“The Right Stuff” High tech = not real! The result of the efforts of the special effects staff who achieved overwhelming reality.

The American special effects industry at the time

Next, Kaufman looked for a production company to handle the effects of aircraft and the Mercury spacecraft. At the time, the American special effects industry was seeing the success of Star Wars (1977) and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and the ILM-style method of shooting miniatures against a blue screen using a motion control camera (*2) and overlaying the images on an optical printer was considered the only option (*3).

Kaufman initially approached the new ILM, which had been founded by George Lucas in San Francisco, but the company was already fully occupied with productions such as Star Trek: The Motion Picture II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), ET (1982), Boltergeist (1982), and Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983).

"Star Wars: Return of the Jedi" Trailer

They also approached several Los Angeles production companies, but they gave up on them because Kaufman was based in San Francisco and it would have been too time-consuming to check the work. They also couldn't come to an agreement on the budget: The Right Stuff's special effects budget was only a quarter of that of Return of the Jedi.

*2 Now that CG has become commonplace, some people may not be familiar with the concept of a motion control camera. In other words, a camera is attached to a device such as an industrial robot, and controlled by a computer to enable precise repetitive movements. Although it is rarely used for shooting miniatures these days, it is widely used for shooting scenes that would be difficult for a human cameraman to perform, such as high-speed camerawork. Major manufacturers include:Mark Roberts Motion Controland so on.

*3 Conversely, techniques such as suspending models from piano wire, which are known in Japan as puppetry techniques, had disappeared in the United States, and it was difficult to find companies or engineers who could do this.

USFX is established

Kaufman began storyboarding anyway, contracting out the work to Gary Gutierrez and Drew Takahashi's Colossal Pictures in San Francisco, a small production company founded in 1976 that made animated television shorts, corporate logos, station IDs, commercials, and film titles.

Kaufman showed Gutierrez 30 to 40 films and videos as materials, including Jet Pilot (1957) produced by Howard Hughes, in which Yeager flew an F-86 Sabre for the film (and also had an accident) and in which an actual X-1 appeared; Supersonic Jet ( 1952) directed by David Lean; and Flying Tigers (1942) directed by David Miller, as well as other aviation action films, including military and NASA archive footage.

Jet Pilot trailer

After completing over 2,000 storyboards, Gutierrez learned from Kaufman that the special effects company had not yet been decided, and offered to set up a production company specifically for this film. Thus, USFX was born in September 1981.

Making of miniatures