Daily Archives: August 1, 2008

I watched an old Hitchcock film today, “Number 17”, from 1932(?), made and shown in the UK… it was really interesting to see the way they used camera angles and lighting… and there was this great train/bus race to a ferry… the train runs out of control and crashes into the ferry… they used models to show the carriages of the train falling into the water when the ferry broke loose and slipped out to sea… I wondered what the reaction of the patrons in the theater was to the special effects back then?? Today a typical action movie fan would laugh, but back then they were not used to the kind of special effects we are used to today… as time goes by, we expect the special effects to be more and more realistic and we look back (even 10 or 20 years) and scoff… that which we get used to replaces that which came before… but is slicker, faster, more realistic really better? I am not so sure…