There's an episode of Bewitched where Sam and Darrin are on a sidewalk in Manhattan (outside McMann & Tate), and you can see the Santa Monica Mountains in the distance. I think it was decades (and stills online) before anybody noticed. You were looking at Elizabeth Montgomery's face, and nothing else mattered. She was the special visual effect.
Westerns apparently had the opposite problem: they needed a mountain and there wasn't one, so they built it from scratch. Bonanza shot there:
www.facebook.com
On Star Trek when the view revealed too much, they stuck an obstruction in front of the camera. "Arena" probably had telephone poles or some Earthly building out beyond the location set:
"Metamorphosis" had studio lights above where the cyclorama ended:
Both of those solutions are ugly. But it's great when they covered the sound stage with a gorgeous matte painting:
One thing they never did was a neat trick where a miniature set is put right in front of the camera, and the more-distant actors are visible through an opening in the miniature, so it looks like they are inside a giant, elaborate sci-fi set. It can look more real than a painting. I wish Star Trek or Lost in Space had done that at least once. I can't remember what movie did it, looking down a seemingly giant sci-fi hallway toward the actors. Probably a James Cameron picture.
Westerns apparently had the opposite problem: they needed a mountain and there wasn't one, so they built it from scratch. Bonanza shot there:
Great moments in television and movies | For years I wondered where was the location for this Western town, seen in dozens of Western films; most memorably as Virginia City in the long runnin... | Facebook
For years I wondered where was the location for this Western town, seen in dozens of Western films; most memorably as Virginia City in the long running series "Bonanza". My only clue was the...
www.facebook.com
On Star Trek when the view revealed too much, they stuck an obstruction in front of the camera. "Arena" probably had telephone poles or some Earthly building out beyond the location set:
"Metamorphosis" had studio lights above where the cyclorama ended:
Both of those solutions are ugly. But it's great when they covered the sound stage with a gorgeous matte painting:
One thing they never did was a neat trick where a miniature set is put right in front of the camera, and the more-distant actors are visible through an opening in the miniature, so it looks like they are inside a giant, elaborate sci-fi set. It can look more real than a painting. I wish Star Trek or Lost in Space had done that at least once. I can't remember what movie did it, looking down a seemingly giant sci-fi hallway toward the actors. Probably a James Cameron picture.
