premiere venues, the Honolulu Cinerama Theatre had a strict advance-purchase, reserved-seat policy for 2001 ticket sales. My seat was in the center of the third row. The curved Cinerama screen extended beyond my peripheral vision on both sides, and the six-channel stereo added to the overwhelming power of the experience, especially during Bowman's journey through the wormhole.
It's a memory I treasure, and an experience I consider myself lucky to have had ...
Re: (Score:3)
Not just because of scale or resolution, but because of the 'captive audience' principle. You see it end-to-end, no distractions, no ability to pause the film, make coffee or suchlike.
That applies to the pacing of all the VFX in the film. Those glacially slow exterior space scenes would never make it into a modern film, uncut. But in 2001, they're 'tableux' that you can take the time to look really carefully at.
Re: (Score:2)
But you had to see it in the original CINERAMA, using
3 70mm projectors and a screen that encompasses all
of your peripheral vision.
Watching 2001 on video is a joke.
Well done Sir (Score:2)
What a pity (Score:5, Interesting)
Did you know he directed the Enterprise fly by scene? What a pity. His vision defined so much of what the future looks like to us.
Trumble did not invent slit scan (Score:5, Informative)
The someone else was Trumble.
Whitney's optical motion graphics technique was also used by Robert Able for the iconic look of flying logos [youtube.com] for television commercials in the 1970s.
blade runner. (Score:2)
The visual world of Blade Runner was just absolutely amazing.
It was such an important part of the feel of the film.
Everytime I watch it I almost feel like I'm seeing it for the first time again.
Re: (Score:2)
Trumbull agreed to work on Blade Runner for Ridley Scott – largely because no spaceships were involved – and left the movie half way through to start work on his second directing project, Brainstorm. A sci-fi thriller about a device that allows people to experience others’ sensations, Brainstorm became notorious as the final role for actor Natalie Wood, who died in mysterious circumstances during the film’s production. Trumbull did manage to complete the film but it fared poorly at the box office on its release in 1983.
source [theguardian.com]
I saw the Showscan demo film. (Score:2)
As an IMAX projectionist (at the time) I saw the Showscan demo at the Chuck E. Cheese test theater in Dallas. ('87, IIRC) There is nothing, literally no cinematic effect or experience before or since, that knocked my socks off like that short film. I was in a room full of IMAX theater folks and the collective gasp at the reveal was louder than the sound effects. We're approaching 40 years later and I can still recall the mind-bending experience of that show. (Chuck E, Cheese was the launch-partner, tho
Re: (Score:2)
One of the earliest SHOWSCAN films was shown in the
British Columbia pavilion at Expo86 in Vancouver. Seeing
this 35 years ago left a mark on me that nothing has
matched since.
That film, along with almost all high-frame-rate demos,
was a travelogue shot from a helicopter. At the speed of
the copter, every scene would have been blurred into
obscurity at 24fps. At 60fps it was beautifully clear.
But does this apply to a scene of people walking around
and talking? Probably not. One thing that 60fps boosters
claim that