Tales From the Script
Motion Control for Terrifying ImagesICOM Magazine
February 2002Comic books are an important contributing factor in juvenile delinquency. BatMan and Robin depict a homoerotic relationship. Wonder Woman, a lesbian. Sound like Tipper Gore on the rampage before the last election? Nope. It’s Fredric Wertham railing to the public in 1954 on the decline of American civilization, as he knew it.
The upcoming one-hour documentary for AMC’s American Pop series, "Tales From the Crypt: Horror Comics of the 1950’s" tells the story of EC Comics (Entertaining Comics) and its struggle against the moral crusaders of the day.
The show chronicles EC’s iconoclastic founder, William M. Gaines, and his invention of a whole new genre of comics, using high-quality artwork and writing, through McCarthy-esque U.S. Senate hearings. After EC ceased publication due to the public pressure, Gaines went on to found the popular magazine, "Mad."
Aside from the obvious analogies to modern day computer games and song lyrics, the program shows EC to have been a very influential force on a number of writers and filmmakers, from R.L. Stine and Stephen King to George A. Romero and John Carpenter
"I was too young to be a fan," said the documentary’s producer, Chip Selby, "but I saw a bound collection of EC comics at the library at age 9, and was hooked." After finishing a documentary on the Warren Commission for The History Channel, Selby obtained the rights from Gaines’ daughter and pitched AMC with the idea.
With over 60% of the show being comprised of still images, the issue of how to shoot the motion control was important to Selby. The various photographs presented no particular problems, but the comic books themselves, critical to the show, created a real problem.
Doing motion control on printed material has traditionally caused an objectionable moiré pattern to appear because of the dot patterns (called rosettes) used to mimic large number of colors from just a handful of inks used by the printing press.
Comic books amplify this problem by using larger dots than normal photographs. "I had $6,000 budgeted for camera stand work" said Selby, "but when I shot the first comic book cover, it was impossible to look at the footage and I realized that they would have to be shot some other way."
Selby initially used the motion control feature in his dpsVelocity editor, but like all NLE’s, the resolution of images was limited to the video frame size of 720 by 486 pixels. As he zoomed into the still, the image would get fuzzier.
He eventually found an inexpensive plug-in for his editor called "MovingPicture that solved his problem. MovingPicture took in high-resolution images and allowed him to make moves directly from dpsVelocity’s timeline.
Selby scanned the images using a standard flatbed scanner at a modest 300dpi, which yielded 2000 by 3000 pixel images. He applied a small gaussian blur filter in Photoshop over the images after scanning. "Just enough to get rid of the moiré, but not enough to make the image soft."
Since MovingPicture accepts images up to 4,000 by 4,000, they held up as he zoomed into them. "I tried using After Effects, but MovingPicture output looked better and cleaner," added Selby, "and it was much easier to use and faster. It saved the project."
"Tales From the Crypt: Horror Comics of the 1950’s" will air this October on the AMC network.
© Copyright 2002 by ICOM Inc.
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