lew@ihuxr.UUCP (Lew Mammel, Jr.) (11/03/83)
I thought the effects in The Right Stuff were terrible. Some of the cockpit scenes in the beginning were OK, but the way they tried to depict the flight itself was poor. They would show a plane way way up there in a crystal clear sky, then cut to a pilot's eye view zooming horizontally through broken cumulus. This broken cumulus was used as staple high speed shot and could pop up at any time. Also, they would show the plane zooming by the camera, about 50 feet away. If you were actually positioned there, of course, it would go by between film frames. (This shot is in the TV ads) I was most disappointed in the Mercury orbit effects. These had none of the "look" that the real NASA footage from Gemini and Apollo had. The capsule was bathed in a soft red glow - none of that distinctive brilliant sunshine effect. I think its interesting that 2001, which was made during the heyday of the space program, looks a lot more like the real thing than The Right Stuff, which was evidently going for some sort of impressionistic effect. The result frankly reminded me of the cosmic scenes in the recent Hercules movie. Perhaps someone can bear me out on that. Glenn's firey reentry was pretty hokey too. The capsule looked like it had been soaked in pitch and thrown flaming from a catapult. Also, they made no attempt to depict the retro-fire or any of the attitude control. the capsule was just shown lazily tumbling along, right up to reentry. In general, there was a total lack of respect for the technical achievements being depicted. The whole thing was viewed from a political and psychological perspective, which is ok, but I'd rather watch 3 hrs of NASA footage. Lew Mammel, Jr. ihuxr!lew