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Harold Michelson - quotes

Quotations relating to Harold Michelson...

Film Pre-Production

Because of the difficult technical problems, we knew we were going to have to have continuity sketches. Well, Hitchcock loved to work that way anyway. His main thrust in all of his work was preparation. Matter of fact, he sometimes facetiously said he was bored with shooting the picture. The excitement came with the ideas that were generated in the preparatory portion of the film making process. He liked to have it all clear in his mind so that before he started to shoot, he saw the whole movie in his mind. There are very few people, directors or otherwise, that can hold this kind of a concept. Harold Michelson was the main production illustrator on "The Birds". He did, I think, almost all of the illustrations.

Robert F. Boyle (2000)

Film Post-Production

Michelson describing how the visual effect of seeing Dan Fawcett's empty eye sockets was achieved...

That was also a matte shot. You won't believe this, but the two eyes were painted as a matte. The makeup man would put black where the eye was and then Albert would get the print and the black part is not processed — is not developed. And he would paint whatever he had to paint for the eyes — leave holes or what ever it is — painted them on glass and then put that together, and that would be the result.

Harold Michelson (2000)
keywords: Albert Whitlock, The Birds (1963), matte paintings, post-production, and special effects