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Old Posted Apr 26, 2013, 6:14 PM
tovangar2 tovangar2 is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2012
Location: West Los Angeles
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MichaelRyerson View Post
Yes, I vote rear-projection. I've always thought, even as a kid, this was a relatively well done (for the time) rear-projection shot. I think the counting room, the stairs and the truck loading area are a fairly high (again, for the time) quality set. The wall finishes, the flooring and especially the lighting seem like a set to me. You mention the apparent lack of a drain on the parking area or ramp, this has also struck me as even in Los Angeles we get the occasional downpour, imagine that ramp feeding rain water into that automatic door and parking area. I have another Criss Cross anomaly that I'll post in a while. The kind of thing that once you've seen it, it pretty much will catch your eye every time you see the movie. By the way, did you notice Kenneth Patterson? He plays Dana Wynter's father in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Thank you so much MR for taking a look at that. Re the set, there's a lot of money on the screen: the ceiling fixtures (both in the counting room and on the landing), the fact that there's ceilings at all, the decorative screen, the solidity and width of the staircase, the handrail, the flooring, the window, etc.. The two automatic doors seem a bit of a stretch though. The sound isn't right either, there's zero background noise as there would be in a real building. The truck's doors slamming and the engine starting up don't boom as I think they should. The one thing I forgot to put in the post was that the shadow on the south side of the ramp does not appear through the open door:



That alone should have convinced me that this was done in post. Still, the smoothness of the truck leaving the garage and proceeding up the ramp is extremely impressive. That's what kept me guessing and sometimes had me convinced this was all real. Also, the painfully-obvious back-projection in the very next scene (through the truck's windows as they head to the refinery) makes the Pacific Mutual garage scene seem real by comparison. And I'm still a little confused as to why they went to all this effort. It could have been done much more cheaply (as some other scenes in the film are).

I did notice Kenneth Patterson and named him in the post. He does a nice turn as Pepe Bailey. He worked until 1989, the year before his death, often uncredited, as in Criss Cross.

Thanks again. I'm looking forward to your Criss Cross post.
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