myDylarama

The Fisherman and the Banker: aesthetically powerful and ethically chilling

Judy Harris — 2024-10-14T11:15:13Z

It's odd that, given the current state of things, online lists of ‘films that make you cry' rarely include political documentaries. Maybe to be seen crying at such a film would betray a shameful naivete (‘didn't they know the World Bank is evil? What a chump!') or maybe people don't watch these films to cry but to be inspired or relieved that someone else, somewhere else is fighting for justice (even if they don't win). Probably, in 2024, English-speaking audiences watching films about Indian fishers taking the International Finance Corporation (IFC) to court over the environmental impact of a coal-fired power plant are more likely to feel jaded than heartbroken.

Not all ‘David vs Goliath' films are moving, some are plain didactic, but The Fisherman and the Banker is aesthetically powerful as well as ethically chilling. While the convergence of poetics and politics isn't always a good thing, when they come together here the long shots of the sea and the shore, filmed from a distance, give us a chance to take in the horrible details. The film would have been even more evocative with more of these moments but productivity reigns supreme in filmmaking as well as power plants and the story is (too) quickly resumed.

The Wagher community's battle ultimately lost on appeal in 2022 but their struggle resulted in the legal precedent that international organisations could be sued in U.S. federal courts, which is a significant victory. Despite their failure to win and the fact that we all know how bad the World Bank and how much we already know about the horrific impact of industrialisation on rural communities and the environment, films that direct our attention to specific battles, places and people enlarge our sense of the world and make our awareness less theoretical and more real. So, even if you don't cry, this film will make you feel something, even if it's something you already know.

Talking Spectacles - Airplane!, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Bram Stoker's Dracula

Judy Harris — 2024-04-23T06:57:58Z

I spoke to film critic and stand up comedian Nick Bartlett about the Karl Strauss technique in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the mirror gag in Airplane! and the old school effects used to create the beautifully macabre world of Bram Stoker's Dracula.

1. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)

I love the transformation scenes in An American Werewolf in London and The Howling but this scene beats even those. It's a POV shot where we see Dr. Jekyll (Fredric March) transform into Mr Hyde. They put red makeup on him and lit him using rotating red and green filters which changed the contours of his face - it's a technique invented by the cinematographer Karl Strauss. It's an optical illusion, using the camera as you would in a magic trick. It's truly unnerving because this trick, combined with his performance, means he really looks like he's transforming. Sh! The Octopus also used this technique and does it even more dramatically and creepily but this is a better film overall.

2. Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)
I tried to choose just one scene but it's the effects throughout the whole film that combine to create an eerie, uncanny world. It's full of time lapses, reverse motion, rear projection, painted mattes and forced perspectives. It has a really odd atmosphere, and the artifice is part of that. There are shadows that move independently, a coachman's arm that appears creepily long and all the vampires move with an awkward, unnatural gait. Coppola used techniques from the early 1900s and hardly any CGI at all. In the same way that today the strength of many silent films is how they look rather than the acting, here the performances aren't great (save Hopkins and Oldman) but visually it's stunning.

3. Airplane! (1980)
This is a small but brilliant moment. Robert Stack's character is adjusting his uniform in front of a mirror and suddenly he steps out of the mirror and walks toward the camera. It's a Marx brothers Duck Soup moment with the false mirror – a moment of wait, what? Some other scenes have a double in the foreground but not here. It's such a throwaway joke and I just love that. They had to go to the effort of creating another set just for this joke. If you read up about Airplane! apparently Robert Stack was one of the guys who didn't get what the film was trying to do, he just played it straight and that adds to the silliness of him doing this surreal gag. Edgar Wright is someone who is really good at visual jokes like the Texas switch etc and I wish more people did this. I love prosthetics but that can age a film and so can CGI. But these visual in-camera tricks are timeless, they don't date.

Talking Spectacles - Matt Houlihan

Judy Harris — 2024-03-03T19:26:31Z

In the first instalment of Talking Spectacles I spoke to Matt Houlihan from The Garden Cinema about the drooling aliens of Alien, Event Horizon's gothic spaceships and the wonderfully absurd animatronics of The Thing.

Alien - This is essentially a haunted house film since it's set in an enclosed space where people are faced with a malign presence. My favourite scene is where Harry Dean Stanton sees the alien for the first time. The way it's introduced is so clever, you don't see it enter fully, you just see its head. There's a real economy to it. So much of the let-down of horror films happens when you see too much, you can see it's a guy in a rubber suit, but here the way it's lit and shot means your imagination has to make up for a lack of visual information. It's a beautiful yet terrifying sight as it comes down, it glistens like it's covered in KY jelly, drooling and so organic - very visceral. And this glistening being is juxtaposed with the grubby, working-class environment where workers are engaged in industrial disputes. It's a gothic, cavernous, dirty space and within it is a real H.R. Giger biomechanical, sexual creature. The way it looks encapsulates the themes the film touches on - the terrors of motherhood, birth and sexual violence. I watched it when I was way too young – I think I was 8 but maybe younger. You can forget how revolutionary it is.

Event Horizon – This is another haunted house film, set on a possessed ship which is like a gothic cathedral. The ship itself is the antagonist, it has an alien feel to it, but it also radiates cold, hard indifference. Rather than only using vxf they combined them with 30 miniatures of different scales and that materiality is what brings it to life. It's such a leap of imagination to be in that place that you need a sense of the hardware. One of the models was incredibly detailed and 30 metres long, but it looks like it goes on for miles. You can see the mastery of the craftsmanship and the direction – the use of shadow and how it's shot creates a powerful, haunted atmosphere. And, as in all these examples, it's how the visual effects work with the sound effects and the score work to create a brutal, ghostly environment. It's like the Marie Celeste ghost story of a ship that disappears and comes back.

The Thing – This is a great film with incredible animatronics that look organic. It's another haunted house film where people are being stalked by something they can't see. What I really like is its absurdity, it's so extreme and comical at times. In the famous defibrillation scene the shape-shifting Thing is found to be a giant mouth within a character's chest that bites the Dr's arms off and then transforms into a spindly, spidery creature scuttling around. It's so bizarre but believable in the context of the film and there's a marvellous level of detail. It all works together including the script – when it scurries across the room in its new form someone says ‘you've gotta be fucking kidding' and it breaks the tension and horror so delightfully, it's a real cherry on top. The film is really smart in the way it straddles the line between horror and comedy because there is inherent comedy in the extremity of it.

Celebrating World VFX Day - Chris Lumb

Judy Harris — 2023-12-08T18:59:25Z

In our final instalment for World VFX day we spoke to comedian and old school effects fan Chris Lumb about the library ghost from Ghostbusters and the face melting scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Ghostbusters - library ghost (Ivan Reitman, 1984)
EEG
When I about 7yrs old I saw Ghostbusters at the cinema with my brother and was totally blown away by this jump scare at the start, screaming at me. It's terrifying! I love the way she shushes them first and then instantly changes, she bursts out into the screen. It's totally unexpected that this little old lady turns into this demon. Blending comedy with the frights isn't easy to do but all the gags work in this film. I love old school effects because there's a certain grittiness to them and you have to be more imaginative with them. It strengthens what you're doing because it impacts how you shoot things, it makes you more innovative in every way. You can watch a version with no sfx on the 4k blu-ray, it's fascinating to see the process of how they put it together.

Raiders of the Lost Ark – opening the ark (Dir. Steven Spielberg, 1981)
ILM
I'm a big 80s film fan especially because of how they merged everything together, the practical and the digital. I love the bit where the three men's faces come off. You've got the exploding one in the middle, the one whose face gets sucked in and the one whose face just melts off. This wasn't funny when I first saw it, I had to fast forward this bit, I just couldn't stomach it. I watched the behind the scenes footage and the guy whose face melts off had layers and layers of clay and paint and all that on him so it would look gruesome. The reason why the first one explodes with a wall of flame in front him is to soften the impact of the explosion because it was too violent.

Chris's show Prequel, Sequel, Requel where comedians have to pitch a sequel, a prequel and a requel in one minute can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeivwdqP5FM

World VFX day is an annual day of recognition in celebration of the vfx industry (and the often invisible labour of vfx workers) started by a collective of visual effects studios. Anyone in or outside the industry are encouraged to take part. Sign up to the ‘World VFX Day' newsletter for the latest news and events: https://mailchi.mp/651b2a6c2ad9/world-vfx-day

Thanks to everyone who took part in our World VFX day series, it's been really fun!

Celebrating World VFX Day - Sam Hall, ILM

Judy Harris — 2023-12-08T13:04:21Z

Happy World VFX Day! We spoke with Sam Hall, actor and Senior Research and Development Engineer at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) about the T-Rex scene in Jurassic Park, Pixar's anthropomorphic Blue Umbrella and rendering black holes in Interstellar.

Jurassic Park - T-Rex reveal (Dir. Steven Spielberg, 1993)
ILM and Stan Winston Studios

The cool thing about this scene is that less is more. The T-Rex has been teased throughout the film so they've built the tension leading up to the full reveal of this giant monster. Now, this is the early 90s and VFX was in its infancy so they're technically quite limited with what they can do and there's a real danger of it looking fake, but they lit it in a way that is shiny and specularly with lots of edge lighting, so it holds up even now. They worked within their limitations and lit it in way that works with the technology that they had. It's also a good scene in terms of its composition, you get a sense of the T-Rex's scale, weight and bulk. As a kid this was one of my favourite films and it was definitely very thrilling and scary.

The Blue Umbrella (Dir. Saschka Unseld, 2013)
Pixar

This is my favourite Pixar short because it illustrates Pixar's ethos of anthropomorphism. It opens on an urban street with lots of inanimate objects and they very subtly bring emotion to gutters and road signs by partially animating them. It's very cute and clever. They really can bring character, heart and emotion to anything and make you deeply care about pair of umbrellas in just 6 minutes.

Interstellar - into the black hole (Dir. Christopher Nolan, 2014)
DNEG

This is a cool film technically. In this scene the main characters are pulled into a black hole and DNEG (the VFX company) worked with astrophysicist Professor Kip Thorne to accurately render how light would behave as it approaches a black hole. They made a rendering engine based on his advice (as in, they wrote software that models how the light would be affected by the gravitational pull). There's also something called an accretion disc which is created when gas and dust from other objects get pulled into the black hole and that was all physically recreated by using these equations. I think it took about 100 hours per frame to render. At first when they looked at the images they thought they looked totally wrong but then Professor Thorne confirmed that's exactly how it would look. As well as being technically brilliant the scene makes you face how small we are. It really throws you off and puts you in an unknown place.

World VFX Day - Tom Salinsky

Judy Harris — 2023-12-08T07:42:38Z

Happy World VFX Day! There's nothing more special than special effects.

Whether digital or practical, special effects are created by a highly skilled, specialised labour force and have created some of cinema's most captivating images (that's why we insist on calling them SPECIAL effects). In support of the effects industry and to celebrate the first World VFX day we spoke with a random collection of people who work in and/or love sfx and asked them to share some of their favourite sequences.

Writer and podcaster Tom Salinsky spoke with us about puppet plant life in Little Shop of Horrors, stepping into the Technicolour world of Oz in The Wizard of Oz and the massive hole in Goldie Hawn's torso in Death Becomes Her.

Little Shop of Horrors - Audrey II grows in its coffee can (Dir. Frank Oz, 1986)
Associates & Ferren

This film takes place in a heightened reality. You have to believe not just that people burst into song but that there's a plant that lives on blood. This is a turning point in the plot where Rick Moranis's character starts wondering what kind of plant this is. It's a crucial moment and they take their time over it. She snaps at him and he begins to figure her out – it's the first time that Audrey II becomes a character. She starts growing and it looks like she physically swells. To get the effect they took a larger puppet from a following scene which was twice the size and slid it toward the camera. This effect is so easy and so brilliant. Some people don't want to know how this kind of magic is done, but it never spoils my enjoyment. Nothing diminishes how joyful this film is for me, no matter how much I know about how it was made.

The Wizard Of Oz – Dorothy enters Oz (Dir. Victor Fleming, 1939)

This scene is also a turning point in the film and the execution is simpler than you might imagine. The first 20 minutes or so are set in the sepia world of Kansas and then there's all the tornado craziness and then it all stops. Dorothy has been living in this drab world dreaming of travelling over the rainbow and here she enters the most colourful world you can imagine. Making that transition with a cut would have been unsatisfying. Instead, they filmed the scene with a colour camera, painted the inside of the house grey and had a stand in for Judy Garland wearing a grey dress. The stand in opens the door and then, seamlessly, Judy Garland in her blue and white dress walks through it and we move with her out into the Technicolour world. As a technique it's akin to the cowboy switch where a stunt actor ducks out of sight and the real actor pops up in their place. What's most powerful with special effects is when they serve the plot, they're a magic trick in service of the story and that's what happens here.

Death Becomes Her – Goldie Hawn gets out of the pool (Dir. Robert Zemeckis, 1992)
ILM

The reason I picked the pool scene rather than Meryl Streep's backwards head is that you can see how hard the head effect is to pull off, but Goldie Hawn's hole in her torso has an ease to it despite being so technically difficult. They created a CG hole which was mapped onto her and then a dummy torso for the water to pour out of and stitched it all together seamlessly which is really impressive given the technology was so new – this is 1992 when digital effects were being used in a naturalistic way for the first time. Some effects are just spectacles to show off the technology – they're divorced from the plot but here the story, effects and the comedy all come together. This is a black comedy and the tone is crucial – you need to believe in their suffering but still find it funny. Her injury had to have a cartoonish element but it also needed to be an extreme injury and a round hole in the stomach is perfect – it's extreme enough but not too gory. They included shots of her body that they didn't need to, but it's not gratuitous, it adds the to the scene by continually reminding you she has suffered what should be a fatal injury, but which mysteriously isn't.

Tom Salinsky co-hosts the film podcast Best Pick, find episodes and more here https://bestpickpod.com

Celebrating SFX - Eddie French

Judy Harris — 2023-12-07T14:01:39Z

In our third post in the run up to World VFX day tomorrow we're talking about sfx legends Ray Harryhausen and Eugen Schüfftan, as well as the sparing use of CGI in Mad Max: Fury Road with non-binary comedian, film nerd and podcaster Eddie French!

Jason and The Argonauts – Talos scene (Dir. Don Chaffey, 1963)
Ray Harryhausen
Of course I love all of Harryhausen's stuff. I would've looked like the ultimate hipster if I'd chosen The Valley of Gwangi, though that is also excellent (I mean it's dinosaurs and cowboys!). But this scene with Talos is so visceral. Harryhausen is just so good! The scale of the status of Talos is astonishing - he moves slowly and yes you can run away but he can just take one massive stride and grab you. When they defeat him the human actors are interacting with a physical model but it blends so well, the leg and foot are identical to the tiny stop motion figure. It's nigh on seamless even in high definition! In The Valley of Gwangi there are three cowboys played by real actors who lassoo a stop motion dinosaur. It's that bringing together of models and humans that Harryahusen did so beautifully, he could blend all these different elements into the same world. The harpes scene is also great and it has Patrick Troughten in it, who is the second Dr.

Mad Max: Fury Road (Dir, George Miller, 2015)
Iloura
This film is just one big car chase - it feels like a road runner cartoon, it's relentless. Everything is done practically and all of the CG is in the background. They've got all these stunt people swinging around on bamboo style poles etc but the background is this waste land done with CG and it reminded me of The Lord of the Rings films – the reason they (mostly) look really good is that everything is real and they just sprinkle CG over the top like fairy dust. It still holds up the way other films made just with green screen don't. They use CG sparingly and it blends so much more easily – not like when actors are talking to a tennis ball on a stick. The palette of the film is incredible. Most of the CG is used to illuminate bits of lore like the sandstorms and poisonous, murky, foggy places – it's using CG for wordless world-building. Almost everything in the foreground is real and then the background is CG.

Metropolis – flooding scene (Dir. Fritz Lang, 1927)
Eugen Schüfftan
I'm assuming that health and safety was more lax back then and that's why they could get away with drenching hundreds of children in water in this disaster effect scene (what Katharina Loew calls a naturalistic spectacular effect). The whole of Metropolis is enormous in scale and the destruction is incredible. This scene is very anxiety producing. Even though you assume that there probably won't be hundreds of drowned children at the end, you still feel tense and afraid. The place never looks like someone is pushing a tonka truck around – this isn't a Hot Wheels set, it feels massive and convincing. A special effect can live or die depending on how it's edited and this film really gets it right. This flood scene is one of the only times you see something natural in the film – it's for the pleasure of the elite in their luxurious garden or with this flood. They've tried to harness nature in order to exploit it and, as we know, that is what will kill your children. We didn't listen!

You can find out more about Eddie French, including their NOFX podcast here: http://www.eddiethefrench.com

Celebrating SFX - Abdel Belabbes

Judy Harris — 2023-12-06T11:06:39Z

In the second instalment of our VFX series we're exploring the merging of CGI and stop motion in Robocop 2, Guillermo del Toro's penchant for insectoids as evidenced in Pacific Rim and the mercurial appendages of Dr Octopus in Spiderman 2, all selected by sfx fan Abdel Belabbes.

Robocop 2 (Dir. Ivin Kershner, 1990)
Phil Tippett

One of the coolest things in VFX is when different techniques are married together and this scene has a great transition from live action to stop motion which manages to maintain its momentum. It happens as Robocop is getting ready to attack his enemy Cain - we see him in wide shot preparing to jump onto him and when the jump happens it transitions to a stop motion figure of Robocop on his back, but the momentum is sustained as the two figures start tussling together. Also, the jitteriness of the stop motion isn't off-putting because it fits with our image of how mechanical figures move. Phil Tippett perfected the craft of stop motion. Every time you think of stop motion in film you think of him and this scene shows how great he is.

Pacific Rim (Dir. Guillermo del Toro, 2013)

Industrial Light & Magic (ILM)
This is a silly movie but I love it. This entire suit up sequence is brilliant as it's another marriage of practical effects and GGI that sells a larger effect. This scene also shows the role that production design has in helping stage larger visual effects sequences. Del Toro is a master of production design; his films have an earthy fairytale quality, an industrial chic. I love a good set up and here the two pilots are getting suited up to pilot a massive robot. The best shot is where there is a spine attachment that the riggers attach to the pilots with a wriggling insectoid part which presumably attaches to their spines. Del Toro has an affinity for anthropods and insect parts and even in this moment of manmade, high-tech wizardry you find a centipede kind of creature. It adds to the creepy fairytale aspect and sells the marriage between organic and mechanical – a literal bridging between the machine and the human.

Spiderman 2 (Dir. Sam Raimi, 2004)

I was wary of choosing this film because we're saturated with superhero movies and Marvel movies. The Marvel films get a lot of flack for overworking visual effects houses and they often end up with inferior results, but this film shows what happens when you prioritise effects. I think this film has some references to Raimi's horror roots, specifically The Evil Dead. This sequence is of Dr Octopus who, in the first half of the film has been presented as a sincere father figure, but this scene changes that as he becomes a Universal style monster. It's a horrific sequence. I think that a lot of CGI undersells the threat of a villain, but this scene sets up Dr Octopus as absolutely formidable! His arms are supposed to be mercurial and snake like yet also heavy and mechanical and it works. The animal like noises add to it too with the roaring and hissing. The arms become characters as well as appendages. The editing works great to bring together puppetry, animation and POV shots. It feels like it's all happening in the same space.

Thanks to 'cinema Gremlin' Abdel Belabbes for speaking with me about VFX. May he never get wet or eat anything after midnight.

Celebrating SFX - Eddy Durnan

Judy Harris — 2023-12-05T12:52:03Z

There's nothing more special than special effects!

Whether digital or practical, special effects are created by a highly skilled, specialised labour force and have created some of cinema's most captivating images (that's why we insist on calling them SPECIAL effects). In support of the effects industry and to celebrate World VFX Day on Dec 8th we spoke with a random collection of people who work in and/or love sfx and asked them to share some of their favourite sequences, starting with visual effects insider Eddy Durnan.

NB: Eddy hasn't seen a film made before 1989.

1) Star Wars: The Last Jedi - The Holdo Manoeuvre (Dir. Rian Johnson, 2017)
Industrial Light & Magic (ILM)

This is a stunning, largely silent scene which is very sad but incredibly beautiful. It's pretty monochromatic, there's not much colour and there's a discrepancy between the rapid motion of light across the screen and the slow motion of the debris. It's low key yet breathtaking. The effects supervisor said he wanted the collision to cut “like a hot knife through butter”. That's what's fascinating about vfx, someone can come up with a concept like that and a team of people can make it happen. It's bittersweet because while Vice - Admiral Holdo dies, her death gives us this spectacular scene. I guess that's all that matters really.

2) Terminator 2: Judgement Day – Fire and Ice Scene (Dir. James Cameron, 1991)

Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), Stan Winston Studio, Fantasy II Film Effects, and 4-Ward Productions.
Additional effects from Pacific Data Images and Video Images.

I love this scene because of how brilliantly the practical and digital effects are integrated. It's effortless but you can still feel that combination of something virtual and something tangible, though it's hard to pinpoint how and where that happens. It's a spectacle in itself but also serves a purpose in the story and I like it when visual effects and plot support each other. I love the gradual metamorphosis of the freezing sequence but the best bit is when the liquid metal starts to take form, it looks incredible, especially the reflections of the fire. Yet the camera work and the composition of the shot mean the spectacle is completely integrated into the scene.

3) Life (Dir. Daniel Espinosa, 2017)

DNEG, Industrial Light & Magic, NVIZIBLE, One of Us, Outpost VFX and Atomic Fiction

This is a hopeful, wonderous opening to what becomes quite a scary film. It's an immersive scene which gives a visceral feeling of weightlessness and serenity. The camera movement is amazing, it floats you through the space station seamlessly even though it's actually 17 takes stitched together. At one point you can see earth through the space station window and it just looks so beautiful. It connects the audience to what the characters must be feeling and places you within the film but it also gives you such a strong sense of wonder and awe in a timeless, transcendental way.

Thanks to Eddy Durnan for taking time out of his lunch hour to talk to us. We're posting conversations about sfx all week in the run up to World VFX Day Dec 8th.

Painted Skies - A Celebration Of Fake Backgrounds

Judy Harris — 2023-11-13T14:33:34Z

As a child, Bruno Savill de Jong was captivated by the charming fakery of films such as The Wizard of Oz, Batman and Singin' in the Rain. Now, a student at the National Film and Television School, he is curating the Painted Skies film season at the Cinema Museum in London. Judy Harris spoke with him about film's relationship to artifice, Mario Bava and the inventiveness of old school special effects.

You describe Painted Skies as a season celebrating ‘fake' backgrounds – what interests you about film's relationship to artifice and fakery?

Today, almost all cinematic images are fake. Even directors like David Fincher, who you don't associate with vfx-heavy films, use tons of digital touch-ups and CGI wizardry, which I recognise is its own artistry. The difference in the films I'm screening is that the artifice is deliberate and pushed to the forefront. Of course, some people argue that cinema is about the truth and don't want it to engage in this kind of fakery. Now, I love neo-realism as much as the next person, but it's frustrating when people think that social dramas and neo-realism are necessarily the most important kind of films to make. What I love about film is how versatile it is - film can be anything, we shouldn't think of live action or realism as the only thing that film can do.

When films are older e.g. The Wizard of Oz, this kind of artifice is more readily accepted, especially if it's placed in a childlike, fantasy world. Even The Cabinet of Dr Caligari is set in a kind of fairy tale storybook world and that allows for more explicit non-truthfulness in its style. For me, seeing the strings in these films is charming. I like to see how a film is made. I love the creativity and inventiveness on display in the work of filmmakers such as Zeman and Méliès. It was so laborious to make films back then, yet they still found a way to be so playful with it.

What is the difference between a matte painting and a painted background?

A painted backdrop is literally just a background that is painted and filmed. A matte painting is a process of combining a painted image with a live-action one, the 'matte' being the flat image which is composited with the other elements.

Are matte paintings used around the world?

There are some amazing resources out there that have taught me a lot about the history of matte paintings, but most of what I found focuses on the U.S. and Britain. However, there are Japanese films that use matte paintings, such as Kwaidan or Female Prisoner #701, which have other-worldly painted skies. I also love the films of Obayashi, and his film House is very interesting in this sense because Obayashi was a pioneer of blue screen and green screen technology, as well as matte paintings and painted backdrops. There's a great scene where a woman's head is moving around the screen cut off from her body. His later films are experimental green screen films. There's one where the actors are in front of a village, but you get the sense it may fall down any moment. There are certainly many other examples from around the world that I don't know about yet.

What are some of your favourite films with matte paintings?

I'll give just two of my favourites:

Black Narcissus – this film is shot entirely inside a studio and has amazing landscapes and sunsets. The matte paintings are by Walter Percy Day who worked with Powell and Pressburger. There's an amazing scene with a view of a bell tower and a dramatic cliff face which retains its dramatic tension, even though you can tell that half the image is live action and half is painted. But for me the heightened reality of the aesthetic only adds to the themes of the film.

Danger: Diabolik – this is an Italian comic book film which is like an insane episode of the 1966 Batman series, but more hippyish. It's a spectacular world with lots of matte paintings. I don't even know if it's a good film, but it's an experience! The director, Mario Bava, actually began his career as a matte painter in fantasy films and did his own matte work in the films he directed.

I think matte paintings are paradoxical – they are both expansive and constrained. They can create a very closed kind of space, yet the sky is the limit when it comes to your imagination.

What, if anything, has been lost in the transition to digital effects?

The issue for me isn't the use of digital technology per se but the way it's used, which is usually as a quick fix. What I think is being lost is a sense of experimentation and playfulness, along with the feeling of looking at something tangible. Matte paintings are fake, but to me they feel more authentic and crafted than CGI and green screens, even though those techniques are crafted things too.

For example, I'm a fan of John Carpenter's The Thing because I love bodily transformations. I really enjoy the metamorphosis of the creature and all the goopiness. Of course, you can do transformations so well with CGI now, but the old analogue techniques are often so much more appealing and inventive. Even the shrivelling up of the title at the start of The Thing – they did that by putting the title behind a fish tank, wrapped up in a garbage bag which was then lit on fire.

However, the film Speed Racer (above) is an example of how CGI could be used in a more interesting way. It has impressionistic backgrounds and while it still has a very digital look it's strange and has its own style. So digital effects could be used in interesting ways, but so often they're not.

What is the status of matte painting today?

While matte painting isn't thriving, I think it is being maintained in certain ways. There are a few big-name filmmakers who have an interest in studio filmmaking and old school effects, as we can see with films like Barbie, Asteroid City and Poor Thing. And matte painter Leigh Took still has a company making models for Game of Thrones. Unfortunately, however, the technical knowledge of all these practices is dwindling away.

Why did you choose these films to be part of the season?

I had a long, long list of films so it took a while to select these four. Ultimately, I wanted to select films that would show a range of different ways to use matte paintings and painted backdrops.

Dick Tracy (Warren Beatty,1990) is the most mainstream film in the season and is a great looking movie. It's set in a comic book world and some legendary matte painters worked on it including Harrison Ellenshaw, Michelle Moen, Paul Lasaine, Michael Lloyd and David Mattingly

Perceval le Gallois (Éric Rohmer, 1978) is an experimental film by Rohmer, whose other films are all much more naturalistic. It's totally studio bound, like a Western where you can see the flimsiness of the sets – it's really cranked up to be obviously artificial. It's very flat, like a medieval manuscript and this mirrors the experience of the hero who is trapped in a closed world, going in circles.

The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (Karel Zeman,1962) is, I think, an extraordinary film. It's very playful with a wood carving style (it's very Czech!) and Zeman is using all the possibilities he can, it feels like he's revelling in his creativity.

You The Living (Roy Andersson, 2007) is extraordinary in a completely different way. Anderson's films are all made inside, they're totally insular and statically shot and this film is reminiscent of Edward Hopper's paintings in its framing, though it's a comedy. There's a great documentary on the making of this film called Tomorrow is Another Day which I highly recommend and hope to screen one day.

Painted Skies – A season of film celebrating fake backgrounds is on at the Cinema Museum 19th Nov – 8th Dec. Tickets available here:
https://brunosavilldejong.wixsite.com/paintedskies/screenings