Today’s Post by Joe Farace
The US version of Godzilla vs Kong premiered on March 24, 2021. I never made it to the theater to see it but did pick up a 4K UHD Blu-ray of the film and in one my movie reviews on my YouTube channel called it a “reference class” disc technically. anyway, Aesthetically, you have to be a fan of the Kaiju genre.
Mary doesn’t normally like giant monster movies but she “kind of” liked this movie, since it hit all of her movie hot buttons, lots of action, explosions and loud music. I, on the other hand, preferred the Japanese film Shin Godzilla, which was released in the US on October 11, 2016. I picked up a Blu-ray copy of that film from Amazon at a good price—it now appears to be out-of print—and prefer its measured, more political and intellectual (if that word can be applied to any Godzilla movie) approach. I’m looking forward to picking up a copy of the newest Japanese film in the series, Godzilla Minus One, when it becomes available on 4K UHD later this year. Look for a review of that film on Joe’s Movie Club.
Photographic Inspiration? Sort of…
Regular readers know that I’m a movie fan and that many times motion pictures are the inspiration for some of my still photography.
Even before the very first Godzilla movie premiered in 1954, I was a fan of monster movies and special effects films starting with the original King Kong. As I got older, I became fascinated by monsters created by genre masters such as Ray Harryhousen and thought it would be fun to recreate a strip of film from an imaginary monster movie. Instead of the legendary Fay Wray, I drafted my wife Mary into playing the damsel in distress.
How I made this photo: Mary was originally photographed using window light in the kitchen of our former home in front of an old 5 x 6-foot collapsible Westcott Chroma-key background. The full-size Tyrannosaurus Rex was photographed at the Utah Field House of Natural History in Vernal Utah, which has a wonderful outdoor museum that is literally a real Jurassic Park, except their sculptures don’t bite. I know Godzilla is not a T-Rex but that’s the closest I could get to a real-life monster.
The two different images were combined using Digital Anarchy’s Primatte Chromakey, a Photoshop-compatible plug-in that lets you to create a composite image by removing the blue/green screen background from a photograph leaving the subject against a transparent background.
The original Gojira (the film’s Japanese title) was a black and white movie so I converted the color composite image into monochrome using Perfect B&W. I cropped the black and white image into a series of photographs to make it look as if was a zoom or tracking shot being played out in the film frames or a least I tried to. The edge printing on the “film” is a film reference that you may or may not get but it’s mostly there for me.
The filmstrip effect you see was a custom Photoshop action that was originality created for me by PanosFX’s Panos Efstathiadis and is a variation of his commercially available Filmstrips Photoshop actions. This particular variation of his software never caught on with anybody (but me), so what Panos/FX currently offers is the latest, improved and in many ways more versatile Photoshop actions. You can read more about his current Filmstrip actions here.
Special Note: For my look (and take) on the various on the various home video versions o Godzilla, you might want to check out my video “Godzilla 4K and More” on my YouTube channel.
Copies of my book Creative Digital Monochrome Effects is available from Amazon with new copies selling for $11.46 and used copies starting at around seven bucks, way less than a grande Butterbeer Frappuccino at your local Starbucks drive-through. No Kindle version of the book was ever available, sorry