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Lot Essay
Used on a motion control rig with a dual-axis gear head, the “Rama” – as it was known at ILM – served as the sister motion control camera to the well-documented “Dykstraflex”.
When George Lucas established ILM in May 1976 to produce the vast quantity of special visual effects that would be required for Star Wars in-house, he appointed John Dykstra to assemble and lead a talented team of young cameramen, effects artisans and optical engineers who would help bring his vision to life, ultimately revolutionising visual effects on film. After setting up shop in a warehouse in Van Nuys, Dykstra and his team began troubleshooting the technical challenges involved in bringing the story’s dynamic space battles to screen with the realistic, freeform camera movement Lucas was striving for, rather than the static in-camera methods that had hitherto set the standard for combining miniatures with other elements on film. ‘I wanted to get a lot of movement into the effects,’ Lucas told visual effects journal Cinefex in 1996. ‘It was clear that we couldn’t do it using any of the effects Stanley [Kubrick] had used on 2001. We were going to have to come up with a whole different way of thinking, because I wanted to be able to pan and have the ships move in ways that, up to that point, were not possible.’
Dykstra and his team developed a computerised “motion control” camera system they dubbed the Dykstraflex, which, as Michael Rubin explains in his 2006 book Droidmaker: George Lucas and the Digital Revolution, ‘was able to move the camera in a precise and repeatable way, so ILM could synchronise many planes of action with precision; multiple spaceships could fly on the same screen, lights and engines on the ships could be added to the images, and so on.’ Each separate element of an effect would be shot against a blue screen that could later be removed with mattes. The multiple elements would then be composited together using an optical printer. The drawback to this technique was the degradation in image quality that occurred each time a layer was combined in the optical printer. To output at the same quality as the 35mm film that would be used for the live action photography on Star Wars, ILM would need to capture each effects element with a higher resolution film at the outset, to allow for the anticipated generation loss. As shooting with 70mm film was out of the question for such a relatively low budget production, Dykstra and ILM effects cameraman Richard Edlund identified VistaVision, which utilised the standard and more cost effective 35mm film, as their preferred format.
Along with Cinerama and CinemaScope, VistaVision was one of the widescreen formats introduced in the early 1950s to combat television’s encroachment on the theatrical box office. While a standard camera would typically run the 35mm film vertically to record an image that was four perforations high, VistaVision turned the film on its side and ran it horizontally, resulting in a negative that was eight perforations (8-perf) wide and over twice the size of a standard 35mm frame, significantly improving the resolution. For exhibition, VistaVision was usually transferred to standard 35mm film, which reduced the frame size while retaining much of the sharpness and clarity of the higher quality 8-perf print. To compete in the widescreen market, Technicolor launched “Technirama” in 1956, which built on the 8-perf principles of VistaVision by using an anamorphic lens to squeeze an even wider image onto the film frame. The Technirama cameras were converted from 1930s three-strip Technicolor cameras that had fallen into obsolescence with the advent of full-colour negative filmstock in the early 1950s. Representing the final evolution in the Technicolor motion picture process, only 28 Model D or three-strip Technicolour cameras were produced, circa 1932, and were used to shoot films like Gone With The Wind and The Wizard of Oz. Of the 28 original D-series cameras, eleven were modified for 8-perf use: five for VistaVision and six for Technirama. The interior mechanisms were removed and rebuilt by the Mitchell Camera Corporation. While the lenses from the original three-strip camera were retained, anamorphic Delrama lenses were added to compress the image one and a half times. As the image area was twice the size of a normal frame, the film itself had to move through the camera at twice the speed, so the magazines needed to be larger. More than sixty films were made in Technirama between 1956 and the mid-1960’s, including Sleeping Beauty, Spartacus, and The Pink Panther. Edlund notes that ‘this camera could have worked on some of those’. With the arrival of 70mm format, VistaVision and Technirama had largely fallen into disuse by the early 1960s.
At the time ILM were setting up their facility at Van Nuys and casting around for old VistaVision equipment, Edlund told Cinefex, ‘Technicolor were selling off their old stuff by the pallet.’ ILM acquired two of the six Technirama cameras that Technicolor had converted from three-strip Technicolor: this camera numbered G-9, which would be known as the “Rama” and would be set up on a motion control rig that could match the movements of the Dykstraflex to shoot effects on stage in Van Nuys, and another Technirama numbered G-3, which would be used as the primary field camera for any on location shots that would later require optical compositing. ‘ILM was built from the ground-up,’ explains Edlund, ‘and we created our own equipment, utilizing existing VistaVision movements and cameras as a base. One of the keys to the work on Star Wars was motion control – the Dykstraflex and Rama motion control systems enabled us to do repeat passes and get the shots and elements we needed without having to lock off the cameras. We developed a custom dual-axis gear-head motion control unit for [the Rama] to ride in, that was capable of matching the movements of the Dykstraflex. The Technirama camera was older and much bulkier, but it served its purpose well.’ Speaking to American Cinematographer in 1977, Dykstra elaborated on the two-camera set-up: ‘This allows complex matched-move, multi-element matte shots by shooting the foreground against the blue screen and then taking that program of motions to a twin camera system. A separate background element can then be photographed with matching motions. When the two elements are combined, the appearance is that of real time photography – allowing pans, tilts, rolls, and accelerations on shots having a multitude of elements which were shot at different times, on separate cameras.’ By way of an example, Dykstra goes on to outline how the Rama could be used to photograph a star background in motion to match a sequence of miniature ship movements shot by the Dykstraflex: ‘This second system does not have the versatility of the Dykstraflex but exactly matches the motor speed per degree of angular motion of the Dykstraflex so that… we can photograph the stars with an exactly matching set of angular moves.’ The accompanying control unit, custom built by ILM for the G-9 Technirama, was intended to work with a custom-made servo motor to drive the camera. For use in a motion control system, the controller would be paired with a Motion Master, a device that stored and played back the camera’s movements.
By then ILM’s Special Effects Supervisor, Edlund confirmed in a 1980 interview with American Cinematographer that on Star Wars, ILM ‘had only two basic motion control cameras, both of which worked very well almost from the outset.’ The brass plate on the side door of this camera, engraved 1, marks it out as ILM’s number one Technirama camera at the time of its acquisition. The accompanying daily camera exposure reports from Star Wars, dated from July 1976 to January 1977, show the Rama was used extensively to capture both background elements such as star fields, and key elements including X-wing and TIE fighter models, as well as the “Pirate Ship” – an early production reference for the Millenium Falcon. The reports also indicate that the camera was most regularly operated by second cameraman Dennis Muren. Speaking to Cinefantastique magazine in 1977, Muren affirmed: ‘when I started [on Star Wars], I was to shoot backgrounds using our limited, older Technirama camera.’ Notably, Muren went on to reveal that this camera was responsible for creating the film’s famous jump to hyperspace shot: ‘That was done with streak photography, by increasing the amount of streaked distance per frame… It wasn’t done on the Dykstraflex but on the secondary camera.’
After production wrapped on Star Wars, ILM’s two Rama cameras were reportedly used on Battlestar Galactica during the time that Apogee leased the ILM facility and equipment from George Lucas. The two Technirama cameras were transferred to the new facility when Lucas relocated ILM north to San Rafael in early 1979 to begin work on The Empire Strikes Back. Although Edlund had commissioned two new VistaVision cameras with additional capabilities, the original Rama remained a workhorse for at least the first six months of the shoot while the new cameras were in development. An additional five Technirama cameras were located in London, but it would take some time to restore and update them. ‘When we arrived, the ILM building was still under construction,’ Muren told Cinefex in 1980. ‘We started shooting in February 1979 when the cameras were set up… it was one shot after another… we were shooting the asteroid sequence and the Vader ship and other things constantly. The only cameras we had running during that period were the Dykstraflex and the Technirama, for months and months.’ The G-3 camera was again set up as a field camera for location work in Norway and in the studio at Elstree near London.
By the time work began on Return of the Jedi in 1982, the two new cameras Edlund had commissioned – the “Empireflex” and the “VistaCruiser” – were up and running, yet the size of the production and the number of different shooting units called for the two original Technirama cameras to remain in constant use. According to Edlund, the Rama motion control system was rebuilt and upgraded for production on Return of the Jedi, yet this Technirama camera remained at the core of the system. ‘It has a new follow-focus, tilts ninety degrees on its side and forty-five the other way, and is on a great big 250-pound gear head on top of a boom arm which sits on a twenty-foot track,’ Edlund reported to Cinefex in 1982. ‘It’ll be a high-speed servo-drive system capable of going from one end of the track to the other in maybe five seconds… so you can do very fast moves… The Rama camera will run 42 frames a second in motion control, so we’ll be able to do shots involving actors or smoke or things – any kind of shot where 42 frames a second would be sufficient.’ The camera can be identified in several behind-the-scenes photographs from the production of Return of the Jedi, set up for shooting ship miniatures including the Mon Calamari cruiser, the Rebel’s Blockade Runner and Jabba’s sail barge.
Markings and paint scratches present on the camera today are visible in behind-the-scenes photographs of the Rama camera in use during the production of all three films in the original Star Wars Trilogy. The R6/L6 magazine presently fitted to the camera can be seen in several shotsphotographs of the G-3 Technirama at Elstree Studios and on location in Tunisia and Guatemala. Edlund notes that the magazine displays a small Pignose sticker as he had invented the Pignose portable guitar amplifier prior to commencing starting work at ILM and the mylar stickers apparently made their way onto much of the ILM equipment. It appears that the present flight case was originally used as the flight case forto transport the G-3 Technirama and can be seen in photographs of the crew on location in Norway during production of The Empire Strikes Back. Beyond the Star Wars Trilogy, Edlund indicates that the camera was almost certainly used on other ILM films of the period, including Raiders of the Lost Ark, Dragonslayer, and Poltergeist, remaining part of ILM's camera department throughout the 1990s.
An undisputed masterpiece of modern cinema, Star Wars immediately broke box office records upon release, becoming one of the most successful films of all time and ushering ing in the era of the blockbuster. Renowned film critic Roger Ebert has likened the action-packed space opera to The Birth of a Nation and Citizen Kane in terms of its the film’s status as ‘a technical watershed that influenced many of the movies that came after.’ The innovative techniques pioneered by ILM had pushed the boundaries of what was possible in science fiction filmmaking and would revolutionise the field of visual effects. Integral to ILM’s groundbreaking twin camera motion control system, the Rama camera was responsible for capturing some of the most memorable effects shots in cinema history. Thanks to their trail-blazing work in developing the motion control camera system, both Dykstra and Edlund received Academy Awards for Best Visual Effects for Star Wars in 1978. For continuing to break new ground in the production of the second and third instalments in the Star Wars trilogy, Edlund and Muren would be recognised for their exceptional contribution to visual effects with Special Achievement Academy Awards for both The Empire Strikes Back in 1981 and Return of the Jedi in 1984.
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
M. Rubin, Droidmaker: George Lucas and the Digital Revolution, Gainesville, 2006.
‘Technicolor three-colour 35mm Camera’, The Kodak Collection at the National Media Museum, Bradford. https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co8225572/technicolor-three-colour-35mm-camera.
‘The Technirama Process - Technicolor 100’, written and directed by James Layton, George Eastman House in association with Technicolor, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Y8JZ_w9a-k&t=1s.
When George Lucas established ILM in May 1976 to produce the vast quantity of special visual effects that would be required for Star Wars in-house, he appointed John Dykstra to assemble and lead a talented team of young cameramen, effects artisans and optical engineers who would help bring his vision to life, ultimately revolutionising visual effects on film. After setting up shop in a warehouse in Van Nuys, Dykstra and his team began troubleshooting the technical challenges involved in bringing the story’s dynamic space battles to screen with the realistic, freeform camera movement Lucas was striving for, rather than the static in-camera methods that had hitherto set the standard for combining miniatures with other elements on film. ‘I wanted to get a lot of movement into the effects,’ Lucas told visual effects journal Cinefex in 1996. ‘It was clear that we couldn’t do it using any of the effects Stanley [Kubrick] had used on 2001. We were going to have to come up with a whole different way of thinking, because I wanted to be able to pan and have the ships move in ways that, up to that point, were not possible.’
Dykstra and his team developed a computerised “motion control” camera system they dubbed the Dykstraflex, which, as Michael Rubin explains in his 2006 book Droidmaker: George Lucas and the Digital Revolution, ‘was able to move the camera in a precise and repeatable way, so ILM could synchronise many planes of action with precision; multiple spaceships could fly on the same screen, lights and engines on the ships could be added to the images, and so on.’ Each separate element of an effect would be shot against a blue screen that could later be removed with mattes. The multiple elements would then be composited together using an optical printer. The drawback to this technique was the degradation in image quality that occurred each time a layer was combined in the optical printer. To output at the same quality as the 35mm film that would be used for the live action photography on Star Wars, ILM would need to capture each effects element with a higher resolution film at the outset, to allow for the anticipated generation loss. As shooting with 70mm film was out of the question for such a relatively low budget production, Dykstra and ILM effects cameraman Richard Edlund identified VistaVision, which utilised the standard and more cost effective 35mm film, as their preferred format.
Along with Cinerama and CinemaScope, VistaVision was one of the widescreen formats introduced in the early 1950s to combat television’s encroachment on the theatrical box office. While a standard camera would typically run the 35mm film vertically to record an image that was four perforations high, VistaVision turned the film on its side and ran it horizontally, resulting in a negative that was eight perforations (8-perf) wide and over twice the size of a standard 35mm frame, significantly improving the resolution. For exhibition, VistaVision was usually transferred to standard 35mm film, which reduced the frame size while retaining much of the sharpness and clarity of the higher quality 8-perf print. To compete in the widescreen market, Technicolor launched “Technirama” in 1956, which built on the 8-perf principles of VistaVision by using an anamorphic lens to squeeze an even wider image onto the film frame. The Technirama cameras were converted from 1930s three-strip Technicolor cameras that had fallen into obsolescence with the advent of full-colour negative filmstock in the early 1950s. Representing the final evolution in the Technicolor motion picture process, only 28 Model D or three-strip Technicolour cameras were produced, circa 1932, and were used to shoot films like Gone With The Wind and The Wizard of Oz. Of the 28 original D-series cameras, eleven were modified for 8-perf use: five for VistaVision and six for Technirama. The interior mechanisms were removed and rebuilt by the Mitchell Camera Corporation. While the lenses from the original three-strip camera were retained, anamorphic Delrama lenses were added to compress the image one and a half times. As the image area was twice the size of a normal frame, the film itself had to move through the camera at twice the speed, so the magazines needed to be larger. More than sixty films were made in Technirama between 1956 and the mid-1960’s, including Sleeping Beauty, Spartacus, and The Pink Panther. Edlund notes that ‘this camera could have worked on some of those’. With the arrival of 70mm format, VistaVision and Technirama had largely fallen into disuse by the early 1960s.
At the time ILM were setting up their facility at Van Nuys and casting around for old VistaVision equipment, Edlund told Cinefex, ‘Technicolor were selling off their old stuff by the pallet.’ ILM acquired two of the six Technirama cameras that Technicolor had converted from three-strip Technicolor: this camera numbered G-9, which would be known as the “Rama” and would be set up on a motion control rig that could match the movements of the Dykstraflex to shoot effects on stage in Van Nuys, and another Technirama numbered G-3, which would be used as the primary field camera for any on location shots that would later require optical compositing. ‘ILM was built from the ground-up,’ explains Edlund, ‘and we created our own equipment, utilizing existing VistaVision movements and cameras as a base. One of the keys to the work on Star Wars was motion control – the Dykstraflex and Rama motion control systems enabled us to do repeat passes and get the shots and elements we needed without having to lock off the cameras. We developed a custom dual-axis gear-head motion control unit for [the Rama] to ride in, that was capable of matching the movements of the Dykstraflex. The Technirama camera was older and much bulkier, but it served its purpose well.’ Speaking to American Cinematographer in 1977, Dykstra elaborated on the two-camera set-up: ‘This allows complex matched-move, multi-element matte shots by shooting the foreground against the blue screen and then taking that program of motions to a twin camera system. A separate background element can then be photographed with matching motions. When the two elements are combined, the appearance is that of real time photography – allowing pans, tilts, rolls, and accelerations on shots having a multitude of elements which were shot at different times, on separate cameras.’ By way of an example, Dykstra goes on to outline how the Rama could be used to photograph a star background in motion to match a sequence of miniature ship movements shot by the Dykstraflex: ‘This second system does not have the versatility of the Dykstraflex but exactly matches the motor speed per degree of angular motion of the Dykstraflex so that… we can photograph the stars with an exactly matching set of angular moves.’ The accompanying control unit, custom built by ILM for the G-9 Technirama, was intended to work with a custom-made servo motor to drive the camera. For use in a motion control system, the controller would be paired with a Motion Master, a device that stored and played back the camera’s movements.
By then ILM’s Special Effects Supervisor, Edlund confirmed in a 1980 interview with American Cinematographer that on Star Wars, ILM ‘had only two basic motion control cameras, both of which worked very well almost from the outset.’ The brass plate on the side door of this camera, engraved 1, marks it out as ILM’s number one Technirama camera at the time of its acquisition. The accompanying daily camera exposure reports from Star Wars, dated from July 1976 to January 1977, show the Rama was used extensively to capture both background elements such as star fields, and key elements including X-wing and TIE fighter models, as well as the “Pirate Ship” – an early production reference for the Millenium Falcon. The reports also indicate that the camera was most regularly operated by second cameraman Dennis Muren. Speaking to Cinefantastique magazine in 1977, Muren affirmed: ‘when I started [on Star Wars], I was to shoot backgrounds using our limited, older Technirama camera.’ Notably, Muren went on to reveal that this camera was responsible for creating the film’s famous jump to hyperspace shot: ‘That was done with streak photography, by increasing the amount of streaked distance per frame… It wasn’t done on the Dykstraflex but on the secondary camera.’
After production wrapped on Star Wars, ILM’s two Rama cameras were reportedly used on Battlestar Galactica during the time that Apogee leased the ILM facility and equipment from George Lucas. The two Technirama cameras were transferred to the new facility when Lucas relocated ILM north to San Rafael in early 1979 to begin work on The Empire Strikes Back. Although Edlund had commissioned two new VistaVision cameras with additional capabilities, the original Rama remained a workhorse for at least the first six months of the shoot while the new cameras were in development. An additional five Technirama cameras were located in London, but it would take some time to restore and update them. ‘When we arrived, the ILM building was still under construction,’ Muren told Cinefex in 1980. ‘We started shooting in February 1979 when the cameras were set up… it was one shot after another… we were shooting the asteroid sequence and the Vader ship and other things constantly. The only cameras we had running during that period were the Dykstraflex and the Technirama, for months and months.’ The G-3 camera was again set up as a field camera for location work in Norway and in the studio at Elstree near London.
By the time work began on Return of the Jedi in 1982, the two new cameras Edlund had commissioned – the “Empireflex” and the “VistaCruiser” – were up and running, yet the size of the production and the number of different shooting units called for the two original Technirama cameras to remain in constant use. According to Edlund, the Rama motion control system was rebuilt and upgraded for production on Return of the Jedi, yet this Technirama camera remained at the core of the system. ‘It has a new follow-focus, tilts ninety degrees on its side and forty-five the other way, and is on a great big 250-pound gear head on top of a boom arm which sits on a twenty-foot track,’ Edlund reported to Cinefex in 1982. ‘It’ll be a high-speed servo-drive system capable of going from one end of the track to the other in maybe five seconds… so you can do very fast moves… The Rama camera will run 42 frames a second in motion control, so we’ll be able to do shots involving actors or smoke or things – any kind of shot where 42 frames a second would be sufficient.’ The camera can be identified in several behind-the-scenes photographs from the production of Return of the Jedi, set up for shooting ship miniatures including the Mon Calamari cruiser, the Rebel’s Blockade Runner and Jabba’s sail barge.
Markings and paint scratches present on the camera today are visible in behind-the-scenes photographs of the Rama camera in use during the production of all three films in the original Star Wars Trilogy. The R6/L6 magazine presently fitted to the camera can be seen in several shotsphotographs of the G-3 Technirama at Elstree Studios and on location in Tunisia and Guatemala. Edlund notes that the magazine displays a small Pignose sticker as he had invented the Pignose portable guitar amplifier prior to commencing starting work at ILM and the mylar stickers apparently made their way onto much of the ILM equipment. It appears that the present flight case was originally used as the flight case forto transport the G-3 Technirama and can be seen in photographs of the crew on location in Norway during production of The Empire Strikes Back. Beyond the Star Wars Trilogy, Edlund indicates that the camera was almost certainly used on other ILM films of the period, including Raiders of the Lost Ark, Dragonslayer, and Poltergeist, remaining part of ILM's camera department throughout the 1990s.
An undisputed masterpiece of modern cinema, Star Wars immediately broke box office records upon release, becoming one of the most successful films of all time and ushering ing in the era of the blockbuster. Renowned film critic Roger Ebert has likened the action-packed space opera to The Birth of a Nation and Citizen Kane in terms of its the film’s status as ‘a technical watershed that influenced many of the movies that came after.’ The innovative techniques pioneered by ILM had pushed the boundaries of what was possible in science fiction filmmaking and would revolutionise the field of visual effects. Integral to ILM’s groundbreaking twin camera motion control system, the Rama camera was responsible for capturing some of the most memorable effects shots in cinema history. Thanks to their trail-blazing work in developing the motion control camera system, both Dykstra and Edlund received Academy Awards for Best Visual Effects for Star Wars in 1978. For continuing to break new ground in the production of the second and third instalments in the Star Wars trilogy, Edlund and Muren would be recognised for their exceptional contribution to visual effects with Special Achievement Academy Awards for both The Empire Strikes Back in 1981 and Return of the Jedi in 1984.
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
M. Rubin, Droidmaker: George Lucas and the Digital Revolution, Gainesville, 2006.
‘Technicolor three-colour 35mm Camera’, The Kodak Collection at the National Media Museum, Bradford. https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co8225572/technicolor-three-colour-35mm-camera.
‘The Technirama Process - Technicolor 100’, written and directed by James Layton, George Eastman House in association with Technicolor, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Y8JZ_w9a-k&t=1s.