The Optical Printer
The optical printer was a revolutionary machine for special effects when it first ones came out in the 1920’s, these machines were simple. But Linwood G. Dunn later expanded on this concept in the 1930’s. The optical printer has been in cinema history for over ninety years for its special effects capabilities but with the rise of computers and the problems with the instrument, the optical printer has fallen out of big cinema and now is a tool for the experimental filmmakers. The subjects that will be discussed are the mechanics and workings, the history, and the decline from the use of the optical printer. With the invention of the optical printer visual effects were expanded. Some films that were used with the optical printer were Star Wars, Superman, and King Kong. Sometimes the film goes through the optical printer more then fifty times like with the complex images in Star Wars. The use of the optical printer has expanded through the years but the basic concept of the printer has stayed the same.
The optical printer is essentially taking a picture of multiple layers of frames. It allows filmmakers to re-photograph film with another filmstrip to make the illusion that the two photos were filmed at the same time. It is like layers on the computer, you can layer one object above another and yet they are separate. The optical printer can also create fade-outs, fade-ins, dissolves, slow motion, fast motion, and matte work. It is also used in animations with hand drawn animations blended with live-action or later the optical printer was used with mini-computers to make abstract animation such as Norman McLaren’s animation in 1971 called Synchromy. What the optical printer looks like is one film projector that is mechanically connected to a movie camera with the camera pointed directly at a projector. One lens then runs film through a projector, and is re-photographed. The optical printer has a long history in special effects.
The Optical Printer
Simple Optical printers were being experimented with in the 1920’s but it was Linwood G. Dunn who refined the optical printer and it was a revolutionary invention. Instead of all of the special effects being in-camera effects, Dunn had refined a machine that could combine several images. Before there were other in-camera opticals but they were unreliable with frames not matching up or deteriorating the original negative. With Dunn’s new optical printer it was capable of generating sharper mattes and was able to align them more accurately. It allowed each effect to be processed individually and it allowed less retakes of a scene. This opened the door for new illusions that could be placed in a film. One of the first uses of the optical printer was in King Kong and it allowed filmmakers to make it appear that the actors were in front of the animated monsters. Another film that demonstrated the optical printers capabilities was Orson Welles; Citizen Kane. The achievement of having the deep focus shot or having the foreground, middle ground, and background in sharp focus was the optical printer. Essentially layering all of the film together to create the deep focus. In the 1970’s the optical printer was expanded on the new movie Star Wars. George Lucas bought VistaVision equipment including the Anderson, a Howard Anderson Optical Company from Paramount. The Anderson used 35mm negative horizontally, which is double the size of an upright negative. With the size of the negative Lucas was able to put the film through an optical printer many times without the decrease of the quality of the film. The optical printer is also used for animations. It is used to merge live-action images with hand-drawn animations. Norman McLaren used the optical printer in both his Pas de Deux in 1967 and Synchromy in 1971. He used the step-and-repeat printing on the optical printer. Another example would be Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It merged the toons with the live actors. Presently the optical has fallen out of use because of computer technology because even with it being cheaper then compositing on the computer that is all the optical printer can do compared to the other uses the computer has.
The use of the optical printer has declined because of the rise of computer technology. In the 1980’s filmmaker used minicomputers and optical printers together but at the present no major studio uses it as a special effects medium. The reasons are that everything you can do on the optical printer you can do on the computer. Unlike the computer the optical printer has some faults to it. Each time you put film into the optical printer the quality of the film declines. George Lucas went around that by filming in VistaVision but that is expensive format to film in. Another problem is color correction needed after going through the printer. Finally with computers there are additional effects that can be added to the film and with the computer the change to the film in an instant. But experimental filmmakers who have a small budget still use the optical printer for their small films. But at the time the optical printer was a revolutionary compositing machine for special effects back in its hay day.
In the 1930’s Linwood G. Dunn created a reliable compositing machine that revolutionized the special effects in movies and animations. It allowed transitions between scenes like swiping and dissolve and allowed many strips of film to be composited together. It became extremely popular and continued in use until compositing programs on computers became sophisticated enough to handle large movies. The optical printer is an example of how special effects changes as technology changes.
