This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2007)

70 mm film

70mm film (or 65mm film) is a wide high-resolution film gauge, with higher resolution than standard 35mm motion picture film format. As used in camera, the film is 65 mm (2.6 in) wide. For projection, the original 65mm film is printed on 70 mm (2.8 in) film. The additional 5mm are for magnetic strips holding four of the six tracks of sound. Although more recent 70mm prints now use digital sound encoding, the vast majority of 70 mm prints predate this technology. Each frame is five perforations tall, with an aspect ratio of 2.20:1. The vast majority of film theaters are unable to handle 70mm film, and so original 70mm films are shown with 35mm prints at these venues, in the regular Cinemascope / Panavision aspect ratio of 2.35:1.

History[link]

Films formatted with a width of 70 mm have existed since the early days of the motion picture industry. The first 70 mm format film was most likely footage of the Henley Regatta, which was projected in 1896 and 1897, but may have been filmed as early as 1894. It required a specially built projector built by Herman Casler in Canastota, New York and had a ratio similar to full frame, with an aperture of 2.75 inches (70 mm) by 2 inches (51 mm).  There were also several film formats of various sizes from 50 to 68 mm which were developed from 1884 onwards, including Cinéorama (not to be confused with the entirely distinct "Cinerama" format), started in 1900 by Raoul Grimoin-Sanson. Two other formats, Panoramica and 20th Century Fox's Grandeur, began distribution in 1929 and 1930, respectively.

The "Todd-AO" format, introduced with the film Oklahoma! in October 1955, popularized the format for use in feature length films. The original version of the Todd-AO process used a frame rate of 30 per second, 25% faster than the 24 frames per second that was (and is) the standard. Due to the costs of 70 mm film and the expensive projection system and screen required to use the stock, distribution for films using the stock was limited, although this did not always hurt profits. Most 70 mm films were also re-released on 35 mm film for a wider distribution after the initial debut of the film. Lawrence of Arabia, made in 1962, My Fair Lady, made in 1964, and The Sound of Music, made in 1965, are well-known films widely shown in 70 mm format with a general release in 35 mm format.

By the 1980s and 90s, films shot on 65 mm stock were increasingly rare. With the advent of small, multi-cinema theaters and the availability of digital soundtrack systems for less expensive 35 mm film, large-format films were made less often, and not always shown in their original format. The 1996 Kenneth Branagh Hamlet, for example, was filmed in Super Panavision 70, but largely screened in multiplex theaters in 35 mm reduction prints. Conversely, some 35 mm films made during the 1960s and 70s and intended for roadshow presentation were "blown up" to 70 mm size to make them appear more impressive on a larger screen. These included such films as Camelot (1967), Oliver! (1968), Cromwell (1970), and Fiddler on the Roof (1971). These enlargements did not have the sharpness and smoothness of 70 mm origination, but the larger prints were more stable when projected.

In recent years, the use of 65 mm negative film has been drastically reduced, in part due to the high cost of 65 mm raw stock and processing. The only recent films shot entirely on 65 mm stock are Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (1996), Ron Fricke's, Baraka (1992), and its sequel Samsara (2011). Other films used 65 mm cameras sparingly, for selected scenes or special effects. Films with limited 65 mm footage include Terrence Malick's The New World (2005), Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight (2008) (certain scenes in IMAX format), and Nolan's Inception (2011)^[1]. Samsara, in contrast, is the first feature-length film in over a decade to be shot entirely in 65 mm.

For home theater, VHS and DVD did not offer enough resolution to carry the full image quality captured by 70 mm film, and VHS and DVD video transfers were usually prepared from 35 mm reduction elements. The high-definition Blu Ray format, in contrast, can potentially reveal the quality advantage of 70 mm productions. Although telecine machines for 70 mm scanning are uncommon, high-resolution transfers from high-quality full-gauge elements can reveal impressive technical quality. Blu Ray transfers for certain classic films such as Ben Hur, The Sound of Music, and It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World arguably approach the quality of real-world 70 mm projection.

There is currently one type of digital cinema camera with a 65 mm sensor, the Phantom 65. Otti International's Phil Kroll developed the world's first 65/70 mm telecine transfer system. This camera has been used in Hollywood to digitally master 70 and 65 mm films.

Uses of 70 mm[link]

[edit] Ultra Panavision

An anamorphic squeeze combined with 65 mm film allowed for extremely wide aspect ratios to be used while still preserving quality. This was used in the 1959 film Ben-Hur, which was filmed with the MGM Camera 65 process at an aspect ratio of 2.76:1, one of the widest prints ever made. It required the use of a 1.25x anamorphic lens to horizontally compress the image, and a corresponding lens on the projector to uncompress it.

Special effects[link]

Limited use of 65 mm film was revived in the late 1970s for some of the visual effects sequences in films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, mainly because the larger negative did a better job than 35 mm negative of minimizing visible film grain during optical compositing. Since the 1990s, a handful of films (such as Spider-Man 2) have used it for this purpose, but the usage of digital intermediate for compositing has largely negated these issues. Digital intermediate offers other benefits such as lower cost and a greater range of available lenses and accessories to ensure a consistent look to the footage.

IMAX[link]

A horizontal variant of 70 mm, with an even bigger picture area, is used for the high-performance IMAX format which uses a frame that is 15 perforations wide on 70 mm film. The Dynavision and Astrovision systems each use slightly less film per frame and vertical pulldown to save print costs while being able to project onto an IMAX screen. Both are rare, Astrovision largely in Japanese planetariums.

70 mm 3D Early use[link]

The first commercial introduction of 70 mm single projector 3D was the 1967 release of Con la muerte a la espalda, a Spanish/French/Italian co-production which used a process called Hi-Fi Stereo 70. This process captured two anamorphic images, one for each eye, side by side on 65 mm film. A special lens on a 70 mm projector added polarization and merged the two images on the screen. The 1975 re-release of Warner Brothers' House of Wax, used a similar process without anamorphics called Stereovision. This format was developed by Allan Silliphant and Chris Condon, of Stereovision International Inc., who handled all technical and marketing aspects on a 5-year special-royalty basis with Warner Bros. The big screen 3D image was both bright and clear, with all the former sync and brightness problems of traditional dual 35 mm 3D eliminated. Still, it took many years more before IMAX began to test the water for big-screen 3D, and sold the concept to Hollywood executives.

IMAX 3D[link]

Recently, Hollywood has released blockbusters shot in 35 mm as IMAX blow-up versions. Now many 3D films are being shown in the 70 mm IMAX format. The Polar Express in IMAX 3D 70 mm earned 14 times as much, per screen, as the simultaneous 2D 35 mm release of that film in the fall of 2004.

Blow-ups[link]

Starting in the late 1950s and continuing until the mid-1990s, some 35 mm films were converted onto 70 mm prints for premiere showings in large cities or venues which could accommodate the format. This practice occurred for two reasons: The larger image area on each frame of 70 mm film allowed for clearer, brighter and steadier images, although it did not reduce film grain; and the six magnetic sound tracks available with 70 mm prints were vastly superior to the four-channel stereo sound tracks available on 35 mm prints (from 1953 to 1977, some 35 mm prints carried four-channel magnetic sound, and required special print stock with narrow perforations, type CS-1870). 70 mm prints were also used by a limited number of drive-in theaters because the larger frame area allowed use of higher intensity light to project a brighter image on their large screens. After the introduction of digital sound formats (DTS, SDDS, and Dolby Digital), 70 mm lost one of its major advantages over 35 mm film and thus usage of this expensive format declined markedly (A 70mm film print with magnetic sound is 10 to 15 times more expensive to make than a 35mm film print with optical digital sound.)

Technical specifications[link]

Standard 65 mm (5/70) (Todd-AO, Super Panavision)[link]

• spherical lenses
• 5 perforations/frame
• 42 frames/meter (12.8 frame/ft)
• 34.29 meters/minute (112.5 ft/minute)
• vertical pulldown
• 24 frames/second
• camera aperture: 52.48 by 23.01 mm (2.066 by 0.906 in)
• projection aperture: 48.56 by 20.73 mm (1.912 by 0.816 in)
• 305 m (1000 feet), about 9 minutes at 24 frame/s = 4.5 kg (10 pounds) in can
• aspect ratio: 2.2:1

Ultra Panavision 70 (MGM Camera 65)[link]

Same as Standard 65mm except

• Shot with special anamorphic adapter in front of lens
• 1.25x squeeze factor, projected aspect ratio 2.76:1

Showscan[link]

Same as Standard 65 mm except

• 60 frames per second

IMAX (15/70)[link]

• spherical lenses
• 15 perforations per frame
• horizontal pulldown, from right to left (viewed from base side)
• 24 frames per second
• camera aperture: 70.41 by 52.63 mm (2.772 by 2.072 in)
• projection aperture: at least 2 mm (0.080 in) less than camera aperture on the vertical axis and at least 0.4 mm (0.016 in) less on the horizontal axis
• aspect ratio: 1.35:1 (camera), 1.43:1 (projected)

IMAX Dome (formerly: OMNIMAX)[link]

Same as IMAX except

• special fisheye lenses
• lens optically centered 9 mm (0.37 in) above film horizontal center line
• projected elliptically on a dome screen, 20 degrees below and 110 degrees above perfectly centered viewers

Omnivision Cinema 180[link]

Cinema 180, West Germany 1979

same as standard 65/70 except:

• photographed and projected with special fisheye lenses matched to large 180 degree dome screen
• Theatres upgraded from 70 mm 6track analog sound to DTS digital sound in 1995.

Omnivision started in Sarasota, Florida. Theatres were designed to compete with Omnimax but with much lower startup and operating costs. Most theatres were built in fabric domed structures designed by Siemens Corporation. The last known OmniVision Theatres to exist in USA are The Alaska Experience Theatre in Anchorage, Alaska, built in 1981 (closed in 2007, reopened in 2008), and the Hawaii Experience Theatre in Lahaina, Hawaii (closed in 2004). Canobie Lake Park in Salem, New Hampshire has a "Vertigo Theatre" that is a Cinema 180. A Cinema 180 is still operating at Rainbow's End (Theme Park)

One of the few producers of 70 mm films for Cinema 180 was the German company Cinevision (today AKPservices GmbH, Paderborn).

Dynavision (8/70)[link]

• fisheye or spherical lenses, depending on if projecting for a dome or not
• vertical pulldown
• 24 or 30 frames per second
• camera aperture: 52.83 by 37.59 mm (2.080 by 1.480 in)

Astrovision (10/70)[link]

• vertical pulldown
• normally printed from an Omnimax negative
• projected onto a dome
• almost exclusively in use only by Japanese planetariums
• the only 70 mm format without sound, hence the only one with perforations next to the edges

See also[link]

• 70 mm Grandeur film
• Cine 160
• Cinerama
• Dolby Stereo 70 mm Six Track
• List of 70 mm films
• List of Early Wide Gauge Films
• List of film formats
• Ron Fricke
• Super Panavision 70
• Super Technirama 70
• Todd-AO
• Ultra Panavision 70

References[link]

External links[link]

• The American WideScreen Museum
• in70mm.com — The 70 mm Newsletter Devoted to 70 mm films new and old
• The History of the Todd-AO Projector

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (June 2011)

Douglas Trumbull
Douglas Trumbull at FMX 2012
Born	(1942-04-08) April 8, 1942 (age 70) Los Angeles, California, United States
Occupation	Director, producer, writer, special effects supervisor

Douglas Huntley Trumbull (born April 8, 1942, Los Angeles) is an American film director, special effects supervisor, and inventor. He contributed to, or was responsible for, the special photographic effects of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Blade Runner and The Tree of Life, and directed the movies Silent Running and Brainstorm.^[1]

Early days[link]

Douglas is the son of Donald Trumbull who created visual effects for the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz as well as later movies including Silent Running and Star Wars.

Doug was a creative talent even in the 6th grade. My first recollection of him was one morning in Inglewood, California when he arrived early in Mrs. Essex's class, and had draped a virtually invisible antenna wire out the window, so that he could surreptitiously listen to his crystal set in class. At recess, I introduced myself, and we became fast friends. In the 1960s he worked in the office of my father's electrical contracting firm, G & M Electric Company, to put himself through El Camino Junior College. -- Larry Dighera

Major projects[link]

1960s[link]

Douglas Trumbull's early work was at Graphic Films in Los Angeles. The small animation and graphic arts studio produced a film about spaceflight for the New York World's Fair. Trumbull, the son of a mechanical engineer and an artist, worked at Graphic Films as an illustrator and airbrush artist. The spaceflight film caught the attention of director Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick hired director Con Pederson from Graphic Films, and Trumbull then cold-called Kubrick after obtaining the director's home phone number from Pederson. Kubrick hired Trumbull for the production of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Trumbull's first task was to create the dozens of animations seen in the data display screens in the Aries moon shuttle and the Discovery.^[2] They looked like computer graphics, but they were created by photographing and animating reproductions of charts and graphs from technical publications. Trumbull initially created the shots using a number of Rube Goldberg–like contraptions he built with gears and motors ordered from a scientific equipment supply house. Kubrick gave the young effects technician creative freedom and encouragement: "He would say...'What do you need to do it?' and I would have complete carte blanche, which was wild as a young guy," Trumbull recalled. "I was 23-24 when I started the movie, and was 25 by the time I was doing the Star Gate. He would say, 'What do you need?' and I'd say, 'Well, I need to go into town and buy some weird bearings and some stuff' and he would send me off to town in his Bentley, with a driver, into London. It was great!"

Trumbull's responsibilities and talents grew as the production continued, and he became one of four special effects supervisors on the film (the others were fellow Graphic Films alumnus Con Pederson, along with Tom Howard and Wally Veevers.) Trumbull's most memorable contribution was the development of the slit-scan photography process, used in the "Stargate" sequence. "...I just happened to be in the right place at the right time... We were struggling with the Star Gate. Nobody knew what a Star Gate was; but, I came up with some ideas that I didn't even know at the time were based on some things I was learning as a young guy about street photography and weird photographic techniques..." Working on 2001 hooked Trumbull on the concept of producing immersive film experiences on huge screens - ironically, at a time when the industry was moving towards the multiplexing of theaters with smaller screens.

Although Trumbull's association with Kubrick was a huge boost for his career, he swore afterwards that he'd "never work for someone else again," in part because Kubrick "was a hell of a taskmaster...his level of quality-control bordered on perfectionism."

Trumbull was often incorrectly credited in print as being the sole special-effects creator for 2001. Whenever this happened, he usually received a call shortly thereafter from an irritated Kubrick. Though this created a strained relationship for many years, Trumbull said after Kubrick's death that Kubrick "was a genius," someone whom Trumbull missed terribly.

1970-1974[link]

Having returned to Hollywood, Trumbull set up his own company and subsequently bid on the job to produce special effects for the science-fiction film The Andromeda Strain. ("I was a young guy and very naive," he later recalled, "And I seriously underbid the job - I had no idea what these things were supposed to cost. I nearly went bankrupt as a result!") Trumbull and associate James Shourt produced dozens of shots, including the "electron microscope" pictures of the Andromeda organism and various on-screen readouts. Though many of these looked like computer graphics, they were created using techniques Trumbull had used for 2001. Author Michael Crichton and director Robert Wise were much impressed by Trumbull's work.

Trumbull's participation and success on "Andromeda" set him up to direct the 1971 film Silent Running, with a script based on his original treatment: America's last great forests are preserved and sent into space inside huge geodesic domes, in the hope that one day they can be returned to an earth that can once again sustain them. When orders are issued by faceless bureaucrats to abandon and destroy the domes, the ship's botanist (Bruce Dern) rebels and takes over the ship, aided by three anthropomorphic "drone" robots. He steers the ship away from the fleet and hides among the rings of Saturn, out of contact (silent running), attempting to keep the forest in good health, alone except for the drones who follow him around like pets.

Silent Running was produced by Universal on a shoestring budget of one million dollars, one-tenth the budget of 2001. The film used a number of special effects techniques that Trumbull had helped develop. The spacecraft interiors were shot aboard a mothballed aircraft carrier, which lent its name to the movie spacecraft Valley Forge. Trumbull was not originally slated to direct, but as the start of production loomed he became the obvious choice. (Other newcomers included the script writing team of Deric Washburn and Michael Cimino, who would later collaborate on The Deer Hunter, along with writer Steven Bochco of Hill Street Blues and LA Law fame.)

When Silent Running was released, insiders were astonished that the finished film had been produced for so little money. Lead actor Bruce Dern compared Trumbull's creative vision to that of Alfred Hitchcock, with whom Dern had also worked. Trumbull was seen as one of Hollywood's up and coming young directors.

Although a critical success, Silent Running was a flop at the box office. Trumbull recalled that "It was just a great experience for me as a film maker, but I didn’t know that I was part of an experiment by Universal Studios . . . to see if it was possible to have a movie survive on word of mouth alone without an advertising campaign." It was not, but Silent Running's environmental message struck a chord, and the movie has since became a cult classic.

After Silent Running, Trumbull developed a number of movie projects, but a series of misfortunes and bad luck kept them from getting beyond the initial development stage. One project nearly did get into production, and was already being cast when it was abruptly scuttled - the investor had decided to abandon the movie business and build a Las Vegas casino instead. Trumbull described this period of his career as "development hell." Unable to live on development fees alone and needing money, Trumbull returned to creating special effects, including some uncredited work using blue screen techniques on the 1974 film The Towering Inferno, a huge commercial hit.

1975-1980[link]

In 1975, Trumbull turned down an offer to provide the effects for George Lucas' Star Wars due to other commitments, but in 1977 he contributed effects to Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In late 1978, Trumbull's Future General Corporation, a research/ special effects house that was funded by Gulf + Western and Paramount Pictures, was offered the job to produce the special effects for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Trumbull, already deeply involved in Close Encounters, refused, wanting instead to focus his efforts on his patented Showscan process, a high-speed, large-format movie process that provided unprecedented visual clarity. Paramount awarded the contract to effects house Robert Abel and Associates, and in a move seen by some as payback for Trumbull's refusal to take on the project, all but shuttered Future General.

Abel had produced many high-end, visually advanced commercials for clients such as 7-Up, but it soon became apparent that their choice of technology, which featured software-controlled camera rigs and graphics imaging systems very advanced for the day, simply couldn't scale up to the volume of material required. In August 1978, with rumors of an impending meltdown at Abel swirling, Trumbull approached Paramount offering to step in and do the effects with partner Richard Yuricich. Paramount declined, hoping that Abel could still work a miracle.

Early in 1979, and with principal photography nearly finished and a December release date looming, Abel was fired after failing to produce even a few seconds of usable footage. Paramount approached Trumbull to take over effects production, which Trumbull did after securing an agreement to be released from his contract at Paramount upon completion of the film. "At the time," he recalled, "I think they would have entertained anyone who could have pulled them out of the jam." Trumbull reassembled his Future General team, rebuilt his facility which Paramount had nearly gutted, and with a mere five months to create the hundreds of effects shots needed, worked virtually around the clock for months. His team made the date, but their in-house battle cry became "...crop it, flop it, or drop it!" (That is, re-use part of an existing scene, take an existing scene and "flop" it over so that a right-to-left shot of the ship now plays the other way, or "drop" the shot from the script altogether.)

The model of the Enterprise, already built by the time Trumbull's team took over, proved especially tricky. While the model of Discovery in "2001" was over 50 feet long and featured a wealth of detail (from parts gleaned from, among other things, hundreds of plastic model tank kits), the model of the Enterprise was only seven feet in length, which severely limited the photographic possibilities. Other compromises had to be overcome. Trumbull had several ideas for unconventional effects - such as a modified slitscan technique to produce fantastic streaks when the Enterprise went into warp drive, but many had to be shelved due to time constraints. Trumbull also made several contributions to the story line, in collaboration once again with his Andromeda Strain director Robert Wise.

1980-1990s[link]

In 1981 Trumbull directed the special effects for the Ridley Scott film Blade Runner.^[3] By this time Trumbull had all but sworn off doing special effects for other directors, but was lured to the project by the opportunity to work with Scott, and a chance to create something other than sterile, grey and white spacecraft. "One of the things that appealed to me about the project," Trumbull recalled in an interview in Cinefex magazine, "was that it was NOT a space movie. I'm just real tired of doing spaceships against star backgrounds." Indeed, the iconic images of a polluted, dystopian Los Angeles, looking more like an oil refinery than a metropolis, and complete with building-sized electronic billboards and a bulbous blimp circling overhead advertising "Off World" job opportunities became the film's visual trademarks. (Despite the experience and professionalism of Trumbull's disciples, not everything went smoothly. According to Cinefex magazine, a young model maker was giving his girlfriend a tour of the effects shop, and he noticed that a large model of a building being photographed in the "smoke room" - a sealed room specially constructed to provide a smoky atmosphere - was burning fiercely. Thinking this was just another effect, he mentioned it in passing to a supervisor, who immediately grabbed an extinguisher and ran to put out the fire. The plastic and fiberglass model had been mounted too close to a powerful light which eventually set it ablaze.)

Trumbull did not complete Blade Runner, (David Dryer took over as special effects supervisor) leaving the film as agreed about halfway through to concentrate on pre-production for his next directing effort, Brainstorm, a story of two brilliant scientists who develop a revolutionary device to record and vicariously experience other people's feelings and perceptions, a device the military tries to steal for its own purposes.

Brainstorm was to be a showcase for Trumbull's "Showscan" process, which utilized special cameras and projectors to capture and project 70 mm film at 60 frames per second. At the last minute the Showscan process was not used, because theatre owners balked at the idea of installing expensive new projection equipment. The film was shot conventionally at 24 frames per second on 35mm film, though Trumbull continued his process of shooting effects work in 70mm. "In movies people often do flashbacks and point-of-view shots as a gauzy, mysterious, distant kind of image," Trumbull recalled, "And I wanted to do just the opposite, which was to make the material of the mind even more real and high-impact than 'reality'".

The film was nearly scuttled by the mysterious drowning death of Natalie Wood during a break in production. MGM immediately shut down production and initially wanted to dump Brainstorm (and collect the insurance on the unfinished film). Trumbull argued that the film could easily be finished - Natalie Wood's performance was already "in the can" and only a few scenes would have to be reshot. Lawyers and insurance companies battled over whether to even complete the film. The movie was finally finished two years later when the insurance company supplied the money to finish production. Trumbull had pushed all the while for the studio to finish and release his movie. "I can do this," Trumbull recalled in an interview with Greencine, "I've got all the coverage...All you need to do is let me in the editing room and I'll show you. They said, 'No, you can't come back, we don't want you in the cutting room, you can't finish this movie.'" Because of his determination to finish his film, Trumbull became "persona non grata" at MGM in the process. Eventually released on a small number of screens and with little publicity (though Trumbull recalled in the Greencine interview that the film became "Quote, Natalie Wood's last film, unquote,") Brainstorm was well received critically but a commercial failure at the box office.

Exhausted from his battles with the Hollywood system ("The movie business is so totally screwed up that I just don't have the energy to invest three or four years in a feature film,"), Trumbull retreated to the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts, to escape "the lawyers, the insurance agents, the creeps", redirecting his career away from traditional Hollywood projects and concentrating instead on developing new technology for movie production, and for the exhibition industry and theme-park rides, such as the Back to the Future Ride at Universal Studios Theme Park. Until recently, Trumbull's Showscan technology could be seen on a theme-park type ride at the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas.

In 1994 Trumbull was briefly a Vice Chairman of IMAX Corporation and President of its Ridefilm division through his involvement in the simultaneous combination and takeover of the Canadian based private company Imax Corp. and Trumbull Co.

2000-Present[link]

Trumbull has spent nearly two decades in the Berkshire hills of western Massachusetts, starting and running a series of companies involved in effects production and innovation.

In 2010, Trumbull leveraged social media, after a fashion, when he posted a video on Vimeo and YouTube showcasing an original invention aimed at capping the BP oil spill. Although the video "went viral" almost immediately, Trumbull never heard from BP or any of the government agencies struggling to contain the spill, which left him bemused and mildly annoyed. "I didn't do it with the hope of compensation," he later said, "I did it because I thought it was the moral thing to do."

After nearly thirty years away from Hollywood, Trumbull contributed to special effects work on Terrence Malick's 2011 film The Tree of Life. Reportedly Malick, a Trumbull fan, approached him about the effects work and mentioned that he did not like the look of computer-generated effects. Reportedly Trumbull asked, "Why not do it the way we did it on 2001?" Recent compositing programs such as Nuke allow practical scenes shot on film to be combined with fewer of the headaches of "traditional" effects work, such as shooting multiple camera passes on a single piece of film, matte passes, and the like. Trumbull eventually signed on as special effects consultant, working with the film's effects supervisor, Dan Glass. Many of the "organic" effects processes used in "2001" and "Close Encounters" were resurrected, such as photographing chemical interactions in petri dishes and releasing paints into water tanks. "It was a working environment that's almost impossible to come by these days," Trumbull told The Guardian newspaper in July 2011. "Terry wanted to create the opportunity for the unexpected to occur before the camera, then make something of that. He didn't want to use a very stringent design process, he wanted the unexpected phenomenon to occur – and use that."

In March 2011, director James Cameron announced plans to film his next "Avatar"-type 3D feature in a digital version of Showscan. Cameron has been pushing for movie theaters to adopt higher frame-rates to maintain the 3D effect during scenes involving high-speed motion (like explosions.) At 24 frames per second the 3D effect breaks down, while at 48 or 60 frames per second it is maintained. 60 frames per second is difficult to achieve with conventional film because of the stress on the medium itself; recording 60 frames per second using a digital camera is commonplace. Cameron and Trumbull have been friends for years, and it appears that Trumbull's contribution to a heightened theater experience may finally see its day, thanks to the influence of powerful directors like Cameron and Peter Jackson—nearly 30 years after its invention.

Douglas Trumbull (right) discussing frame rates with Ray Feeney (left) and Bill Desowitz

Now approaching his 70th birthday, Trumbull maintains a workshop and studio on his property in the Berkshire hills of Massachusetts (an area hampered, ironically, by lack of high-speed internet access). He continues the development of new tools for film makers, and is also spearheading a project to photograph UFOs. He often travels to film screenings and seminars and is enjoying a resurgence of his celebrity among film and visual effects enthusiasts. Trumbull seems grateful for the recognition and reverence accorded by his followers. "They really keep me going," he told The Australian newspaper in February 2011. "They reinforce some enthusiasm about my work. It's very hard to keep me going, because the setbacks [were] really tragic and difficult." As of February 2012, Trumbull is working on a new science-fiction project that he claims is "way beyond anything that Peter Jackson and Jim Cameron have been doing,"^[4] which will probably be shot with a camera capable of recording 120 frames per second, twice the speed of its ancestor, Showscan.

Honors[link]

Trumbull has been nominated for Academy Awards on five occasions, has received the American Society of Cinematographer’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and was a 2010 inductee to the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.^[5]

Trumbull received the International Press Academy's Tesla award in December 2011, named in honor of Nikola Tesla, an inventor, scientist and engineer, whom, Trumbull noted dryly in a runway interview, "Died penniless, after lots of people took credit for his work."^[6][7] Trumbull also received the Gordon E. Sawyer Award in February 2012, an honorary Academy Award given to an "individual in the motion picture industry whose technological contributions have brought credit to the industry.",^[8] as well as the Georges Méliès award from the Visual Effects Society in the same month.^[9]

See also[link]

• The Starlost
• Showscan

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• Douglas Trumbull at the Internet Movie Database
• Douglas Trumbull: In Retrospect An overview of Mr. Trumbull's career, with emphasis on the special effects work he did on the movie Blade Runner. Written in 2006.
• "Total Immersion", Howard Rheingold, Wired Magazine, November 1993 - coverage of Trumbull's VR installation at the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas.
• 2009 interview with Douglas Trumbull.
• Onstage conversation between Douglas Trumbull and Ben Mankiewicz, May, 2010
• Video interview
• Audio interview with Douglas Trumbull, December, 2010
• Douglas Trumbull giving a talk at ITF 2010
• The Australian article