Another old western question

[coach]

Has anyone noticed the painted scenery in many of the old western TV shows especially. I sometimes see it in movies too. Not really a criticism of the budgets available to directors of such shows. Was it less noticeable in the old days than it is now with hi-def tv? I saw a particularly noticeable unrealistic cemetery scene in an old black & white Maverick yesterday.

 

[Daveboone]

I guess you could call the old painted scenes "pre computer generated".

 

[Cholo]

Are you watching on a 1080 TV? If so, there's 95% of the problem. I still have a 720 plasma and much prefer it to 1080. On my daughters 1080 everything looks like a live soap opera. I won't watch a movie on it. Sooo...

There's a way to turn off that soap opera effect which softens the images so everything fake doesn't look quite so fake. You can turn the sharpness down or, if it's a Samsung, follow this link:

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/samsung-tv-settings-guide,review-4663-7.html

If not a Samsung, Google Turning Off Soap Opera Effect on an (X) TV.

If you're 720--you're SOL. Try turning off the TV and start building that nuclear reactor you always wanted

 

[Selena]

If you want to see truly hokey backdrops try the original series of Star Trek. Then again, in those days programs & movies were made to tell a story not show off effects. Dad is addicted to a program called "Wagon Train" which other than the occasional Indian being shot off a horse has very few stunts. But the program actually gives insights to the development of the characters as well as something sadly lacking in modern cinema - a theme and a moral.

 

[coach]

Actually most of the old westerns tend to be on stations that broadcast in standard definition, but even my older hi-def LED TV is much clearer than than the old cathode ray tube TV of days past not to mention bigger. Probably making the set design more noticeable.
I haven’t watched Star Trek for a while but the sets for the away teams are really hokey and cheap. Same boulders, flat ground and take your pick of different colored cloudless sky. The story is the important part not necessarily the CGI effects that are used today.

 

[BearBio]

If you want to see truly hokey backdrops try the original series of Star Trek. Then again, in those days programs & movies were made to tell a story not show off effects. Dad is addicted to a program called "Wagon Train" which other than the occasional Indian being shot off a horse has very few stunts. But the program actually gives insights to the development of the characters as well as something sadly lacking in modern cinema - a theme and a moral.

Or were all filmed at Vasquez Rocks, outside of Los Angeles==most were in the parking lot!

 

[bogus bill]

I got a kick out of watching "High Sierra" with Humphrey Bogart. I knew every bit of that country that was filmed. The cops are riding motorcycles sitting almost straight up in the sharp curves on about 1936 harleys chasing Bogart driving his 37 chev coupe doing about seventy! The car and harleys on that steep road in reality probably couldn't do 25 to 30 MPH! The filming was obviously speeded up as I have rode harleys up that same road several times as far back in 1960 when I used to work in Yosemite.

 

[WAYNO]

We are spoiled by modern filming technology.

When I was a kid, and long before, many scenes of many movies were filmed in a studio. A huge warehouse, with a street, and fronts of buildings, and cowboys shooting it out, while the desert or mountains in the background were painted on the wall.

I am no more critical of earlier movie production, that I am of Model T's being lame compared to a Toyota.

This progression of technology is history, and should be celebrated, not criticized.

I also see, more than ever, obvious props on old TV shows and movies. And I even call them out. But I do so just to show how far we've come.

Movie sets were art forms of their own. Even when we see an obviously painted background, it's not always easy to see where the props end, and the painted wall begins.

 

[vito]

Our expectations of what was in a movie were very simple back in the old days. Watch a fist fight in an old film and you can actually groan with hope fake it looks to a modern eye. But back in those days it "seemed" realistic. I remember as a little kid seeing Wizard of Oz and thinking how magical it all was. Watching it on a flat screen hi-def TV with my grandkids, they immediately starting saying, when Dorothy comes out of the house in Munchkinland, and the black and white changes to technicolor, "Grandpa, why are they in a place with plastic flowers?"(but the flying monkeys still scared them a bit!).

 

[pete44ru]

.

I'm old enough to remember the Buster Crabbe "Flash Gordon" movies that showed his "spaceship" jetting across the screen with the exhaust rising 90-degrees to the line of travel. :roll:

It looked like the film makers used rising cigarette smoke to create the effect...…………………


.

 

[caryc]

Anybody old enough to remember "Sheriff John's Lunch Brigade"? John Rovick, an honorary deputy sheriff did this lunchtime cartoon show for kids. He did it from his "sheriff's office/jail"

I was watching one time when I was a kid and all of a sudden the whole backdrop of the jail cells and office wall fell over on him. Sheriff John was quick with a comeback. He simply said "Well they don't make jails like they used to". I guess the show was live or they certainly wouldn't have shown that.

 

[Colonialgirl]

If you watch movie street scenes carefully enough, you'll soon notice that the same buildings appear in "city' after
"city" because they were all filmed in the same studio "street" scene areas.. It's one of the interesting things you discover if you ever visit one of the studios in Burbank and Hollywood, CA.

 

[cas6969]

Are you watching on a 1080 TV?

That's what I was thinking, it probably looks fine on a 13" black and white Philco.

 

[Fox Mike]

By the same did you ever notice how many westerns show Saguaro cacti? All made at the Old Tucson 'city' and area.

 

[Bull Barrel]

I got a kick out of watching "High Sierra" with Humphrey Bogart. I knew every bit of that country that was filmed. The cops are riding motorcycles sitting almost straight up in the sharp curves on about 1936 harleys chasing Bogart driving his 37 chev coupe doing about seventy! The car and harleys on that steep road in reality probably couldn't do 25 to 30 MPH! The filming was obviously speeded up as I have rode harleys up that same road several times as far back in 1960 when I used to work in Yosemite.

Those HDs could do only 25 or 30 before shaking to pieces anyway....

 

[bogus bill]

I put well over 100,000 miles on this 1963 FL back then.

 

[bogus bill]

A 64 I also owned. I once rode the 63 just over a 1,000 miles in 24 hours.

 

[bogus bill]

Here is another I had. A woman ran a stop sign and I T-boned her. Fortunately for me a off duty highway patrol trooper seen it happen in front of his house. He ran up to me and said when my partner gets here he will write her up and bring you a copy of the ticket to the hospital, and they did!

 

[caryc]

Speaking of T Bones...Back when I had my chopped 55 pan head, I had a buddy that T Boned a lady that pulled out of a side street without seeing him coming. I remember specifically the gas tank. It was what we called a peanut tank that all the chopped down Harley guys used. At the rear of that tank were three dents about the size of half an orange. One on the top and one on each side of the tank. This was where his pelvis hit the tank and busted up. He was in the hospital for about 3 months. His bike looked a heck of a lot worse than the one pictured above.

 

[Rick Courtright]

.

I'm old enough to remember the Buster Crabbe "Flash Gordon" movies that showed his "spaceship" jetting across the screen with the exhaust rising 90-degrees to the line of travel. :roll:

HI,

How about the rocket ships that flew across the screen on rather visible wires? Or Tarzan/King Kong type movies where the ape would turn around and accidentally show the zipper up the back of the costume?

Today's green screen techniques are fantastic, as are some of the CGI tricks. I dunno if they still have it up on their website, but Browning used to have a video of some guys out hunting pheasants to advertise their new shotgun, then they added a "How we did it" video to show how the main one was shot. Almost all of it was done inside a studio--very interesting.

Along that line, I wonder if NASA's still got their sound stage setup in Burbank from about Jul 20, 1969. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink!

Rick C

 

[blackhawknj]

I watched "Daniel Boone" with Fess Parker. I called in "Daniel Boone on Alpha Centauri". The set for Boonesborough was shot on an interior set, everything had three shadows.

 

[bogus bill]

I was a security guard for universal studios late 1964/early 1965. I worked a lot of graveyard shifts walking through the various studio buildings, hangers and sets. It was amazing to go through those vacant sets in the middle of the night. I recall going through the munster mansion and messing with that trap door in the stairway etc. They even had cobwebs that would hit you in the face off set at the doors etc and some type of scent that made it smell mouldy and musty. We had a guard that got cold cocked one night walking through it. Evidently some one had climbed the fence or whatever.
I recall being off a weekend, coming back and going in a new set that was like walking back in the old west into a old mexican village. Think it was for the movie "The rare breed".
I believe the real unsung hero`s of the movie industry is all the carpenters and people that build those sets and special effects people.