Tobruk – 1967
I’m certainly glad this movie didn’t win the Oscar for Best Special Effects. Granted they were better than the effects for Doctor Dolittle, the film that did win, but they were still pretty awful. It must have been a really slow year for superior visual effects achievements. There were better blue-screening effects from movies in the early 40s than there were in this 1967 war film!
One of the tell-tale signs of bad blue-screening is the black outline that surrounds the actors in the fore-ground. This movie had a lot of them. It is a clear visual separation that is hard to miss. The actors didn’t look like they belonged to their surroundings. Usually I’m able to get past this kind of flaw, but here, it was way too obvious, so much so that I was taken out of the story, distracted by the effect.
Another sign of poor blue-screening is the difference in picture quality between the fore-ground and the background. There were times when it appeared as though they were using inferior cameras to film the landscapes. They were very grainy while the images of the actors were clear and sharp. I understand that the background needs to be slightly out of focus, but this was ridiculous.
Another sign of poor compositing is inconsistent lighting. There were a few shots in which actors were running around amidst fire and explosions. Sometimes the actors were surrounded by glowing white halos, as if they were lit from behind by bright white stage lights. And sometimes the flames in the various layers of compositing were different colors, while in other shots, they were all a pretty uniform color. Those shots just looked terribly fake.
But that’s not to say all the effects were bad. The wide shots of the gasoline fires in the film’s climax were really cool. And the effects artist really knew how to blow things up. Whether the explosions were caused by machinegun fire, detonating land-mines, or igniting fuel tanks, they were done pretty well. There were several great shots of stunt men being set on fire and thrashing about.
And finally, I have to mention one other thing that distracted me from what was actually a great story. I almost hesitate to mention this issue because I don’t know if it was the fault of the special effects artists or the set designers. There were several sets used in the film that looked way too much like sets, something you might see in a stage production. You know something has to be wrong when the sets themselves look fake.
I just don’t understand why the academy couldn’t come up with any more worthy visual effects nominations than Tobruk and Doctor Dolittle. I can only guess that 1967 must have been a slow year for the category.