Plan 9 From Outer Space (Ed Wood, 1959)

[Bob Furmanek]

Sorry schreck, I'm not playing this time.

The documents are out there, some are even on-line. Happy research!

[HerrSchreck]

Man walks into John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and up into a classroom that is studying the case law in the Wylie Hoffert Career Girls murders. He interrupts:

"The man who is serving time for that murder is not guilty-- your textbooks are wrong."

All eyes turn to this new face who has opened this can of worms:

"How do you know this, sir?"

The man rolls his eyes in disbelief:

"Sorry, I'm not playing this time. The documents are out there, though. Happy research!" he snaps gladly, and exits the room to the sounds of many pill bottles opening, and high windows sliding up.

[denti alligator]

Wikipedia (awesomely trustworthy source!) cites

BoxOffice Barometer. "Plan 9 From Outer Space" February 29, 1960. Pages 117, 130

in claiming that the film was originally matted.

That's all the "documentation" I could fine in one cursory google search.

[HerrSchreck]

Like the Criswell "pattern" mentioned on the last page, another telling frame from the very start of the pic:

:

Originally shot to be the titlecard for "GRAVE ROBBERS FROM OUTER SPACE" note the tombstone very deliberately foregrounded as the "grave" to be "robbed" while the rest are hinted at behind title text. This is a typical Thompson-Woodian clunko setup.

Remember much of this movie started out with Ed Wood & Bela just walking around scamming shots like home movies without a plot (without Thompson).

I wouldn't swear that it wasn't matted in theaters over time. But that means nothing to how it was shot by Ed & Thompson, an academy man if there ever was one (did he even SHOOT a widescreen pic?)

And David-- what could possibly be a bigger fish than Plan 9????

[knives]

And David-- what could possibly be a bigger fish than Plan 9????

Jailbait?

[denti alligator]

Schreck I'm on your side on this debate, but arguing by way of these framings seems a bit odd, no? I mean, if Wood/Thompson took that much care in framing a shot, wouldn't they have avoided leaving boom mics, etc. in the frame?

[HerrSchreck]

If ever there was a red herring in the siscussion, it’s this. Every time a boom mic or shadow appears in a film, does it mean you’re watching it in the wrong aspect ratio? Of course not. I’ve seen boom mics/boom mic shadows in Ophuls (La Ronde), Tarkovsky (The Mirror), Sargent (Marcus Nelson), too many to count really.. not to mention crew members (Raging Bull, Murnau’s Faust). If booms’ visibility is proof that Plan 9 was filmed with widescreen in mind, the mic shadow would appear in more than just a shot or two when watching in 1.33 (and the only one I know of is the cockpit scene).

And a static still long shot of a graveyard (it may even just be a duped single photograph and not a legnth of exposed graveyard graveyard footage from a nailed down pov) is a lot different that a shot with talking actors, with movement, with everything done in a single take.

Mic shadows happen to the best of them, and it means nothing but a minor slip. Wood is famous for letting these minor slips go, due to “creative license”, his favorite phrase on the set before stunned cast and crew who were expecting an retake of a disastrous take.

[denti alligator]

Yeah, I reconsidered what I wrote once I saw the shadow of a mic in Ford's Rio Grande last night.

[HarryLong]

The one I recall most clearly is in Fred Zinneman's JULIA during a boating scene where it pokes in quite a bit & quite obviously from the lower corner of the frame. I couldn't believe that a film that was that expensive had such a gaff in it.
BTW: Why the hell did they even need a boom in "Dancing in the Dark?" Fred & Cyd are dancing to playback & there's no dialogue!

[HerrSchreck]

The worst actual boom I saw was in Sargent's TV movie MARCUS NELSON MURDERS... there's a scene where Louis Humes is first being brought into the police station for the very first time, and behind the hallway entrance to the stairs a handheld mic boom leans in from behind the wall so blatantly I thought there were supposed to be TV news reporters converging on the station to cover a murder or press conference or something.. until I realized...

[GaryC]

The one I recall most clearly is in Fred Zinneman's JULIA during a boating scene where it pokes in quite a bit & quite obviously from the lower corner of the frame. I couldn't believe that a film that was that expensive had such a gaff in it.

Read Walter Murch's and Michael Ondaatje's book The Conversations. Murch was the editor on Julia and mentions that very error. He ordered an optical to hide it. Zinnemann thought that no-one would notice it. They compromised: the DP (Douglas Slocombe) would watch the film and if he commented on this error then Zinnemann would authorise Murch's optical to remove it. Slocombe didn't notice the camera crew's boat poking into frame, so it remains in the film to this day.

[Vic Pardo]

BTW: Why the hell did they even need a boom in "Dancing in the Dark?" Fred & Cyd are dancing to playback & there's no dialogue!

Well, he did indicate in his post that it could have been a moving crane that caused the shadow.

Anyway, the only time I've ever seen a mike in the shot is when the projectionist had the film framed wrong in the projector and you saw the top of the frame when it should have been matted out by the projector gate.

[HarryLong]

Slocombe didn't notice the camera crew's boat poking into frame, so it remains in the film to this day.

Jeez, that's right. It's not just the mic it's the tip of the boat! (Been a few years since I saw JULIA.)

From what I know it was standard practice to keep a live mike going through playback to prerecord numbers to capture a wild track. Generally even the foot movement/tap noises were postdubbed but Hal Bourne and Astaire for instance convinced their directors at RKO to keep the practice so it was available for foley, if needed.

I hadn't though of that, it makes sense (even though they aren't tapping in that sequence - one of my favorites from the entire MGM musical catalogue, btw).