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Special effect in scene with Hungry Joe (spoiler)

posted 18 years ago by trevor-150
13 replies | jump to latest

There is a well-known scene in which McWatt, flying an airplane at low altitude in an attempt to scare Yossarian, accidentally chops Hungry Joe in half, who had been standing on a platform in the water. In the scene, we see Joe's legs (minus the rest of his body) pause for a moment and then suddenly fall into the ocean.

If Catch-22 had been filmed today, this special effect would almost certainly be done in post-production with computer imaging, but of course such technology did not exist in 1970. It is quite remarkable, then, that the filmmakers were able to produce such a convincing effect, and I wondered how they pulled it off.

Switching to the commentary track of the Catch-22 DVD, I skipped to Hungry Joe's final scene and was delighted to hear one of the filmmakers explaining the secret behind this special effect. Unfortunately, I couldn't understand his explanation!

He said something about a projection, that the actor playing Hungry Joe was simply holding up a screen. Indeed, when I stepped through the scene frame by frame, I noticed that there seemed to be a kind of halo around the area where the actor might be holding a projector screen.

But this still doesn't fully explain how the special effect was done. Was the projection onto the screen simply an image of the landscape behind Hungry Joe? That makes sense, but how were they able to mask the actor's top half when he fell into the ocean? If he were holding a screen, it seems like it should have been visible at that point.

I don't quite get it. Can anyone explain it to me?

[–] His_Name_Is_Zabo 18 years ago

My best guess is that after he was hit, they got a pair of legs to fall far him.

"I got some words of power from my book of magic."-JFK

[–] Marlonius 18 years ago

He was supposedly holding up a front projection screen. It's tough to explain without diagrams, but front projection works via this screen, a projector, a half silvered mirror at 45 degrees between them, and finally the principal photography camera. In short, the background that appears on the screen (in this case, sky) is projected at the 45 degree mirror, and bounces onto the screen the actor is holding. The front projection screen then bounces that image back to the main camera. Since the 45 degree mirror is half silvered only, the principal camera can see through it. Like I said, it's tough to explain without diagrams and a certain knowledge of photography. Do a web search under "front projection photography" and you should find something. The technique was commonly used from the late 60s up until the mid 80s, noteably on 2001 (1968), Catch 22, Superman 1-3, etc.

Marlon

[–] stlennon 18 years ago

In the film version McWatt kills Hungry Joe. In the book is it Hungry Joe that is killed or another character? I can't remember.

[–] negatron-1 18 years ago

In the book version Hungry Joe is killed by Huple's cat.

Kid Sampson is killed by McWatt from what I remember.

[–] badarsemotherk 18 years ago

Exactly right, negatron. Always thought it was funny he dies via Huple's cat after all those nightmares about it lol.

I would like to give you a brief history of the inside of my pants.
-Stephen Hawking

[–] johnflewis 17 years ago

I remember reading an article in an aviation magazine about the filming of Catch-22, circa 1971. Might have been Air Progress. The lightplane (a Stinson, I think) was really flown into a blood-filled mannequin on the raft, and the pilot (Frank Tallman, I think)had difficulty controlling the aircraft after the impact. When he landed, the dummy's hand was found wedged in the elevator linkage. Tallman and Nichols went to extraordinary lengths to make the flying scenes technically correct. All of the B-25s were completely operational- all gun turrets, bomb bay doors, bomb release units, etc, were functional, and this was 10 years after the the USAF retired the type. The films pilots really flew formation takeoffs on a narrow strip, really dropped inert ordnance. A remake of this movie would be impossible today, and heretical.

[–] johnflewis 17 years ago

The magazine article I mentioned was written by Frank Tallman, and first published in 1973. Tallman died in '78. The same article has just be reprinted in a magazine called "Warbirds International", published by Challenge Publications. I found my copy at a Barnes & Noble. Look for the May/June 08 issue, volume 27-#4. The death of Hungry Joe scene is described on page 55.

[–] suzycreamcheese1 17 years ago

It was actually Kid Sampson in the book...have no idea why they changed it to Hungry Joe for the movie.

[–] crazyj89 17 years ago

Probably because they didn't have a Kid Sampson in the movie, but they had mentioned Hungry Joe before in the film.

[–] ridge-m-1 10 years ago

During the filming, the Hungry Joe character had a few additional scenes but Mike Nichols and Seth Allen had a falling out during filming and most of his footage was left on the cutting room floor. You can see him briefly taking pictures of Dreedle's WAC. One also notices that Seth Allen is uncredited in the list of the cast.

[–] LJ27 11 years ago

Visual effects supervisor Albert Whitlock combined the two shots of the live actor falling in the water with the dummy legs with a torso full of guts spilling out by using rotoscoped mattes. These mattes are literally painted frame by frame on animation cels and the blacked out area of the film is used to add something else to the shot as it is all done on the same negative. Basically, the guts spilling out, are added to the shot of the real person falling into the water. The screen the actor holds over his top half, obscures it and replaces it with real sky. The rotoscope artist, a woman who worked for Whitlock, her name was Millie something, and she was almost never credited for her work, was doing nothing but painting black blobs of ink on animation cels. When the mattes were photographed, the film was rewound, and they added whatever was needed to the shot in the unexposed area in the mattes. The woman must have had the patience of Job because it is a
long, gruelling task. Whitlock ran a small department staffed by Bill Taylor, Sid Dutton and this Millie lady. Since he was a vice-president at Universal, he could run his shop without any interference and was free to take on jobs from other studios such as CATCH 22, which was made by Paramount I think. At the time, Whitlock was considered the most cutting-edge effects artist in the business. He had the reputation in the industry that ILM does today as being able to tackle any problem. I think the effects work in CATCH 22 holds up even today.

[–] ridge-m-1 11 years ago

I witnessed the scene being filmed as I was an extra on this picture. The information provided above by johnflewis is correct and the stunt pilot was indeed Frank Tallman.

[–] blisteringlogic 10 years ago

It's called green screen and they've been doing it long before Catch-22.