One of my favorite stunts ever executed in a movie is so simple yet incredibly groundbreaking and it’s in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy opens the door to reveal a full-color world.
The Wizard of Oz starts out in black & white — standard of the time and what people were used to.
But then after Dorothy lands and opens the door, she reveals not only the magical land of Munchkinland but also the magic of technicolor in one single shot.
Since technicolor was not very widely available prior to the Wizard of Oz’s release, for many people it would be the first time they were ever seeing a moving picture in color. What better way to pull it off than in a big reveal like that? Fantastic! I know by today’s standards this doesn’t seem like a lot for a movie, but this was a great trick given the technology they had. What a special way to bring some magic to audiences, especially in a time when things were really down in America during the Great Depression.
ALSO
ALSO
This is the greatest special effect you never knew you were looking at.
The celluloid used as film at the time was thick and brittle. Splicing it was basically impossible. How to go from sepia Kansas to technicolor Oz? This was a problem that nearly sank that amazing reveal shot.
Until some crewmember said “why not just film it all in color and paint Kansas brown?”
That’s right. THAT WHOLE THING IS COLOR. ALL OF IT. Bobbi Koshay (Judy Garland’s body double) has been put in brown makeup to hide the pink of her skin. That dress isn’t blue and filmed in sepia, it’s an identical brown dress. The furniture? All painted brown. The walls and door were painted to match their color on the Kansas film rolls....a daunting task, because film at the time came out so incredibly dark that those lush Ruby Slippers were almost orange in real life, just to get that deep red color. (Early tests with actually-red shoes came out black rather than red!)
And it was done so well and so expertly that the only way to tell it’s even there is to get one of the 1970s or TNT prints where Kansas is black and white instead of sepia-tone (since the painted “sepia” will be out of place).
Today we could do this with a click of a button. Back then they had to invent a whole new set.
Drink your “respect the SFX crew” juice today!
