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Old School Visual Effects: The Cloud Tank (2010)

99 points by exvi

by steve1977

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I vaguely remember having tried this myself with a very small aquarium and liquid latex (IIRC), filmed with my Super 8 cam in slow motion (which meant 36 frames instead of 18).
The results weren't that impressive, but it was fun, as was all the Super 8 stuff. I kind of miss those times and I see at least one other poster seems to have similar recollections :)
To add another nice example of this effect, which is where I learned about it, is The NeverEnding Story (1984). There it's used for the "nothing" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPfQogtS2Eo) and also in the opening of the US release (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCgfRC6gHtI). The original German release only had text on a black background.
It might not look the most realistic, but IMHO it still looks beautiful.

by xfeeefeee

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Really cool to see this here. I always loved these in movies. There are a bunch of really interesting artists making use of ink ink liquid, oils, chemical reactions etc that create beautiful abstract pieces. Fitting for HN, Roman De Giuli even creates his own machines. Check out Emitter https://youtu.be/VMd608zCEWc

by JKCalhoun

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Close Encounters of the Third Kind was indeed when I first noticed this effect. It was dramatic and cool and all that, but pretty obviously an effect. Coupling it with Raiders of the Lost Ark and the effect almost pigeon-holes a film to be of that era.
I'm unsurprised Douglas Trumbull was behind the Close Encounters effect since his work on 2001: A Space Odyssey captured his earliest experiments filming tanks of liquids with fluids added. They were fairly effective in Kubrick's film when they appeared to resemble fantastic nebulae, globular clusters…
(And never mind the mind-bending cleverness of how the slit-scan shots were created for 2001.)

by BoredPositron

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If you are interested in old school vfx work there is a great documentary about the early days of vfx called "Light and Magic."

by GarnetFloride

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by mgot

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Great article, big fan of stuff like this. (Recommending Corridors VFX series, for ppl who want something similar).
However, checking the authors "Top/Worst films of the year", being called the "Single Minded Movie Blog" seems fitting, and not in the way they think. Some of the worst movie takes I've seen hahahahh