My dad was a WWII vet and he enjoyed this show. I was 10 yrs old when it started. I never missed an episode watching with him. I watch reruns now with memories of my dad. Thanks for the explanation of forced perspective. Cool device!
Forced perspective and matte painting are two “old school” techniques still used today, even in films and TV shows liberally laced with CGI. Thanks, Rick, for this fascinating and informative tutorial!
When you binge watch that first season HH DVD, you will see, in the first episodes a group of actors working together, then jelling as a team, and by the end of the first season you can see that these men really enjoy each other's company-they are true and fast friends.
Hogan: "Ok lets set the charges and blow up these barrels. That will take out the aircraft. Newkirk: But Colonel, those planes must be a quarter mile away? Carter: No they're not...they're right behind the barrels...See? (reaches through the chain link and wobbles the cardboard cutout). Hogan and Newkirk: CARTER!
I first learned about Forced Perspective from an imagineer at Disney back when Disneyland was closed on Mondays. He invited me to lunch and had security let me drive in. Driving down Main Street was a thrill. The windows that i thought were full size were much smaller. Years later i was blessed to have brunch with John Hench (creator of Tomorrowland and French Quarter). He talked about forced perspective but the best memory was that you can blindfold him and release him anywhere in the park and he can tell you which land he is in. The magic was they intentionally used different surfaces to let you subconsciously feel where you were at. When i had brunch above Pirates, his badge had a 55 year pin. He mentioned how many tv shows used the technique as well. Thanks for sharing.
They also use forced perspective on Main Street to make it looklonger and also to make the castle look larger. Thery do this by making the buildings get a bit smaller in scale as you move down Main Street and get closer to the castle. So the buildings at the end of Main Street are actually at smaller scale than the ones at the beginning, but it's small enough of a difference that you don't notice it except for the effect it achieves.
What a great experience you had! Thank you for sharing the insight you were given as to the different techniques that were used at Disneyland to create the illusions at the park. I was born in So Cal the same year Disneyland opened. So it is very much a part of my childhood memories. It sounds like you got to have brunch at Club 33, above Pirates of the Caribbean. When I was a teenager, I got to eat there a few times with my parents. I loved the secrecy of it-needing to push a button at an intercom to be let in at a door that appeared to be just a part of the street facade.
@@SandraHof Sandra, I was born the same year as you. I used to have annual passes for many years, even when I lived in other parts of the country. If you ever get a chance, go to City Hall and ask them about "Walking in Walt's Footsteps". It's a private walking tour that tells you many things. We even got a ride in the Lilly Belle train car around the park. Back when they were closed on Mondays, I had a chance to meet an imagineer friend for lunch and he had me drive inside the gates and park next to his office. We took a driving tour around the park - even down Main Street in my VW bug. Even got to walk through some of the control rooms in the park. Not to drag on long, I'll share one funny story. Underneath Country Bear there was a control room that had a patch panel where you could redirect sound effects to other locations. One night after closing, someone patched the bear snoring at the entrance to Bear Country and sent the sound to Mr. Lincoln. When security was making their rounds, they heard someone snoring in the hall and called for backup. There are so many stories around the park. Hopefully you can get the tour.
In regards to the force perspective on the Disney castle. From what I learned Disney was forced to give the castle force perspective. Florida has a building code on heights of structures do to aircraft. Disney wanted to build it higher which is OK but the regulations would required him to put a flashing light on the top for low flying aircraft. Disney didn't want to put a flashing red light on top of the castle. So he built the castle just high enough just under the limit and used force perspective to give it the illusion of it being higher. Tom Dutkiewicz
I have such deeply held affection for Hogan's Heros....after high school I was working at a job on 2nd shift prior to leaving for the Navy, and my mom also worked 2nd shift... we would come home and watch it together every night after work and it was such a bonding experience for us.... some of the best memories I have of me and my mom.... the forced perspective back then was so well done at times, that it took you right along with the story and you got lost in the fantasy of it all....and at others...well, it just added to the tongue in cheek fun of the program
Remember the ceremony at the end of Star Wars? Most of the people were painted in (on the sides) in a forced perspective glass painting. Others were photographed multiple times in different places, to give the impression of throngs...
That's called a matte painting and that technique was used extensively throughout the original trilogy. It's still used today, except instead of painting on panes of glass, it's done on a computer. But the concept is still the same, it's just the medium that's changed.
I did not notice the forced perspective in this episode but with our new high definition TV's with huge screens I find myself noticing more of this special effect. Excellent video Rick!! 👍👍
I remember watching this as a kid. On forced perspective, I did figure out that the planes were cutouts. I used to use force perspective in my photo class in high school back in the early 80's before any digital. You would put your palm out flat and had a friend walk about 200 ft further back and set it up so that it looks like my friend was resting on my palm. Fun times.
Rick, just remember that the original "Star Trek" came out about this same time. Special Effects were so primitive they rocked the camera to suggest ship movements...
In one episode, it's plainly visible that the real-size fighter planes were made from wooden mock-ups with the clincher being that the propeller is clearly a flat, plywood cut-out stuck onto a wooden dowl at the nose of the ersatz airframe. Looked as good as real when we were little kids, though.
Forced perspective was used quite a bit in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. They blended different size props and characters, while moving the set, to create a seamless scene between Frodo and Gandalf
I was going to mention LotR, you beat me to it. The Hobbits in the movie were a combination of little people, kids (I think), and the actual actors standing a certain distance from the "Human" actors and certain lens/camera focus settings to make actors like Elijah Wood and Sean Astin look much smaller than some of their co-stars. I also recall reading/seeing somewhere that Francis Ford Copola also used a lot of forced perspective, and other in camera tricks, in hi Dracula movie. A lot, it not all, of the effects were not only done practically but done on set/in camera as well. He didn't use green/blue screens much in that movie.
As a kid I watched every episode of Hogans Heros on the TV. I knew nothing about forced perspective or any of the other tricks, locations, actors used on the show. I just enjoyed it. Thanks for your TubeTube Channel, it brings back so many enjoyable memories.
Actually, water has been simulated with alcohol when using miniatures like in the movie Tora Tora Tora, because alcohol doesn't have as great a surface tension as actual water.
Rick when I was younger I used to make animated films using stop motion characters and creatures similar to what you would have seen in King Kong or Sinbad films. I also did live actions stop motion similar to things you would see in Benny Hill or Monty Python. I used forced perspective to make things look more exotic or like a fantasy world. I miss those days.
My Uncle was a camera nut when he was a kid. He took a photo of a utility pole and one of my dad. (This was in the mid thirties) He processed the photo that gave the illusion of my dad balancing himself on top of the pole. When my grand-dad saw it he became unglued and almost gave both my dad and uncle a whippin'. I still have this photo to this day.
They were all TV serial actors who could act out their roles perfectly naturally, and hogan's heroes have been remembered to this day. Love col hogan, sergant schultz, col klink, carter, vol burkhalter, lebau, newkirk, you are incredible
Forced Perspective is famously used in CASABLANCA at the airfield, including having used small people and children for ground crew and models and cut-outs for planes.
Never knew it was called Forced Perspective. Great tactic to get the image wanted. Hogan's Heroes is my favorite show. Thanks...especially for the impersonation...loved it!
Did not know this studio trick term of FORCED Perspective till your explanation. I knew the use of modeling to create distance; but this "tid-bit" makes an already excellent show even better!
The airport scene at the end of "Casablanca" uses it. The only full sized plane is the one they get into. The others in the background are smaller, scale models, with some of the Munchkins from "Wizard of Oz" in costumes all to make them look perspectively correct. Also the take off taxi scene in "The Memphis Belle". They used a mixture of closeup and scale models to give the illusion of lots of planes on the field. In reality they only had 7 B-17s and even then, one of them crashed on takeoff for real. The scene would have been great as it really did happen at times, but since there were some actual deaths, they didn't use it.
I watched all of these episodes from this show when it first came out and have see re-runs of all the shows several times and I never noticed that. Thanks for explaining.
I just started watching the six million dolor man on DVD. it is great to be able to pause so clearly. I collect VHS and such so i love the show on VHS the best as it resembles the old farms tv signal back then.
Really love that you’re discussing this movie technique, Hollywood employed many artists to create some some really iconic backgrounds and sadly this technique is no longer used due to cgi
Trompe l'oeil on stage is a great effect. I was once at a musical where it took me half the scene before I leaned over to tell my friend that I'd just realized the back wall was flat as a pancake, when they'd cut windows and so on at angles to give a very convincing depth illusion. It meant the actors looking thru the windows had to fake the angles of their gaze accordingly. Near where I was living in the Bronx there was a house that decorated outdoors annually for Christmas with professional stage-building help, using animatronics and also trompe l'oeil to make the upper story decorations look like they were bigger and farther back than they were. These techniques have been in use for a long time. Ask about how the Parthenon uses a curve to appear straight when viewed from the correct place. If you want to see it parodied, the movie "Top Secret" does so in a few places, creating an illusion via forced perspective and then blowing the illusion by having actors move up- or downstage.
Thanks for sharing this. Hogan Heroes was one of my all time favorite shows growing up. I am always amazed by forced perspective when it is used and done right. It takes a great deal of skill to pull it off. It seems like too many rely on CGI instead of the area form.
Its cool to learn ways they used to do stuff and how it differs from today! Force Prospective was a good way to give an illusion of something of different size without having to actually have to full product, and looks just as good! I love learning new stuff about my favorite shows!!
Correction **forced Hogans heros is the my favorite show of all time! I need this DVD so i don't have to stay up late at night every day to watch it lol
Force Perspective! I have always wondered what that was called!!! Thank you, again, for helping all of us! I LOVED Hogan's Heroes. I had the opportunity to meet Bob Crane as he was performing at a dinner theater in Jacksonville, Fl. That was so many years ago. We remember the good times, and hold all close during the troubling ones.
My favorite force perspective on film is in 'Night of the Hunter'. When you see the silhouette of the guy riding a horse far in the distance, it's actually a little person riding on a pony not very far away, and done on set.
As a studio carpenter for 20+ years I built many forced perspective sets. Usually it was long hallways and staircases that went up forever. Always a neat effect!
Good eye! My favorite forced perspective is the end of Casablanca. To save on materials and perhaps studio space, they built an airplane in the background at like half the scale and used little people to stand around it to give to trick the scale and smoke to obscure the details and make it look further in the distance. They'll also pump more light in so the camera can stop the iris down and give more focus to background objects as it would at normal scale. It's such a great art. Probably not done much anymore.
Another great episode ! It is great to hear and learn of all the Hollywood movie magic behind the scenes. Let's not forget to mention Dorothy's yellow brick road 👍😉 Please keep on revealing and sharing.
Forced perspective is a tool film makers and tv shows have been using a long time. Even Lord of the Rings, with its 300 million dollar budget, used forced perspective for shots with Gandalf and Frodo together. Those films demonstrated that if it's done right, it's very effective. Your explanation of the technique was rather well done.
I loved Hogan's Heros when I was growing up. I had not noticed the FORCED Perspective in that scene until you pointed it out. It is an excellent way to trick the eye and I have noticed it in modern shows, such as Dare Devil on Netflix. I would like to win the DVD set of the first season. Thank you.
Forced perspective was one of the more creative ways for studios to obtain the shots they were trying to achieve; it clearly took some pretty precise calculations prior to setting up the scenes , as well as skilled prop and camera placement. Thanks for sharing.
If you want to see forced perspective, look at the vacation photo's of anyone who's ever visited the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and I'm sure you'll find at least one of them "holding up" the tower.
I noticed it on the original broadcast, because I was already aware of the very tight camera shots in the series and the use of stock footage for distance shots. I still loved the show then and now.
Examples of Force Perspective were used in several of Terry Gilliam's films, including "Time Bandits" and "Baron Munchausen". And many old science fiction films and television shows. It's always an impressive technique!
Very interesting. I really know nothing about things like this and being that I am getting older, I find what you post very interesting. This is one show I watch over and over. One of my very favorites. I love your comments. Good job. Thanks for doing this for us older folks.
I remember a long long long time ago, going to Universal Studios on a school field trip to learn how movies were made. It was so long ago that color TV was a new technology. The tour guide showed us how forced perspective worked. She focused on Alfred Hitchcock, especially the shower scene in Physco. She said Janet Leigh's blood going down the drain was actually chocolate syrup, which was good news for Janet Leigh. In a black and white world in which Physco was filmed that worked perfectly. She took us into a sound stage where she showed us how space ships were actually models hanging from a pully system and the back drop was black with stars and planets painted with "glo paint." It was the most interesting field trip I went on. Very old school, very old school. I don't think you can make movies like that anymore. I think the last attempt at black and white was "Young Frankenstein," 1974.
I’ve always been fascinated with Force Perspective. I remember seeing a house in Glendale that was used to represent the Gone With the Wind house using force perspective. I also saw the Beverly Hillbillies house that was apparently filmed in Force Perspective to make it appear much larger than it really was! Thanks for the video!
Forced perspective is a really neat tool for providing a desired effect both in film and in still photos. I have experimented with it in still photos, and it takes a bit of work, but it is rather amazing what you can accomplish with it.
One mind blowing case of Force Perspective is in Disney's Darby O'Gill and the Little People. There is a scene where Darby and the leprechaun king are sitting next to each other and having a conversation. To achieve this effects, they had to use hundreds of studio lights that cause blackouts across the city where they were film!
What I notice about almost every episode of "Hogan's Heroes" is that the exteriors are meant suggest wintertime, with snow on the ground & the cast in winter coats, yet the foliage is always in summertime full bloom, and no steam escapes from the actors' mouths when they speak--------Aaaaahhhh, that good old German summertime snow, or wintertime greenery, or . . .
Forced perspective is also an excellent way to make a fish appear larger in a photo. Hold it at arms length toward the camera and it appears much larger in the resulting photo.
The FX imagineers of early cinema through the 70s were brilliant! Working out how to *make* shots and scenes work, without computers and "we'll clean it up in post"!
I had now idea and never heard of force perception. Very cool and I am going to order the season that includes episode 104. Thanks for the training in truck photography!
I didn't know what the term was, but have seen the episode so many times that I have seen this before. Thanks for a cool video to explain it in detail.
I know how Forced Perspective wirks and have even used it a couple time. It is amazing how simple ques can trick the mind into seeing something small is huge. Thanks Rick
I’d never heard of Forced Perspective, so thanks for explaining that. It looks so realistic when done well. And Hogan’s Heroes is one of my favorites too. It’s amazing that roughly 25 years after the end of WWII they could make a comedy show like this. I don’t think that could happen today.
The Japanese set builders for the old Ultra Man series as well as the old Godzilla movies were masters at forced perspective. With the cameras down low at street level, everything appeared normal, however, once a monster entered the scene and began stomping on the buildings it gave you a sense of just how huge they were. But in reality we all know they were just men of average height in rubber suits. The backs of the stages were also usually paintings to give the illusion that giant monster in front of you was very far from the farm fields and power lines painted on the background. As a kid I loved all the Ultra Man episodes.
Like many others, learned a lot from Disneyland visits with Main Street. I notice it in many old movies and shows. We look for it and camera shots when watching old movies forced perspective is an art
Hi, Rick! Yep, forced perspective is a nice trick. It's been used on stage since the ancient Greeks. In modern film, it sometimes goes to great lengths. Like, in Star Trek - The Motion Picture, the Engineering set was built with forced perspective, and it looked better if people were working at consoles at various depths of the set. So, they hired actors of very short stature, like four feet tall, put them into the Engineering hard suits designed for that movie, and placed them into the set at the appropriate location. They looked like they were 6 footers standing in a set that was 50 feet deep, rather than 4-footers on a set only 20 feet deep.
I watched this episode and never noticed. I never noticed the forced perspective in Danger: Diabolik (1967) either until it was shown in the DVD extras. Nice to see another example of it.
It's called forced (not force) perspective and Walt Disney first used the technique on Main Street in Disneyland, opened in 1955. It's an architectural and film technique known long before Disney and Hollywood employed it. The first floor is constructed at normal size (typically about 14'), the second floor is 5/8ths the size of the first (about 8-3/4'), and the third floor is 1/2 the size if the first or 7 feet. It gives a viewer a sense of size larger than the true size of the structure. Also, it saves on construction materials. Disney also pumped the smell of baking bread throughout Main Street to give a visitor a sense of homieness, and comfort.
Thanks for the info on Forced Perspective, esp. the Disney castle. i am guessing that when shot, they didnt think that folks would be dissecting scenes in the future. There was no pause button back then.
I like the old shows where they are driving in a car or riding in a stagecoach and the background is a movie screen making it look like they're going somewhere.
Hey Rick, I find Force Perspective fascinating, I know it's very effective in creating many optical illusions!! Thanks for sharing this fun video on Hogan's Heroes 👍👍🙂
Excellent, Excellent, Excellent work!!!! Your work keeps improving and you’re getting stronger overall! To me, your explanation (with helpful visuals) of force perspective was more easy to understand and more to the point than a lot of the “behind the scenes” tv programs I’ve seen lately. This one is a keeper!
