I’m back with some labyrinth spam starting with some outfit changes for Sarah. i mean Jareth changes clothes like his life depends on it, so Sarah get’s a matching outfit!
The “Love on the Silver Screen” part of the LFAS calendar project features the Mystic Messenger characters in parodies of famous movies, and I’m so excited to contribute to it. This is a close-up, cropped preview – Ray inspired by Jareth from the movie Labyrinth.
There is so much amazing talent on this project, it’s going to be incredible! Def check out the tumblr @2020loveforallseasons!
The various things that Jareth does with the crystal balls (rolling them around his arms and in his hands and so forth) are not camera tricks or any other kind of special effect. They are actually done by choreographer Michael Moschen, who is an accomplished juggler. Moschen was actually crouched behind Bowie with his arm(s) replacing Bowie’s. Unlike a typical Muppet performance, however, he had no video screen to view his performance. In other words, his manipulations were performed completely blind.─ IMDB Trivia
DAVID BOWIE as “Jareth, King of The Goblins” in Labyrinth (1986) MICHAEL MOSCHEN ─ Choreographed and performed with crystal balls as David Bowie’s hands
Scroll no further unless you want Labyrinth to be ruined for you!
Okay fam! Labyrinth is one of my favourite films of all time and have watched it endlessly for nearly 15 years and I’ve just noticed something so insignificant yet so important.
At the end of the film, the goblin king as an owl flies towards the moon- there are no stars.
THERE.
ARE.
NO.
STARS.
Jim Henson and his attention to detail did not put stars in the sky!
Doesn’t seem significant but let’s remember, Jim Henson found it important to show us that our disneyified view of mythology is wrong- look at Sarah and her innocence towards fairies and the idea that goblins are malicious rather than Childish and trickster like. Henson very clearly wants to explain that real mythological creatures are dangerous.
The Goblin King is very clearly based one the Erl Köng and the Green Man. In European legend, this creature seduces young women, offering them fruits and sexual favours. After nights of summoning them back to the forest, he manages to imprison these women and keep them as song birds in gilded cages. This is seen in the ballroom scene, all these beautiful people fawning and begging for the attention of the immortal Erl Köng. Sarah is able to see beyond this facade and is able to apparently free herself from this cage.
She’s still trapped in the Labyrinth.
She solves the Labyrinth, that was the only term that was set by the Goblin King. But as Hoggle says at the beginning, “even if you reach the castle, you’ll never be able to get out again”.
The Goblin King never said that both Toby and Sarah could leave, it was only an exchange of persons.
She ate the peach, the Goblin fruit, and now she is apart of the kingdom, therefore can never leave.
Fast forward to the end when Sarah is escorted back to her home by the Goblin King, Toby is lying in his crib as if nothing has changed.
That’s because nothing has changed for Toby, time has reordered itself so that the changeling was never there.
Sarah closes the door to Toby’s room- the reality where we are. The whole goblin Kingdom and it’s power are only shown when in Toby’s room, the thoughout way from the underground to the aboveground.
Sarah doesn’t say goodbye to her friends in the mirror, she joins them in their realm. The camera pans from the mirror to the bed, almost like we are now in the reflection.
Sarah says her goodbyes to her father and brother (visually to her brother and verbally to her father, who actually questions where she is and never responds to Sarah after her saying she was there)- the goblin kings true gift and is now stuck underground living out her fantasy.
There are no stars underground nor moon, the moon is now the new door way to the mortal plane that the Goblin King uses.
Sarah has been outmanuvered and is now stuck in her gilded golden bird cage.
Marvel movies have completely eliminated the concept of practical effects from the movie-watching public’s consciousness
Not just practical effects just like. Basic set design lol
How… How do they think sci-fi was done before CGI?
Really badly? Do you remember sci-fi before CGI? It was shit. And don’t say Star Wars because they went back and fixed that with CGI later.
*big sigh* *puts head in hands* heathens who’ve never watched pre-MCU sci-fi movies OR the unedited Star Wars movies, my beloathed
So first of all, most people agree that the majority of the “CGI fixes” in the Star Wars original trilogy (excluding minor visual/sound effects like lightsaber colors and blaster sounds) are unececssary, extremely conspicuous, and/or bad. This is not news to literally anyone older than about 20 who has consumed Star Wars content on any level. There are quite literally two very famous ‘despecialized’ fan projects explicitly dedicated to un-doing all of the shitty “fixed” CGI effects while simultaneously restoring the OT in HD.
And yes, I do, in fact, remember sci-fi special effects before CGI was the foundational cornerstone of moviemaking. It was not, in fact, shit:
Also, ironically I can show you by….*gasp* using fucking Star Wars, of all things. Welcome to the Tatooine pod race set of The Phantom Menace, which was not, as popularly believed, CGI’d but was instead a fully-built miniature set:
Yes, they built the entire set as a minature, built life-sized pod racers for the actors, then spliced the two together using digital effects. Yes, they did such a fantastic job that people think the entire set and scene sequence was basically completely CGI’d to this day. You’re fucking welcome for undervaluing the time, effort, and talents of set designers by implying that set design and practical effects inherently mean things will look like shit.
CGI also ages really poorly. What you think looks incredibly realistic now is going to look terrible in a few years. Just look at the original vs remastered Star Trek. They “restored” Star Trek around 2006 and replaced a lot of the practical effects with CGI, and maybe it looked ok in 2006, but it looks so bad and fake now.
In the 60s they built a whole model of the Enterprise, complete with blinking lights and beautifully sculpted/painted details. It looks stunning! Then they replaced it with that horribly smooth and fake looking cgi ship.
Just look at this beauty
You can see the model at the Air and Space Museum in DC
Unfortunately the remastered version is the only version available to stream, but you can still find DVDs with the original effect.
made in 1968 and still stunning 2001 A Space Odyssey
the designers worked with engineers at NASA to make realistic futuristic special effects using models and matte paintings no computer effects at all! - and incidentally inspired David Bowie to write Space Oddity, later performed in space by astronaut Chris Hadfield
The CGI of the original Jurassic Park may not be aging well (though arguably still better than some), but the practical effects will always look stunning.
I want to talk fantasy.
This shot was achieved with splicing and green screen.
This wild-looking shot (and similar manipulations) was famously achieved by having a professional juggler in a duplicate of Bowie’s jacket and gloves sitting behind him, basically with Bowie in his lap, doing the handwork while Bowie kept his arms behind the juggler. You may have seen a game based on this on Whose Line Is It Anyway.
This? Wires! Splicing! THE CGI TO DO THIS DIDN’T EXIST YET! (The juggler is hidden under the cape. If there’s a scene where he’s wearing a cape, that’s actually probably why.)
And this? This heartstopping shot?
This does appear to be from the version with CGI—
—CGI THAT WAS USED TO ERASE THE SHADOW FROM THE PRACTICAL EFFECT.
The shot itself hasn’t changed. The lift itself was done with wires and Bowie was given some propulsion with an air cannon so he could make that turn at speed. A minor amount of CGI was used in the 30th anniversary to “touch up” the work done in 1986, and one of the things they did was to remove a shadow on the wall from one of the wires.
How about this?
You don’t know it, but you’re looking at a practical effect. In real life, the Ruby Slippers are almost orange. That luxe, rich ruby color showed up on the film as black when the shoes were the correct color, so the costumers adjusted the actual costume to give the color they wanted.
A MODEL OF A HOUSE SHOT INSIDE A NYLON STOCKING ATTACHED TO A FAN.
MAN IN A COSTUME.
HORSES DUSTED WITH COLORED GELATIN.
And this? This is where it would’ve been useful to have CGI. Margaret Hamilton got really badly burned on the steam doing one of her entrance/exits, and ended up in the hospital. THIS is what you use CGI for.
You come into my house and insult practical effects?
I’ll just finish off by reminding you THIS IS ONE, TOO.
That last one, iirc, was there was a double in a sepia-toned costume, and the interior door and wall there was painted brown, so when it was lit and shot it all appeared to still be in the sepia tone of the Kansas scenes, and part of why Dorothy stepped back out of the frame was so the double and Judy Garland (in the proper blue-and-white costume) could swap.
You are correct. The double’s name, by the way, was Bobbi Koshay.
There are so many practical effects in Mary Poppins that it’s unbelievable. Ranging from the big ones (popping through pictures, tea parties on the ceiling, flying with an umbrella, etc.) to the incredibly little details, there’s a big reason why Mary Poppins won the Oscar for “Best Visual Effects” in 1965
I can’t find a list of all effects used, so this is just going off my memory of a documentary I watched once, so bear with me here; some of these things might be misremembered. But, some of the practical effects used in this film:
- Actors suspended on wires
- Scenes filmed front of a white screen lit with sodium vaporlights (early cinema’s “greenscreen” before greenscreen was invented)
- Matte paintings on glass for the cityscape scenes (rooftops of London, St. Paul Cathedral, etc.)
- Animatronics (the robin that whistles with Mary Poppins is an animatronic controlled by a wire, and the movement and sound you see on-screen was what it was actually doing on-set. The talking parrot umbrella head was also an animatronic.)
- Moving set pieces (every time they slide up or down the banister, they’re riding on a mechanized chair-lift hidden from the camera)
- Padded stairs (when they climb up the staircase made of smoke, the actors actually were climbing up a staircase padded with thick styrofoam, so that their feet would actually sink in some. The children found it particularly challenging, prompting Dick Van Dyke and Julie Andrews to offer extra help in keeping them balanced, thus really selling the idea that they are two kids walking on smoke with assistance from their guardians)
- Scene splicing (When she pulls impossibly large items from her carpet bag, she’s pulling them through a hole from under the table. The scene was spliced with footage depicting the table with nothing underneath it - except for Michael, who crawled underneath to ‘examine’ for a hole)
- Hidden compartments in bottles containing liquid of different colors (this one is my favorite lol; the children were not told that the medicine would come out of the bottle in different colors; they were just supposed to complain about taking it. Their reactions of shock and amazement are 100% genuine)
Even tiny details that you wouldn’t normally even think of as “special effects” were paid careful attention to, in order to help sell the story. Such as, during the Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious scene, while Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke are dancing and acting their hearts out, the children are supposed to sit on a fence and eat candy-apples. However, after filming for a long time, the kids were sick of the candy apples they’d been eating. So, Disney called for candy-apples made in tons of unique and delicious flavors, just colored to all look the same. It became the children’s favorite thing about the scene: they just got to sit and listen to fun music and watch the adults sing and dance while they tried a hundred different candy-apples, which is why they’re devouring them like little lions every time you see them on-screen.
(Also not so much a practical effect but just cute to note while I’m talking about Mary Poppins: the kids kept actually falling asleep during filming for the scenes in which Julie Andrews sings them lullabies lol)
CGI has its uses, to be sure. But it ought to be used to ENHANCE practical effects, not REPLACE them.
tbh that’s what Coraline is. And pretty much every movie by LAIKA Studios. It’s all filmed with practical effects and then enhanced with CGI.
Practical effects are actually amazing, and the overreliance on CGI makes films look far more ‘fake’ and causes them to grow outdated far more quickly than modern producers want people to admit.
Mainly because set designers and practical effects specialists are UNIONIZED but computer animators are not, making their labor easy to exploit and often leaving them massively overworked and underpaid.
I know I was already here, but since @plushchrome1212 made this incredible addition, I just want to point out this is a gold standard of practical effects work. Like. What I wrote above probably clued you in that I love looking for the man behind the curtain and going “oh, THAT’S how they did that!”
Mary Poppins is my favorite Disney movie. In 33 years, it has never once occurred to me to question how any of it was done. The illusion is so complete, I’m a grownass adult who just. Accepted that they disappeared into the sidewalk.
Can Someone please add the plant puppet from “My little shop of horrors”!?
That special effect was fenomenal and it took 6-8 people to move that puppet!
