The Art of the Hollywood Backdrop

The definitive at the back of-the-scenes historical past of considered one of Hollywood’s so much carefully guarded cinematic secrets and techniques in the end discovered—painted backdrops and the scenic artists who introduced them to the massive monitor.

In virtually each and every characteristic movie of Hollywood’s golden age, from The Wizard of Oz to North through Northwest to Cleopatra to The Sound of Music, painted backings have yes moviegoers that what they’re seeing—whether or not the incredible roads of Ounces, the presidents of Mount Rushmore, or historic Egyptian kingdoms—is actually actual. Those backings are without delay meant to move the target audience and but stay unseen for what they in point of fact are. The Artwork of the Hollywood Backdrop finds the hidden global and creators of those masterpieces, lengthy-guarded as a distinct results mystery through the main studios akin to MGM, Warner Brothers, Common, Columbia, twentieth Century Fox, and Paramount.

Regardless of the ongoing use of hand-painted backings in lately’s motion pictures, together with the massive-funds Interstellar and Lemony Snicket’s A Collection of Unlucky Events amongst many others, virtual era is starting to supplant the Artwork shape. So that you could maintain the irreplaceable wisdom of scenic masters, Karen Maness and Richard Isackes, in collaboration with the Artwork Administrators Guild, have compiled a definitive historical past of the craft, entire with interviews of the surviving artists. It is a wealthy undiscovered historical past—a historical past replete with competing Artwork departments, dynastic scenic households, and origins stretching again to the flicks of Méliès, Edison, Sennett, Chaplin, and Fairbanks.

Stuffed duvet to hide with over 300 photographs,The Artwork of the Hollywood Backdrop is superbly packaged as a hardcover e book with slipcase.