Category: film gifs

William A. Wellmand, “Wings”: Film History Series

Artist Unknown, (First Kiss), Computer Graphics, “Wings” Film Gif

“Wings” is a 1927 American silent war film set during the First World War. This Paramount Pictures film was directed by William A Wellmand and produced by Lucien Hubbard. This romantic action-war film was written to accommodate film star Clara Bow, Paramount’s biggest star at that time. It also starred Charles ‘Buddy’ Rogers as Jack Powell and Richard Arien as David Armstrong.

Acclaimed for its technical prowess and realism, “Wings” became the yardstick against which future aviation films were measured, mainly because of its realistic air-combat sequences. Some three hundred pilots were involved in the shooting of the movie, including pilots and planes from the US Army Air Corps.

“Wings” was one of the first widely released films to show nudity and the first to show two men kissing. The scene above occurs near the end of the film. Jack Powell rushes  to the side of the dying David Armstrong after David’s plane had crashed into a field during the epic Battlle of Saint-Mihiel. Jack realized that he had unknowingly shot down his friend David who was flying a stolen German biplane. David consols Jack, who is distraught by what he had done, and just before he dies, forgives Jack for his mistake.

As the original negatives are lost, the closest to an original print is a spare negative stored in Paramount’s vaults. Suffering from decay and defects, the negative was fully restored with modern technology. For the restored version of “Wings”, the original music score was re-orchestrated. The sound effects were recreated by Skywalker Sound using archived audio tracks. In 2012, Paramount issued a restored version for DVD and Blue-ray.

Buster Keaton

Buster Keaton in “Steamboat Bill Jr”,  1928, Computer Gif, Film Gifs

The stunt where the wall falls on Buster Keaton was performed with an actual full-weight wall. Half the crew walked off the set rather than participate in a stunt that would have killed Keaton if he had been slightly off position. Keaton himself, told the previous day that his studio was being shut down, was so devastated that he didn’t care if the wall crushed him or not.

Tron Legacy

“Tron Legacy”,  Directed by Joseph Kosinski, 2010

“Tron: Legacy” is a 2010 American science fiction film produced and released by Walt Disney Pictures. A sequel to the 1982 film Tron, it is directed by Joseph Kosinski, produced by Tron director Steven Lisberger and written by Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis, based on a story by Horowitz, Kitsis, Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal. The cast includes Tron veterans Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner, who reprised their roles as Kevin Flynn and Alan Bradley, as well as Garrett Hedlund, Olivia Wilde, Beau Garrett, Michael Sheen and James Frain. The story follows Flynn’s son Sam (Hedlund) who responds to a message from his long-lost father (Bridges) and is transported into a virtual reality called the Grid, where Sam, his father and the algorithm Quorra (Wilde) stop the malevolent program CLU from invading the human world.

Interest in creating a sequel for Tron arose after the film garnered a cult following. After much speculation, a concerted effort to devise Tron: Legacy began in 2005 when producers hired Klugman and Sternthal as writers. Kosinski was recruited as director two years later. As he was not optimistic about Walt Disney Pictures’ Matrix-esque approach to the film, Kosinski opted for a loan which he used to cultivate a prototype and conceptualize the universe of Tron: Legacy. Principal photography took place in Vancouver over 67 days, in and around the city’s central business district. Most sequences were shot in 3D and ten companies were involved with the extensive visual effects work. Chroma keying and other techniques were used to allow more freedom in creating effects. The film score was composed by French duo Daft Punk, who incorporated orchestral sounds into their electronic music.

James Whale, Frankenstein”: Film History Series

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“Frankenstein”: Directed by James Whale, 1931

“Frankenstein” is a 1931 American Pre-Code horror monster film from Universal Pictures directed by James Whale and adapted from the play by Peggy Webling (which in turn is based on the novel of the same name by Mary Shelley), about a scientist and his assistant who dig up corpses to build a monster, but his assistant accidentally gives the monster a murderer’s brain.

The film stars Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, John Boles and Boris Karloff and features Dwight Frye and Edward van Sloan. The Webling play was adapted by John L. Balderston and the screenplay written by Francis Edward Faragoh and Garrett Fort with uncredited contributions from Robert Florey and John Russell. The make-up artist was Jack Pierce. A hit with both audiences and critics, the film was followed by multiple sequels and has become an iconic horror film.

In 1991, the Library of Congress selected “Frankenstein” for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

Although Frankenstein’s hunchbacked assistant is often referred to as “Igor” in descriptions of the films, he is not so called in the earliest films. In both “Frankenstein” and “Bride of Frankenstein”, Frankenstein has an assistant who is played both times by Dwight Frye who is crippled. In the original 1931 film the character is named Fritz, who is hunchbacked and walks with the aid of a small cane. In “Bride of Frankenstein”, Frye plays Karl, a murderer who stands upright but has a lumbering metal brace on both legs that can be heard clicking loudly with every step. Both characters would be killed by Karloff’s monster in their respective films.