Albert Whitlock, the real hero

And it all looks real unlike todays CGI work.

Could not agree more about Albert Whitlock. I was his cameraman for 10 years until he retired; Hindenburg was my first film with him. As I have said elsewhere, he had the gift for creating illusions with simple methods. For example, when the Hindenburg dumps its balast tanks, the "water" is actually a spoonful of fine sllver sand.

We could do this film much better with today's technologies, but as far as "bang for the buck" goes, Al made a very small budget go a long way with some wonderful artistic effects. The shot showing the Hindenburg flying over the Jersey Coast is still thrilling to me 31 years later.

Bill Taylor ASC
Illusion Arts Inc.

I posted my comments on the general Hindenberg page,and I agree 1000 percent
with your comments.

Albert Whitlock I am always in awe of, he certainly beefed up the quality of Dune's special effects of his featured work. The work by the other effects
people on Dune were hit & miss, quality wise (but mostly miss).

Whitlock's work on Hindenberg is stunning still with passage of time and as other people have commented, excells in its realism compared with much CGI fare today which seems intent on drawing attention to the fact it is CGI.

A good example would be Pearl Harbor where the bomb dropped out of the
Japanese plane is followed POV straight down the smoke stack of the
Arizona. The artfull use of CGI is to re-strain from doing sequences such as
the one in Pearl Harbor. The idea of exploiting a new special effects technology is by NOT drawing attention to itself as a special effect, but rather by using it as a tool in combination with other effects.

Of course there are folks wowed by CGI for its own sake, and I'm sure they would comment on the shot in Pearl Harbor saying,"That's a great CGI shot!!!"

In my book, if someone reacts that way to a special effect shot, the shot has failed.

I think in the film, The Aviator, Robert Legato has got it right in his approach to the use of CGI in conjunction with other methods of special effects. A prime example of Legato's approach to handling special effects is in, The Aviator, for the crash sequence of the U.S. Army spy plane XF-11, a test plane Howard Hughes crash landed in a Beverly Hills neighboorhood on July 7, 1946.

Legato had commented that he dilberately did not want to do it in a CGI style where the sequence is done in one seamless sequence with no cut-aways.
He built several different scale minatures of homes, and close up sections that were crashed into by the XF-11, as well as a large model of the XF-11 that had
break away sections. His philosophy was that he wanted to cover the event as if
he had several cameras actually on location filming from different angles, cutting between the camera positions, having a close up section of the landing gear strut tearing out the top of a terra cotta roof.
It was all done outdoors with motion control under natural light.

Legato used CGI in The Aviator where he thought it was appropriate but not to the exclusion of any other techniques.

I completely agree. I have always admired his work. "The Hindenburg" contains some of the most elegant and beautiful special effects I have ever seen, well deserving of the Oscar. Mr. Whitlock's work in so many other films such as "Earthquake" and "The Birds" is wonderful as well.

Add me to the list of fans who greatly appreciated Messers Whitlock and Meddings.

I too have a distaste for CGI applied like ketchup at a truck stop diner.

Bill, do you know if Albert had an apartment on the upper east side of Manhattan in the late 1970's? Feel free to PM me your reply should you care to. Thanks