"Robert A. Heinlein - Shooting Destination Moon (Article)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

Up went the costs again.


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Even with the set entirely тАЬwildтАЭ it took much, much longer to shift from one
angle to another angle than it does on a normal movie set, as those panels
had to be bolted and unbolted, heavy lights had to be rigged and unriggedтАФ
and th├з costs go sky high. You can figure overhead in a sound stage at about
a thousand dollars an hour, so, when in the movie you see the pilot turn his
head and speak to -someone, then glance down at his instruments,
whereupon the camera also glances down to let you see what he is talking
about, remember how much time and planning and money it took to let you
glance at the instrument board. This will help to show why motion picture
theaters sell popcorn to break even
тАв and why science fiction pictures are not made every day. Realism is
confoundedly expensive.

Nor did the costs and the headaches with the control room stop there. As
every reader of Astounding knows, when a rocket ship is not blasting,
everything in it floats freeтАФтАЭfree fall.тАЭ Men float aroundтАФwhich meant piano
wires inside that claustrophobic little closet. It was necessary at one point to
show a man floating out from his acceleration couch and into the center of
the room.
Very well;, unbolt a panel to let in the wires. Wups! While a spaceship in
space has no тАЬupтАЭ or тАЬdown,тАЭ sound stage three on Las Palmas Avenue in
Hollywood certainly does have; supporting wires must run verticallyтАФsee
Isaac Newton. To float the man out of the tight little space he was in would
require the wires to turn a corner. Now we needed a Hindu fakir capable of
the Indian rope trick.
The special effects man, Lee Zavitz, has been doing impossible tricks for
years. He turned the entire set, tons of steel, on its side and pulled the actor
out in what would-normally be a horizontal direction. Easy!
So easy that the art department had to design, double gimbals capable of
housing the entire set, engineer it, have it built of structural steel, have it
assembled inside a sound stage since it was too big to go through the truck
doors. Machinery had to be designed and installed to turn the unwieldy thing.
Nothing like it had ever been seen in Hollywood, but it did enable a man to
float out from a confined space and, later, to walk all around the sides of the
control room with тАЬmagneticтАЭ boots.
This double gimbals rig, three stories high, put- the control room set high in
the air, so the carpenters had to build platforms around it and the camera had
to be mounted on a giant boomтАФone so huge, so fancy, and so expensive
that Cecil B. de Mule came over to inspect it. The camera itself had to be
mounted in gimbals before it was placed on the boom, so that it might turn
with the setтАФor the other way, for some special effects. This meant removing
its soundproof blimp, which meant dubbing the sound track.

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(тАЬWho cares? ItтАЩs only money.тАЭ DonтАЩt say that in the presence of the business
manager, heтАЩs not feeling well.)