Practical effects

David Kalat

It entails painting part of the scene onto a plane of optically clear glass and filming through it to create an in-camera superimposition, as opposed to an optical effect or process shot in which different aspects are combined after the fact in the lab. Tsuburaya uses both techniques throughout Godzilla, and you have to bear in mind that neither technique had been used very much at all at that point previously. Tsuburaya's team was starting from scratch. There was no body of experience to draw on.

18:29 · jump to transcript →

David Kalat

This is another in-camera superimposition. The villagers in the puppet Godzilla were photographed at two different times, but on the same strip of celluloid. The result is a far superior looking image as compared to combining the plates in a lab, but it's a far riskier proposition. If anything goes wrong on either side and the film is ruined, you have to do the whole thing over again. But the art of Japanese optical effects was spotty at best, so the use of such opticals is very limited.

22:20 · jump to transcript →

David Kalat

The film stock they used was exceptionally soft and vulnerable to dust. Fingerprints and hair, any kind of foreign particle could permanently mar the picture. Every time you handled the film, you increased its risk of contact to airborne contaminants. In-camera multiple exposures, basically any time Godzilla or a model are seen in the same shot as a living actor or a real patch of city, magnified the dust problem.

22:48 · jump to transcript →

when Lillian Gish fires the shotgun and goes off yelping into the barn. Lawton thought that was hilarious, but nobody else really did. I know I wondered about that, too. Lillian Gish felt the same way as you did. She said, in Griffith's day, you made as big a success, if not more, if you played a villain. Actually, Lawton filmed that scene twice. The first time, Mitchum runs out the screen door and doesn't do that. But the second time, Lawton says, don't forget the yips this time. And then Mitchum runs out and does that cackling laugh.

8:49 · jump to transcript →