Henderson, Brian. “Notes on Set Design and Cinema.” Film Quarterly, Vol. 42, No. 1 (Autumn, 1988), pp. 17-28

    Brian Henderson elaborately describes certain key techniques in classic and modern filmmaking by citing examples from famous films such as Citizen Kane, Bringing Up Baby, North by Northwest and Johnny Guitar.  Henderson begins his article by discussing distinctive creators among set designers and production directors in “the latest stage of auteurist dialectic.”  He moves from a comparison of Hollywood set designers to the architectural profession and discusses the value of production stills taken during the filming of movies.  Production stills, though giving a simple and concise summary of the visual set which can preserve our knowledge of the filmmaking, don’t preserve the full knowledge of the filming because no single vantage point can be used to reproduce or understand a set.  A photograph only presents a view from a single angle.  One would need multiple shots from different angles to accurately learn about the styles of different film sets.  Henderson argues that production stills are most valuable simply for publicity purposes – he cites examples of sets from Bringing Up Baby.  The author also describes visual and illusionary techniques in filming, such as the use of large foreground models and miniature background models to simulate depth.  Some filmmakers replace parts of the sets with miniatures that are built to scale or they use devices that create composite images such as rear projection, glass shots, travelling mattes, the Shufftan process, or an optical printer.  Some of these special effects are used to supplement the narrative of the film.  The Shufftan process which uses a semitransparent/semi-reflective mirror can be good at showing before and after images – a technique used in documentary filmmaking.  He also mentions techniques used by Orson Welles in Citizen Kane, and techniques by Alfred Hitchcock.

    Henderson elaborates in some detail the extent of the use of special effects in Welles’s Citizen Kane.  An interview with optical printer, Linwood Dunn, reveals that not very many people know about the extent of the post production work and modifications made to the film.  Many photographic effects used and only a handful of people actually worked on the post production special effects.   Dunn says that special techniques other than advanced hardware had to be used to get the deep-focus shots that Welles desired.  In scene of Susan Alexander’s suicide attempt, the girl and poison are featured in the foreground while the doctors and Kane contrasted as they enter in the far background.  To achieve this effect, in-camera editing techniques were used.  First the foreground was shot with a dark background, then film was rewound, the lens refocused, and the film stock was exposed again with the background lit and foreground dark.  Over 50% of footage involved special effects, but this was not well known for about 40 years after the film was released.  Shots of Xanadu (Kane’s palatial estate) were filmed as miniature models.  This common technique saved money on set design.