Superman – 1978 (WINNER)
This movie had some really good and innovative special effects. They made great use of new technologies and masterfully executed photography and camera angles to create the convincing illusion of the man in the red cape flying through the air. They used rotoscoping and other techniques to hide all the wires holding him up. They gave the world things they had never seen before and it was really amazing.
Let’s take a look at a few of those technical achievements that really stood out. They used blue-screens to put Superman in the sky and then painted out the wires on every frame. They also used wide angles in which the wires were imperceptible, and then used unique camera angles and zoom lenses to give the appearance of motion. I’ve always loved the scene where Superman saves Lois Lane from falling to her death from the top of a skyscraper. It was all very cleverly done!
And then they used a technique called front projection. Wikipedia does a great job of explaining how it was done. “In front projection, the background image is projected onto both the performer and a highly reflective background screen, with the result that the projected image is bounced off the screen and into the lens of a camera. This is achieved by having a screen made of a retroreflective material. The actor performs in front of the reflective screen with a movie camera pointing straight at them. Just in front of the camera is a two-way mirror angled at forty-five degrees. At ninety degrees to the camera is a projector which projects an image of the background onto the mirror, which reflects the image onto the performer and the reflective screen. The image is too faint to appear on the actor but shows up clearly on the screen. Thus, the actor becomes his own matte. The combined image is transmitted through the mirror and recorded by the camera.”
The beginning of the movie, which showed Superman’s origin on Krypton, had a really cool look. The clothes worn by the Kryptonians were made out of the same highly reflective material used for the front projection effect, giving their attire a very unique and alien look. And the destruction of the planet was awesome with great lighting effects, people falling in odd directions, and lots of flashy explosions.
And then there was the film’s climax which made use of some great scale models. An earthquake along the San Andreas Fault caused the destruction of the hoover dam, a major flood, and a landslide that buried Lois Lane alive. Add to that some stunts like a school bus almost toppling off a bridge, and you have some really exciting effects. And Superman had to fly into the molten mantle of the planet in an attempt to minimize the effects of the catastrophe caused by Lex Luthor. And as Superman flew so fast, he went back in time, all the destruction was played in reverse, putting everything back in order.
Again, this was a time when technology was really starting to elevate to a new level, giving audiences visuals that they had never seen before. It was really an exciting time for movies and their special effects!