What the heck is a Slant Focus Lens? Who is RenderMan? And why are they being honored by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences this year?
The Scientific & Technical awards have already been announced and will be handed out tomorrow at a special banquet at the Century Plaza Hotel. This year's winners include achievements that are familiar to the hoi polloi--such as morphing--and others that are, and most likely will remain, obscure to the general public, like the Dolby Labs Container (a stereo five-band audio processor).
But all these developments are of significance to anyone who watches movies--and even more so to those who make them.
Iain Neil, who is being honored with Kaz Fudano for the Panavison Slant Focus Lens (Neil is among the winners for Panavision's 65 synch sound camera) doesn't claim he invented the lens. "We re-engineered the product," says Neil. And made it accessible for common use in the industry.
Briefly, the Slant Focus Lens allows the focus plane to be tipped and rotated. So what, you say? Well, that allows objects both near and far to be simultaneously in focus. And it adjusts itself during filming, so the action doesn't have to be interrupted.
Like most such innovations, it will be taken for granted by audiences. And by filmmakers, too, after a suitable period of gratitude. But such attitudes typify the advancements in the scientific and technical areas of the industry.
And as for RenderMan--no, it's not the name of a super hero, at least not in the conventional sense. It's a piece of software that produces images digitally from computer descriptions and can then be incorporated into a film scene.
Ed Catmull, one of the developers of the program (Loren Carpenter, Rob Cook, Tom Porter, Pat Hanrahan, Tony Apodaca and Darwyn Peachey are the others), explained for the computer illiterate that RenderMan helps computer graphics look more realistic. Computer graphics are perfect--live-action motion is not. There is slight blur in the movement of real objects. And RenderMan incorporates the blur. So when the computer-generated image is blended into a film, it is as fluid and life-like as anything else.
You may not have noticed--and you weren't supposed to--but you've already seen RenderMan at work in "Batman Returns." Some of those penguins weren't real, they were graphics that only looked real. RenderMan will provide an assist to the computer-generated creatures in this summer's "Jurassic Park."
Catmull makes it all sound so simple. He's excited that the Academy is recognizing computer software as an important component of the expanding sci-tech area. But he's no more excited than Ken Bates, who designed and developed the Bates Decelerator System, which the Academy is recognizing this year. "It's a big deal for stunt men," says Bates.
He explained that this is the first time the Academyhas recognized a contribution from this area (except for a lifetime achievement award to stunter par excellence Yakima Canutt).
The Bates Decelerator is something to which anyone who's ever bunji-jumped may relate. It was used in "Another 48 Hours," in "Die Hard II" and in "Marked For Death." And it enables one to be Superman--to jump off a building and hit the ground running.
A cord is attached to a leg harness that distributes the weight load through a body. This in turn is attached to a deceleration system. If one jumps from a 10-story building, one will free fall for the first nine stories. Then the decelerator pneumatically slows the rate of fall, so perfectly that one can land on one's feet--which Bates actually did once.
The advantage is that it eliminates the need for an air bag and consequently allows the fall to be shot from virtually every angle imaginable.
Morphing has become such a popular term and is so widely used in television commercials these days that it's a bit of a surprise that the Academy hasn't already seen fit to honor this digital computer graphic system for the creation of metamorphosis and transformation effects.
This year Tom Brigham, the original conceiver and pioneer of the MORF system, and Douglas Smythe and the computer graphics department of Industrial Light and Magic will be cited for their contributions.
Smythe and the ILM group used the process rather seamlessly in "Willow" but it wasn't until "Terminator 2" that the brouha-ha began, he says. Both men see the applications of the MORF system more as a tool than as an in-your-face special effects device. "Audiences have seen it before," says Smythe.
ILM's Doug Kaye points out that morphing has applications that can be applied to post-production work. "Morphing and other digital compositing will make post-production go so much faster," he says.
Both RenderMan and morphing bring the Academy up to speed on the use of computers, software and computer graphics, validating them as an essential filmmaking tool.
Neil mentions that his Slant Focus Lens can be used on Panavision's System 65 Studio Sync Sound Reflex Camera System, for which he, Al Mayer, George Kraemer, Hans Spirawski, Bill Eslick and Don Earl are all being given a scientific and engineering award. That includes the camera, lenses and accessories that make using a 65mm camera almost interchangeable with a 35mm camera--it is more compact, its lenses are faster and more flexible than previous 65mm equipment.
The Academy also is honoring the Cp-65 Showscan Camera System that was conceived by Douglas Trumbull (Geoffrey H. Williamson, Robert D. Auguste and Edmund M. DiGiulio also are being cited). Arriflex's 765 Camera, also for 65mm motion picture photography (Otto Blaschek and the engineering department of ARRI Austria are the recipients) complete the 65mm trio of winners.
Other awards are less "sexy" but also important in the advancement of the art of motion pictures. The Dolby Labs Container allows for creative use of an analog sound track, increasing its dynamic range with a minimum of distortion. Claus Weidemann and Robert Orban are being honored for the design and Dolby Laboratories for the development of the Container. Ira Tiffen of the Tiffen Manufacturing Corporation is being cited for the Ultra Contrast Filter Series, which provide a grade range of contrast-reduction photographic filters.
Robert R. Burton of Audio Rents Inc. is receiving a technical achievement award for his Model S-27-4-Band Splitter/Combiner, which provides a method of processing sound tracks by letting the mixer work on separate bands without affecting the rest of the soundtrack.
Chadwell O'Connor of the O'Connor Engineering Laboratories is being honored with an Oscar statue for the concept and engineering of the fluid-damped camera-head for motion picture photography.
O'Connor conceived and produced the first fluid camera-head, which afforded cameramen the opportunity to pan and tilt with smoothness. Further adjustments made it possible to apply the proper drag to prevent sudden starts.
And a Gordon E. Sawyer Award, also an Oscar statue, is being presented to Erich Kaestner for Lifetime Achievement for his 44 years of service to Panavision.
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