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

Friendship 7 re-entry scene

In this way, more and more shots were approved. However, one thing that still hasn't been resolved is the re-entry scene of Friendship 7.

Various experiments were repeated, including ideas such as burning metal powder used in fireworks and attaching Scotchlite (*10) to the bottom of a capsule to emit light. Furthermore, in order to express the atmosphere of the heat shield and retropropulsion rocket melting down, various materials were considered, including shaving cream foam, mercury frozen with liquid nitrogen, ice, ice cream, and jelly, but none of them were successful. It ends in vain.

In the end, spraying the capsule with liquid nitrogen and lighting it orange seemed to be the most promising method. Therefore, they created a mechanism to emit liquid nitrogen from around the heat shield and from the retropropulsion rocket, and by blowing the gas out with a blower and using strong lighting from behind, a realistic re-entry scene was created. The glowing atmosphere of the retropropulsion rocket and its connecting cables is expressed using Scotchlite.

"The Right Stuff" (c) 1983 The Ladd Company. All.rights reserved.

However, this method could only express close-ups and medium shots. For this reason, the editorial team expressed a desire to ``want more detailed pictures.'' In order to get a sense of that image, the staff carefully looked at a huge amount of film recording of the re-entry. Kaufman came across footage of a falling capsule crackling and burning like fireworks, and requested, ``I want that feeling.''

With a direction in sight, Gutierrez takes on a new test with Fitcher. This was a rather wild experiment in which a 30cm-sized fireproof capsule was coated with a suitably mixed combustible material, ignited, and then dropped from the third floor of the building that housed the USFX and photographed at high speed.

Kaufman was overjoyed with this result, and from there he began working on special effects, mainly outdoors. Pyrotechnician Thane Morris and special effects man Dave Pear coated a 30cm aluminum capsule with a combustible mixture of titanium and magnesium powder, steel wool, and rubber cement. Then, they parked an aerial work vehicle in a downtown parking lot and stretched the wire taut diagonally from a height of 24 meters. They then waited until nightfall, lit the capsule, slid it down, and took high-speed photographs from various angles.

*10 Scotchlite is a material used in markers for optical motion capture and front projection screens. It is widely used in everyday life, such as road signs and nighttime traffic safety products. The surface is lined with tiny beads, which have the property of retroreflection, which reflects light only in the same direction as the incident angle. Therefore, in order for this to emit light, it is necessary to light it from the same position as the camera. Therefore, by placing a light at 90 degrees to the camera and installing a half mirror at a 45 degree angle in front of the lens, the optical axes of the camera and light are aligned. By doing this, the areas where the Scotchlight is pasted look like they are shining brightly on their own , rather than reflecting light.

Outdoor photography of aircraft models

Gutierrez took this success as a hint and thought it could be applied to depicting aircraft. Then, just like last time, Fitcher conducted an experiment in which a hard urethane model of the X-1A was dropped from the third floor and photographed from below. By generating Smoke and creating a pseudo-cloud in front of the camera, we were able to capture a very realistic image of the X-1A popping out of the cloud. This worked so well that Gutierrez decided to try it out on models of the XS-1 and NF-104A. Kaufman was really happy and the direction of the project became very clear.

Gutierrez also came up with the idea of ​​shooting a model falling from a window from above. So he had Holman paint a picture of the Mojave Desert on a gigantic 18 x 12 meter canvas, and photographed the X-1A falling out of control from above.

"The Right Stuff" (c) 1983 The Ladd Company. All.rights reserved.

As Gutierrez gradually became more daring, he took on the challenge of watching the NF-104A fly against the backdrop of the real sky. They prepared a large number of models and shot them with crossbows made from aluminum rails and surgical rubber tubing. The NF-104A aircraft is made from a commercially available plastic model with aluminum tape pasted to give it a metallic luster, and more than 70 kits are in use. To prevent it from colliding with the ground and breaking, staff spread out parachute cloth to hold it, but if it breaks, they repair it on the spot and the parachute is being used to its limits.

Commercially available model kits are also used for the B-29, the mother aircraft of the X-1A. A variable-speed motor was installed to obtain the appropriate rotation speed so that the propeller could rotate, and a timer mechanism was also installed to automatically drop the X-1A. This B-29 is suspended from a wire from a height of 4.5m behind the USFX, and its camera shakes while taking pictures at 4x speed. (*11)

By the way, a similar scene with the XS-1 was taken in a studio.

*11 For American special effects enthusiasts in the 1980s, the act of hanging miniatures with piano wire was a difficult choice, as it symbolized the method of the previous generation. In fact, Holman said, ``It seemed childish to hang a model in the air.'' They believed that the theory pioneered by ILM, Douglas Trumbull, and others, that ``the model is fixed so that it does not move, and the motion control camera moves,'' was a new generation technique. However, the scene where the X-1A is separated from the B-29 is the most realistic image in the film.

Shooting in more open areas