How'd they do the tiny people in '35?

Pretorius did not hold the king between his fingers. He picked up the king with a pair of forceps, which greatly simplifies the building of a giant prop that looks reasonable in the shots that are closer in on the king.

I think (though I would have to double check that sequence, just examining it from that point of view instead of watching the movie) that they probably did it with a combination of masking to combine two shots and judicious editing choices.

I think that at that time they still tended to combine a couple different shots by doing the combination in the camera. To that that, they would figure out exactly where they wanted the dividing line between the two shots (and this would typically be facilitated in the set design stage), literally mask one section of the lens so that no light would hit that part of the film, shoot one side of the scene, rewind the film, mask the other side of the lens, and shoot the other side of the scene. Keeping the mask boundaries steady enough for that to work meant bolting down the camera; note that the camera is never moving in those scenes like it is in many other scenes.

So for the king - forceps bit, they would figure to go through the above process with the masks being a top / bottom sort of arrangement. They get the shot of Pretorius starting to reach for the king with forceps while the king is trying to break into the queen's jar. Just at the instant when the tip of the forceps is about to cross their masking boundary, they cut to a shot of just the king with the giant forceps coming from the top of the shot and picking him up. Then they cut back to a masked combination shot of Pretorius holding a miniature king doll by forceps and moving him toward the king's jar. Just as the king's feet are about to cross the mask boundary, they cut to a closer shot of the king's jar with the king being dropped back into it. Then, finally, back out to Pretorius holding empty forceps again.

Note that when Pretorius was picking up and moving the jars containing the miniature people, they always were inside of their velvet covers so that you couldn't see the little people while the jars were moving with changing backgrounds behind them.

Also, note the practical matter that, when you are combining shots in the camera, a mistake in the second shot means that you have to go back and start over with re-shooting the first shot.

The original King Kong did some really interesting things to get their actors into the same shots with the stop-action animation of Kong fighting other giant creatures.

Yeah I was really impressed... look more real than anything CG these days.

G. Méliès was already doing the same in some of his "shorts" 25+ years before...

Just watch all the work he's done as a first timer, you won't believe it! :)

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That was as amazing scene .. just saw it a few min ago and it's the very first time that I have ever seen it .. for that time period , it looked amazing .

......


I'd like a chance t' shoot at an educated man once in my life .

There was one thing I noticed for the first time when I watched the blue-ray on a 60" HD screen, and that is the fact that if you look very carefully when he picks up the king, you can just barely see where they painted out the wires holding the king as he is lifted.

While digital wire removal is commonplace in current films, and has been used to a lesser extent in pre-digital films of the 60's, 70's and 80's where they were animated out by hand; it is incredible to see evidence of such attention to detail in a film of this vintage.

"If you don't know the answer -change the question."

I dotn know this for a fact BUT this is what I'm guessing

they shot pratorious interacting with the not really there miniature people

then had seven actors in seven HUGE Jars containing real sized chairs and were placed in front of a screen that had pratorious's footage rolling behind them

The good special effects aside, this sequence is the only one in the movie that I would cut out completely. While we know and accept that the basic premise of the Frankenstein story is fantastic, the little people... king, queen, bishop, etc. "grown from cultures"... is totally unbelievable and throws the otherwise good script into the realm of the absurd.